dubai_phil

This should not be a surprise. NC put AP under pressure quite deliberately earlier in the season. Many of us have praised AP for making sensible After Match and Pre Match statements/Interviews, but we all assume that they were only intended for the fans. The team selection Saturday looked to me like a double edged sword - it allowed some to get match practice and their debuts, BUT it also showed that our Squad REALLY is still not good enough. (We've had pages of debate about the squad) I would guess that this was again a useful way of "AP Proving a point" that there is still work to be done over the summer months. There are two ways to run a business (and a football team), you can build a team that are not the greatest but who gel as a unit and work hard for each other to over-achieve, OR you can build a "1980's style" British Management structure with friction and Dog Eat Dog attitude where the internal aggression pushes people to over perform and work together based to an extent on "fear" What NEVER works is the half and half medium of a cosy little number. My guess is that NC is making sure that the pot is stirred and everyone knows that have to keep up to the mark. My concern is whether he has enough experience in Football to make that work. Personally I think he SHOULD make sure that it works. But I guess we will see in the coming weeks

Ah the old spam mail this morning UNITED NATIONS / WORLD BANK COMPENSATION UNIT. Our Ref: U.N/WBO/042UK/2010. Attention: My good friend, How are you today? Hope all is well with you and family?, You may not understand why this mail came to you. We have been having a meeting for the past 7 months which just ended Few days ago with the secretary to the UNITED NATIONS. This email is to all the people that have been scammed in any part of the world by Portsmouth City Football Club, The UNITED NATIONS IN Affiliation with WORLD BANK have agreed to compensate them with the sum of USD $1.5MillionDollars. This includes every foreign contractors that may have not received their contract sum, and people that have had an unfinished transaction or international businesses that failed due to PCFC’s financial mismanagement / problems etc. We found your name in the list of those who are to benefit from these compensation exercise and that is why we are contacting you, this have been agreed upon and have been signed. You are advised to contact Mr Jim Ovia of our paying center in Africa, as he is our representative in Nigeria, contact him immediately for your Cheque/ International Bank Draft of USD$1.5MillionDollars. This funds are in a Bank Draft for security purpose ok?, so he will send it to you and you can clear it in any bank of your choice. Therefore, you should send him your full Name and telephone number your correct mailing address where you want him to send the Draft to you. Contact Mr. Ona D Run immediately for your Cheque at the given address below: Bank Name: Offarip Bank Plc. PERSON TO CONTACT: MR. Ona D Run E-MAIL: wassomeoneinhongkong.com I apologize on behalf of my organization for any delay you might have encountered in receiving your fund in the past. Thanks and God bless you and your family. Hoping to hear from you as soon as you cash your Bank Draft. Making the world a better place. Regards, Secretary-General I’m an Android

Interesting fact. My son went to Frankfurt Zoo today. Apparently there are only around 25,000 Orangutans left on the Planet Earth. Unfortunately they won't get full WWF protected status as in a recent survey they discovered a species in more danger, with only 23,000 Skate fans left in Farton

txt just in from a Boro supporting mate Just been to Tesco & noticed the special blue & white packaging on the Oxo Cubes. It's in honour of Pompey's season. They have called it Laughing Stock

lolage Was channel hopping and found a 1948 John Ford/John Wayne movie on TCM.... 3 Godfathers Hadn't seen it before, cinematography was wonderful - every frame was an artistic photograph. 3 Desperados rob the Cattlemans' Association and ride off into the Nevada Desert, with no water & two horses and stumble across a Wagon with a woman giving birth. John Wayne, a Western and holding a baby. Was actually really funny in a daft way. Even more enjoyable (for a two John movie) it runs off into a complete tangent, wonderful Baritone lullaby from the dying "Kid" (like WHY?) than a whole turn into karma thanks to random pages from the Bible and visions of Ghosts and then slips into a Christmas Story movie Strangers from the East and the Baby and Donkeys... No wonder I never saw it before, and the whole bathing the new baby in Axle Grease from the Wagon (thanks to some really old Babyhood book they found) was a classic moment that had us in hoots and cringes at the same time. Absolute Tosh but totally different from the usual Big John and really enjoyed it, but whoever wrote it must have been somoking some weird stuff even that long ago!

Ah yes, but you miss the point. This is all part of the FAPL's evil scheme. Ensure that the money attracts but then ensure that all the clubs lose their grounds to Property Developers. That starts the disconnect with the local community. from that moment it is but one more step for the displaced clubs to become Franchises being sold to the highest bidders in Asia IPL style. All the teams allocated by Demographics rather than history, lots of platitudes that no fan is ever more than 1 hour's drive from PL football, a Dual League Conference style system with Playoffs, a SuperBowl, draft picks and no relegation, just more and more MONEY MONEY MONEY. The (Former) Directors of PCFC won't be the last lunatics proven to have been running the Asylum

Rickie of course Does this mean we get to present him with his award at the forum match? If so, could the admin ask him to bring his boots (I asked first!)

Ah nostalgia White Lies......... Memories of Glasto. And still pretty sure its yet another band that have never been on radio down here

Interesting diversion on the thread, seems like we'll have to take a bus down to Bournemouth for the TSW forum match after party...

Jeez you read that article and say yet another little prayer that we don't have "absentee owners" Certainly won't come back for the Wednesday Away game next season. Bstds put me in hospital last time I went there split my head open with a large metal object chucked from upstairs. Would have understood it if we'd actually not lost

Uh no. AA will be setting up hoops to jump through. You can expect he will have given indications of the level of bid he wants. You forget the two over riding factors here 1) To get the highest possible return for the creditors 2) The MOST important - he is earning about a zillion quid a day so every day he changes his tune he gets another nice night in his luxury hotel with Dom Perignon for Dinner not to mention enough to buy a nice new car. The speed of the deal with Markus was down to the fact that Frt had rolled all the tyres he could find in front of the only bidders he had and suddenly realised he wouldn't get his fees with the wages due at the end of the month, otherwise he'd have strung it out for another week or so at least. What was the weekly figure quoted for AA and his team? 50 grand? Hell show me ANYONE on here who wouldn't keep that gravy train stringing along

How bleedin obvious, the post game doldrums. Well all I can say is yep we sounded awful first half, BUT you guys who moan should (just for once) have listened to the Oppositions' commentators. They saw things in our side that we don't/ It was refreshing and entertaining. We blooded a new CB and learnt some lessons about some of our other cover options. At the end of the day, points and a good run to the end of the season can all be forgotten about by the time next November comes around on a wet windy & muddy pitch on a Tuesday night. However the lessons learnt today SHOULD be learnt and this should have proved a valuable lesson. I really enjoyed the second half respect to the Radio Kent guys for an entertaining commentary

My Gran has a response for Avram

We are flying into every 50:50. Our Pace, manouverability and our interplay is freaking these guys out. Listening to these guys makes us sound like Arsenal or someone, thay are so much more positive and emotive about the match than the Solent guys

I have to say this is a great game to listen to on the Gills feed and well done Connolly 2-1 Saints fans are making a HELL of a Racket. respect. Gills taters cacking it even though we being given the run around by then as they MUST win with the other results going the way they are

Saints fans throing coins at one of their players. Nice end to the season guys

Wow their match day lottery is a whopping 950 pounds!

Darren Barnard seems to be making his debut for Saints today according to Gills

Not offering much going forward and defensively looking disorganised at times, Gills could be further ahead, Fonte seems to be hitting everything except the ball Hmm

Fonte elbows Jackson. This could go t*ts up real quickly

Jeez, Gills taters talk Sooo fast they get about 1,000 words a minute but at least they are describing everything that happens... Fonte having a mare... that sort of thing

If you get booked yoo've goort to be careful or you could get booked again Thanks Dave service as usual then :-)

Could take your own advice there regarding some of your posts as well Still, easy typo to make with your whole Mars Bars/Shower theme. Still strangely enough thanks for the chance to expand on my golf yesterday..... I did have one long walk after hitting a ball yesterday on a 595 yard Par 5.. it was measured out at 345 yards and sat dead centre of the actual fairway it was supposed to be on. And not even a sprinkler head bounce to go that far! That one's in the record books for D_P. Mind you, the other 117 shots were utter garbage :mad: and OF COURSE that hole wasn't in the longest drive competition (I manged 142 yards sideways on that one and only because it hit a rock in the middle of the lake off the tee!) Ho hum

More appropriate comparison for shallow and easily picked apart would be the Skate's Defence....

Training Update. I was on Fire yesterday. No literally. 38C and as humid as a Turkish Wrestlers Jock Strap, our Golf Society had a day out on the companion to the "Race to Dubai's" Earth Course - Fire by Greg Norman a whopping 7,062 yards long. Nothing really interesting in that (apart from the fact I was completely krap). What WAS interesting is that one of the guys had been having a row with his missus about Exercise and Keeping Healthy. She claimed that driving a buggy and whacking balls with a stick wasn't exercise. The row became serious and as such the bloke was forced to wear a Pedometer to prove how much (or little) exercise he got. Astonishingly, at the end of the 18 holes the device (set up by a neutral), showed that he had completed 14,632 steps. If you take and average pace at being 0.6m, that works out at a whopping 8.8kms. Now I could understand the jibes if that had been my figure (I played military golf - left, right, left, right, oh sh1t! backwards, forwards), but the bloke actually won the competition. Anyway 8.8kms in 38C is a fecking good workout twice a week. Should ensure I am capable of standing up in the technical area for 90 minutes (Magners permitting) All I have to do now is cut out the 6 beers to re-hydrate after each round and I may even have the strength to make it out for the warm up again this year!