dubai_phil

Oh thank fook for that, another devotee of the Pathia! meanwhile to everyone else you Dumb f\/cks No really. The Gazebo restaurant here are the purveyors of the finest Dum Phukt cuisine. Very tasty. http://www.gazebo.ae/ Have mentioned a zillion times on here Ravi's Palace (now apparently World Famous according to Timeout) Their Chicken Tikka makes the stuff served in Blighty taste like a packet of E-additives. And again they re-visit whether the best Curry is actually Indian or Pakistani argument with their Chicken Handi. Also worthy of a mention in dispatches are Chicken Tikka Inn for their Chicken Bothi & Mutton Tikka, and Sindh Punjab for their legendary Butter Chicken. For me the most memorable curry though was my first one in Pakistan when I was taken by my customer (and now good friend) to IF memory serves me right the Karachi Yacht club - total back to the Raj experience and the food was amazing AND I only crapped for 3 days non-stop afterwards

We are going to get massively bored with the whole Citeh in the CL thing in the press and who they are going to sign and how the Cup Final saved Mancini the same way it saved SAF. So (although I ain't watching it live) I'd love it to be a Delap long throw onto Higgy's head for Fuller to bury the winner with seconds to go

Ah following on from rallyboy's stylee, there are just so many possible responses to that last one..... I'll settle for "Perhaps that's where Corp Ho has been all these past weeks"

Arggh that just finished me off. That concept on top of tonight's American Idol vote saving the dopey talentless muppet. Sod Samaritans I'm off to teh Burj for a jump

Strangely that has a sort of Karma to it

Strange, after watching one of the best Rock Talents I've seen in ages get voted off American Idol in favour of a Dippy Blonde who can't even sing I think I've landed in the wrong Universe as well. Very scared.

AOC gave AL 50 quid to invest in Vegas. AL won the gazillion pound jackpot and so neither ever need to leave us now. I wish Probably Kit ST Prices Michael Owen signing (yeah right) Oh of course the Ted Bates trophy Pre-Season game against AC Milan/Barca/Real Or following the other thread We've sold SMS to the Russians so Poopey can play in Southampton their spiritual home and are we are building a 60,000 seat stadium at Jacksons Farm

Promotion is our aim this season, End of discussion. Not Top Two or a Playoff spot, simply Promotion. Every signing, our pre-season, our scouting & recuriting staff must build on that basis. Set the team up from day one to compete and win games and to have tactical flexibility. Under NO circumstances buy squad players and set out simply to survive. Will we do it? I think we have a good chance IF close season goes well. Things seem stable, our Physio won't make the same mistakes as AP. Why the hell not and if it comes via the playoffs? Great. We're owed a play off final at least after the last nightmare

And, harking back to the halycon days of the AP demise, think the response to this news at that time would have gone something like..... Hang on. This is rubbish, more evidence of an evil plan by The Arch Bond Villain's number two to undermine our manager. Everyone knows that the manager should be in charge of everything to do with finding and recruiting players. There's a perfectly good airport in Southampton, and NA will know everyone in football and can jet off at a moments notice to scout and sign the best players in the world. No other teams in England have this stupid system. NC out. Or words to that effect. How success changes opinions eh?

Bet the Blue Few members we have are getting a few giggles in with all these new threads about us taking over the world, buying Superstars and extending stadiums....

Well, with all the nice words and targets I was thinking more along the lines of Royal Jet http://www.royaljetgroup.com/pages/showpage.php?id=70 Think we've been down the lines of "Low Cost" or "Your local Airline" before and look where they got us

But.... MLG is right. The Club is targetting Champions League Football. To be honest anybody who is a Saints fan who has an issue with that idea needs to step back and think what it actually means. How do you get into the CL? OK at this moment it means that (like Man City) you buy a zillion superstars and pay them a zillion pounds. But that is not quite how Arsenal or Man Utd got there. I don't believe for a minute that Saints are about to do a Man City nor do I think that is what NC means with this objective. BUT if we look at it a different way, we set the club from Top to Bottom to AIM for that. The Academy players - we recruit the best now from Europe, not just England. We make sure they have the Best training going. We stop selling them at the first sign of a cheque book so instead of buying in players worth 50mil we've developed some of our own and made a profit on others that can then be used to pay from new signings and wages (Such as may happen to AOC) We stop that nightmare spiral of buying Squad players. We have a squad. Each player we buy makes one of our current first teamers into a Squad player. You instill a mindset of moving forwards and always getting better, instead of a mindset of "We have to make a return for the shareholders or keep the bank manager happy" We don't HAVE to buy success, we could actually build it. Arsenal may have won feck all for some time now and their system is starting to creak, but they try to improve each year, they buy for the future. It can be a damned hard balance and Rupert got it wrong towards the end of his first tenure, but if the funds are there why the hell SHOULD the club or the Management or the Fans simply aspire to being "Another Stoke or Bolton". We should aspire to get to their level, match them, better them and then move on to overtake the next. Football IS about getting one over on the opposition, not aspiring to draw every game

I think it is now time for us to move on. We are clearly now aiming to fly very high in the Football World. We have the players jetting off to Vegas. We (appear) to have a new European Scouting Network. So clearly a Bus is no longer going to cut it. All about the getting onto the FLIGHT now Airplane time I believe. (Flashes of Nazareth and getting on this plane tonight spring to mind)

Well they can get some pre season practice in at our SMS tournie then, sure they'd be given a great welcome by the other Saints fan teams on the day

'Twas only an off the top of head idea, but why shouldn't it be available to away fans IF the Yield Management software worked no reason it couldn't apply to the seating the same way. It should be possible for every club in fact. Would actually reduce the money that touts take out of the game, but that's a different argument altogether. FWIW a mate of mine worked for the guys who did the Odeon Ticketing system. They also do Theme Parks & Pubs & stuff - that software has a similar ability to run special promos or pricing by seat yields as well as the ticket issuing machines HOWEVER None of this is likely to happen this year as I'm sure that the club have spent this past season getting the whole technology right for a new system....

And of course it will be fun to watch the takeover now that the Saab project has hit the buffers big time.

Someone's gotta queue at the bar for the beers..... Why does Adam Sandler & Waterboy spring to mind?

Stangely, Saturday was the first ever time I had a beer before a game at SMS. Even more strange was that it took me about 45 seconds to get a pint of Tetley's & a Carlsberg. Wasn't a queue at all at 2:37pm for some reason at the Chapel end.....

Inna da Italian accent "I swear, if I ever have to sit through another one of these I'll get the concrete boots out. What is it with the English and their humour?"

So who's gonna be locked out on the roof, and who will be the ones stealing Mike Tyson's Tiger?

Or you could do a RyanAir Ticket Pricing System. You offer seats so many months in advance and get them at a discount, then as the match nears the price rises, if it looks to be a sell out then the last tickets for example could be released at say 40 or 50 quid whereas those who bought early got them for say 18 quid. Seat Yield Management Software, not that difficult to adapt

Oh no it gets worse for you lot... So the EIB using funds from the EU loans them 400m Euro. And where does the EU get it's money from (especially with all these bails outs) - Yep from the good old taxpayer. Now that other article said that old Antonov was worth what about 300m And Spyker paid out 74mil to buy Saab and probably spent some to keep it running... Oh look it's almost the same figure. So (and I love this bit) The DSB's scammed the UK Taxman for around 100 mil of YOUR money And the guys about to use them to wash their money through (could in a weird and strangely circular conspiracy theory with no basis in fact) be about to do it using - Yep Your Tax Money. Oh bless

You often read over there about "Increased Revenue from Overseas TV Rights" Well, what that means in reality is that we have ONE Sat service provider gets the deal for 2 years. So we all have to pay to get their system installed (About 300 quid) then have to pay for the subscription (about 50 quid a MONTH). Then after two years the NEXT new kid on the block pays more and bingo - we need a NEW system and all that cost. The last time it changed I, and many others here just said Sod it and now go without Football. In many ways you guys are lucky that you only have Sky and don't need to keep changing dishes & boxes and trying to find Hotbird or NileSat or whatever this week's box is. It is at the end of the day all about the money. I bet a decent researcher could dig down on every FIFA member and see what they started out as and what they had and then value their lifestyles today. Dinosaurs and the revolution will come one day, most likely the Players will realise how much money these fools are creaming off for themselves and come up with a new organisation - done of course so that THEY can take more money out the game at the top level. Rant over Oh, and you watch old Warner get off scot free. Why? because he was being Public Spirited, he was using his influence and position to build a School to benefit the Community. Yeah and I'm having my 3rd threesome of the day with Reese Witherspoon, Angelina Jolie & Lucy Liu as soon as I finish my lunch

Yep but the suitcase HERE is King still. And is still the favoured way to get it out of Mother Russia. All that the Club buying is doing is to let the Higher Echelon types who have their "corporations" buy overseas assets from people that are so greedy they don't look too hard. Cleaners, Money Lenders, much the same these days

I found him really boring, but surprised his career took such a downturn that he's turned into a speed camera Oh It's Hammy & his dodgy fingers again. Hammy - you should get a job advertising why people shouldn't buy Smart Phones