dubai_phil

Perhaps you should read some of the interviews and watch some of the Saints TV links. AP has clearly said that the players have not been properly coached, lack footballing intelligence and experience. He has told us and shown us video clips of the fact that he is working on those problems, he has appointed coaching staff and scouts to go out and find better players. If you were to be bothered to read it there is a whole thread discussing his statement that he is looking to bring in support for Lambert. Like I said, he could be criticsed for the way he is setting up the team, but IMHO that is limited by the choices he has in the squad at the moment. He has brought in what 7 new players already, the transfer window is closed and he has to look for out of contract players or loans. Nobody so far has posted a list of suitable loan players who are available that we could discuss sensibly. AP is not immune from valid and constructive criticism, but I'm sorry for you to post stuff like this which is patently untrue makes me wonder whether you are Lowe in disguise, Trousers' post is spot on

Shock news update from Dubai They opened up Al Fahim And found Rupert inside probably the only way things could get worse for the sk8tes

LMFAO Well his wallet was never in it either

Hope he had enough money to keep his medical insurance premiums up to date. Otherwise Skates will have to sell another player to pay his medical bills. Who WRITES these scripts?

Yawn. Saga is finished, if he was interested he'd be about 4kg lighter. Neither he nor Rasiak rushed to leave the club during the window leaving little or no time to bring in a replacement. The midfield players we have inherited do not have any natural wide players apart from Holmes who 1) was injured and 2) doesn't seem to be doing anything to push himself into the team. Perhaps he decided to have a look and see if Lallana, Saga or Patterson could fit the bill. We've had ten games, that was 3 games to look at each of them. Jeez, 3 games to learn how to play off a new forward..... At the moment he is fitting square pegs into round holes, it's clear that some more is needed and the manager has told us he needs to do it and told us he is trying to do something. Perhaps you have a list of players in mind that are available on loan? I don't, but then I don't play CM09 or whatever this month's version is called

I was once told by stunning identical 26 year old babe chick twins in Damascus that I was their sexual fantasy. I thought twins only read each others thoughts???? Oh, and I have NEVER recovered from THAT moment..

Oh Karp, we've become Ebbsfleet United. AP looks on here, sees what we're moaning about and then works on it Alan - mate, there are some VERY weird people on here (myself included) DON'T listen to us

So why doesn't everyone just move to The Chapel? But really, there are some key points to overcome 1) That corner is the easiest to get the away fans off to their coaches and avoids them having to walk through the fans from Itchen & Chapel so that's likely the Police 2) They COULD have the Itchen North & Corner, unfortunately the Itchen used to be more expensive for ST sales (so much needed revenue) AND too close to those nice expensive Executive Boxes Sooooo solve the separation issue (there were only about 5 boxes out of fifty in use on Tuesday so it could work until we get back to the PL and sell the boxes out again) It's a great idea to have the one end but OUR fans will ALWAYS want to be close to the Away fans in order to have the craic, so move them to the Itchen and you'll all moan because you're sitting in the middle of the Itchen by all the hospitality crew... It's a no easy win problem, worth a moan but won't happen

Phew, panic over, just read the date code on that secret file, seems it was recorded last season and there was a mispronunciation instead of Lambert it should have said lumberingelephant Sorry don't you REALLY hate jet lag

Thanks to the miracles of modern technology I think we recorded the phone call Nikola, zat vas fantastic football, I veally enjoyed it. Now on Zaturday kan ve play Holmes on ze left ving and zat Papa up front properly mitt ze Lambert in zee 4-4ficken-zwei bitte Ah yes boss, no problemo boss

For those that missed it when I posted them many moons ago, here is some background on Sultan Bin Trump http://www.1888pressrelease.com/reality-tv-series-hydra-executives-an-international-reality-pr-qeo10393c.html http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+hydra+executive&search_type=&aq=f You need to page down to his show Talking about Man City just in case you were worried he didn't stalk celebs http://www.thenational.ae/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090617/NATIONAL/706169810 notice the careful use of the word REPLACED http://www.propertywire.com/news/middle-east/hydra-properties-project-200906073186.html Even his business was causing problems... 3 years late - how would YOU feel if you paid for a house to be ready last year and have to wait two more years during the recession? - about the same as the skates I would think Oh, and that thing in the first article about not wanting to be thought of as Donald Trump? About as real as his statements about finance to the Skates fans forum http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-179416046.html Sultan Bin Trump, like I said :D:D:D

Too much in this for someone in monitored ISP land to answer IMHO Thaksin himself would see it more as a ego issue and possibly an Al Fayed style live somewhere other than Egypt type thing. Unrelated to anything to do with Thaksin, don't under estimate the value of putting 20 mil offshore pounds into something that returns you 10 mil legit pounds. The PL aren't THAT careful with their checking out of the beneficial owner, hell I even worked out how I could do that with someone else's money... SPV overseas "finance/investment" company anyone? Sven? As a good friend from Russia once said, if (for example) Abramovich ever fell out with his best friends back home who did a Lukoil on his business, he could sell Chelsea for 80 mil cash in an hour and still live very well in England or his own Island

Unless you understand the way this place works then it is actually very hard to find anything. All you have is a trail of "hmmmmmmm's" that anyone down here would understand straight away. The TV show, these guys just don't do ego, they look inwards and have nice toys but they don't push it into the public domain, you sort of look in and go wow at the yachts in Monte Carlo, you don't see them standing there saying LOOK AT THE SIZE OF MY YACHT... He made all those public statements about Man City and was canned in minutes - should have spotted that Mr Storrie - it was obvious he had offended his supposed "business associates" He got removed as CEO from Hydra Properties - the actual detail is fuzzy, but a local only gets moved if it is gross incompetence or something "shadier" He admits to making 100 mil in property deals when employed by a semi-government backed Property Company. Now this place often is accused of strange business practices, but I think this one is just a little more than strange, especially (but unrelated) seeing as a number of "local" officers in property companies have court cases pending for fraud and corruption. Has his big mouth said one thing too much there? Will be interesting His backers, from round one rumours of Thaksin were around, how did Storrie not see them, they were vague, they were rumours but they seem to have come true and caused the whole take-over vehicle to crash. For all we know his trip to the US could have been to find some way of "cleaning" the investment so Thaksin still gets his toy and PL get to look stupid. From day one, he simply did not meet the profile of a successful sustainable businessman. Apart from "His Excellency", name the top 6 trading families in Dubai - most people cannot as they keep a very low profile and just do their thing. He simply didn't fit in to the profile and in the end ask yourselves, if Whacko Jacko turned down his (alleged) money because he (and his advisors) thought it was "an issue" HOW THE HECK could Storrie have welcomed him with open arms... Funny as fook, but I will keep my eyes open, let's face it, this is fun

Of course it's easy, that's why so many of us on here can do it so easily two days after a game! It is really hard, did we fall apart because Mellis went off (who didn't appear effective) or did we not have the right shape at the beginning. One thing I DO agree with you on, what we watched was fantastic for a long period of the game, IMHO we're on the right tracks and it needs some tweaking and more experience/brains being used on the park... Think AP/NC sort of said something along those lines after the game in the interview thread

Just to add to their woes, one thing I can promise is that Sultan Bin Trump won't be bringing any SHECKLES to Nottarfkrap, dodgy dollars maybe but not those :cool:

Great article, especially about why Abu Dhabi canned him from Man City lol And what I love is the whole Piers Morgan thing... "He made 100mil on his first property deal"... Hang on chaps - he was EMPLOYED by a REAL ESTATE COMPANY at the time. So is Al Fahim now saying that he made 100 mil on the side? Wow, that's interesting, I'm sure his previous emplyers would like to have a word with him, as would their shareholders AND the customers who have lost huge sums of money as his promised "developments" have been cancelled. Every time he opens his mouth he digs a deeper hole. 50mil - yep sure that is probably coming from some nice boys in Vegas... Poor old Skates, all 16,000 of them will have the boys coming round when it gets to pay-back time... make a dem da offer they cannot refuse - lol

How that article shows up the clowns for our wasted years... Just simple stuff, what I tend to call "corporate Bullsh1t" speak, shows the gulf in class between the "local businessman wanting to play and massage his ego" and people who actually have some understanding on how to get people to perform.. Just lol'd at the idea of Rupert having "A Trusted Advisor" and how he would have allowed everyone to have 3 different bosses so nobody knew what was going on. Will it all work? Well thank fook it is a sane sensible plan and not a revolution! Will we get to the playoffs this year - lol, right now, staying up will be good. Hopefully then we can get some players who have been trained and coached in how to play PROPER football with brains and understanding of the game instead of what we've produced of late.

OK, and so I'm back, had a truck load of vino on the flight and a good sleep. Have my own keyboard back instead of my horrible laptop one. So, a more balanced overview. About 5/6 years or so ago, we played Man Ure in the cup on TV. We played that day like statues and my memory of that game was the way that the Mancs moved the BALL around the pitch at such incredible pace. They seemed to be thinking minutes faster than our players. Against Bristol, WE moved that ball around like that. It was truly amazing, and the build up to our second goal typified that pace. So at the very basic level, having the team "let the ball do the work" by thinking quicker than the opposition in our playing style rather than "hoofing it long" and letting pacey players run at defenders on their own is a system I can at least understand. The concept is sound, but where does it break down? Certainly the shape. Playing a sort of 1-2-3-4 formation where Papa & Adam made up the two, but with Papa staying out wide, then puts a strain on the 3 midfielders. Playing at such pace as we did, it was obvious that Morgan was shattered. He played a very tired ball out from the edge of our box and AP had no choice but to get Wotton on. Playing like that, do our players actually have the stamina yet to maintain the tempo - the answer seemed to be emphatically no, and the problems that the lack of width from Melis caused to Harding have been well documented. Saga is a good 4 or 5Kg overweight and really sorry to his "Hope HCDAJFU" fans he is not the answer. So, should we panic? No. The foundations are there for a very good footballing side who are big enough to cope with the strong arm stuff. Should we worry? yes I think we should. The style is all about confidence and fitness, they really looked fantastic at times, but they ran out of steam badly (how many years have I been saying that?) BUT, more of a worry is that the style is well suited to the billiard table that is the pitch at SMS. But the little touches and flicks on a frosty night on a bumpy pitch during the winter away from home, will IMHO be a problem. I like what is being built as our plan A football. We were behind the curve with pre-season etc and they were all strangers a few weeks ago, it is a good job by AP & the coaches. I don't like that we may not have a style B (as we saw when we went to 4-4-2 with Mills coming on) and I am not sure that AP is setting up the shape of the team as effectively as he could. Overall, great night out, honestly really enjoyed the game more than any of the few I've seen in the past years and still want to know who let that Blonde in to kick us in the nuts. Hell, they play like that every week and tighten it up a little I may think about moving back, outside the mistakes there is a good football team waiting to come out of that lot when they get fit, get better organised and get a little less naive.

First game for ages, really enjoyed it, but hwo did we lose it. Impressions, we played some good football for about 65 minutes. Some schoolboy errors cost us the game. We had width with Papa wide and forward and James got into the space well and got a lot of good crosses in (but not made that dangerous). Mellis seemed to stay 15-20yards further infield than Papa and as such the shape on the left seemed all wrong and they scored their goals down that flank. Was Melis operating to instructions? 3 in the middle with only Papa wide? Don't know. We sure fell asleep for one of their goals, booking for a dive in the penalty area, seemed everyone in our team was watching what was going on and bang, they've scored. So great movement of the football at some real pace at times but it never ACTUALLY went anywhere until our 2nd goal. Are we too pretty for our own good? Adam made two mistakes from soft flicks, the second one cost us their 2nd goal. Melis seemed to be ineffective but when he went off and we went more 4-4-2 we just disappeared from the game. Was that due to Melis going or we are actually useless in that shape. Too many questions last night, really enjoyed the game have no idea how we didn't win, boarding my flight home now at LHR and will ponder it with a few bevvies and still have no idea. Hmmm

Just setting off on the long journey back home. 4 hour drive from here to Miami (couldn't get a flight into Orlando) so will be off line again this weekend.... So looks like another win then.... Still haven't been able to decide whether to stay over to get to SMS on Tuesday or head back to work..... Know what I want to do but then... Think will make that decision later, for now COYS

woo hoo update part two How can anyone eat an American Porterhouse Steak - 24 ounces FFS I feel SO fat... And for anyone else coming this way International Drive Howl at The Moon. Probably the future - Rock Band bar mixed with karaoke. Was just perfect

Priceless.... and wow I finally found a use for Budweiser - when sprayed onto your screen and keyboard it cleans up the coffee stains normally there!

Thanks guys, here's the update McDonalds Angus Bacon & Cheese Burgers - new and VERY good Seafood nah - big eff off steak later tonight Didn't take a machete, but a bit worried at the sound of sirens as I did hook one of my drives horribly yesterday and hit a car on the far opposite lane of the highway big squeal of brakes and a crunch of glass at the time, we went for a quick review of the previous green... Epcot - meah - nice day out but not a once in a lifetime, although the sort of futurama cartoon thingy they make of you in Spaceship earth made me smirk. They had a Food & Drink festival - 6 bucks for a micro food portion and 12 bucks for a "specially imported beer". Went to China and had a Tsing Tao for $5 Passed Ripley's on the way back seemed empty, don't they have one in Blackpool or something. Think I saw an American, most the other blokes were wearing Liverpool training tops or England shirts. Two Jock ladies sat down while I had a pint of Bass one broke the chair so not just the Yanks. Spent an hour at an Outlet Mall on the way home and found nowhere had anything in my size. Strangely I'm an XXXL in Thailand, XXL in Dubai, XL in UK and a frigging Medium sized Polo shirt here - lol

Thaks gang. Looks like Epcot... Don't get me wrong, I don't HATE rollercoasters per se, just that when you get a hangover, apparently the brain finds it easier to get bashed against the inside of your skull when experiencing rapid G-Force shifts.... So I really ain't up to keeping the hangover repeating itself all day long! Cheers Scudamore, there's a wonderworld near the hotel as well that caused us to stop and blink - the building is upside down, may try that later if get bored at Epcot!

Been at a conference all week with Yanks with expense accounts :cool: When I wasn't blasting golf balls into lakes/trees etc