dubai_phil

Happy with that. Some good performances from MS & Patterson gives hope that they may well move from promising to effective this season. Even had some of that tippy tappy one touch stuff at times, but around the edge of THEIR box for a change Squeaky on set pieces again, but also WE looked dangerous from Throw-Ins and in fact SCORED from one.... How long since that happened I wonder! Bring in the experience and with the youngsters managing around 15/20 games around them we should have a very good and very technically gifted squad. One swallow doesn't make a good night out oops summer, but the green shoots of recovery are there. Get the old heads in and more fitness work and any worries of relegation can be replaced by hopes of a mid table finish!

Think it's likely that we ran out of steam.... At least AP seems to have noticed and was doing something about it. I'll take a point, we were on telly and our opening game, fate dictated we should get nothing and we are now on minus 9 In reality 3 points would have been the minimum but that can start midweek Hope Patterson's fit, he looked the part today

When did we resign Delap???

just tell me this bloke on the stream isn't a REAL commentator surely (anything to stop the strain of the last 3mins)

probably same lino as the Forum match phew

we gone to 4-5-1?

feck it

Kd stunning omg

feck

oh and did ML buy a new Saints scarf or is that his old Swiss one?

now all I have to do for mext tv game is work out how to have 2 monitor view so dodn't have to alt tab between the screens to type something pointless here!

and we're playing tippy tappy football WOOT

And from a long throw AND he looks a millimetre offside!

Wow am in shock we take the lead on telly

Wow when did we sign Beckham? Wow the streaming effect makes the forum match seem to have been played at a much faster pace Wow even 20,000 SMS looks empty Great block by Perry

Thanks 40 minutes of grief sorted - 1 virtual beer owed!

banned website here so have to find a proxy blocker that takes the bandwidth so doesn't stream gggggggrrrrrrrrrrrhhhhhhhhhhh

feck feck feck Justin tv stream says removed by the provider My other normal streaming tv link tells me to run Firefox, that then just loads a zillion ads as popups even with popup blocker. And the commentary seems to be a good game but more them than us

We could break the Sky curse today... As this is the first Sky game NOT being shown over here AND Eric is in UK

Just seen a lovely one-liner quote on cricinfo.com England batted like Fredless Chickens nuff said, Ashes lost in an hour of madness

lol and that was posted on a thread that starts with "I have been by a reliable source"

Raynes - injury history not more than 25ish games in a season so sounds like a promising and experienced youngster as cover for Thomas/Perry which pushes Olly back into emergency cover category while he learns what football really is about - wise move. Pilkington - would hope he is a wide midfield player where we do need cover. Would still want to see a wise old head or two coming in.

Being battered isn't their only problem. SBT is now being reported as having only around 60-70mil which in terms of "disposable assets" at this point is probably about right. He was NEVER the money man at Man City despite ALL his public pronouncements at the time (and how fast did his "mates" move him out of THAT seat... This time he tried the same trick with Taksin and got rumbled and is now trying to simply save face. SBT was never really more than a whacko Jacko with a suntan and an understanding of PR and a spell checker. They have to repay debt fast so players go. SBT will not have the same borrowing power that "Pops" had for his boy. So, IF the deal goes through, SBT gets the club for a quid and his disposable wealth is less than is needed to rebuild a "properly costed and sustainable wage bill", and he has a transfer window about to close... Buy a new squad, get it to gel in the last month of the window - nope won't happen.... In the WORST case, the deal itself falls flat and they fall into admin, THEN what is there for the administrator to sell? 1) A PL income for one year plus parachute payments 2) Admin will not end before the window shuts - so no sqaud improvements possible except for some Bosmans, so even if a money man came in he couldn't spend until January 3) Little or no tangible assets, a high maintenance old stadium and a fanbase disgruntled at the exhorbitant prices they have been forced to pay for ST's Those conditions rule out asset strippers and make it impossible to plan a leveraged buy-out unless the administrator accepts a very low bid. Then a season of PL wallopings but still some PL salaries for the CCC. Then also compare them with other clubs up for sale at the moment, which would be the better investment opportunity for anyone other than a wealthy fan? Their BEST bet in that situation is an MJ type who can milk the parachute payments, worst case, they may not FIND a buyer. No assets, limited squad, recession... they have UNCERTAINTY about their future, IMHO as we've just experienced, that is a far more worrying position to be in AT THIS moment in time than being in L1 with a season ahead of us.

You've been watching too many episodes of Panorama He became marginally wealthy by working in an unsustainable market driven by pure greed, much of that fuelled by brainwashed Brits who thought that owning property anywhere on the planet without checking the local laws was a quick-fire way to pay off their credit card debts. (note that was an equally simplistic retort) The situation and the local economy is WAY more complex than that. The cause of Asian "labour" suffering is a massive mix of circumstances, the single most damaging are other Asian based con-men or Agencies who charge people large sums to get them work here. That whole illegal process occurs in ASIA, not here, and it is STILL illegal THERE. Those poor fools are then hired by a number of unscrupulous companies, here and across the entire Middle East. Those companies are never the Prime Contractors, they are always friends of uncles who drive cost and quality through the floor as sub-contractors. It is also illegal here. BUT, up until very recently, the pittance that labourers appear to earn here even IN those cases was far more than uneducated labour could have earned in their villages in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh or Nepal. The HORROR for many of them though was that through their own naivety, by signing with those "agents" they were charged fees of around $3 to $5,000. They believed they could start out at the bottom of the ladder and work hard and get pay rises and change jobs. Of course those agents never told them they were tied by the Visa process. You could be more accurate than the BBC by actually googling Indian Recruitment Agents for jobs in UAE or Complaints by UAE Government about illegal agents in Asia type stuff and get the whole story. A tea plantation employee picking your Tetley earnt less than ONE US$ a day, even the worst paid labourers here earnt around 3 times that. Those working in PROPER companies that did not try and "find a fast way to success" aren't HAPPY, but they earn 3 times or more than they could have done at home. It is not right, defensible, fair nor equitable, but then it is ok to sit over there and criticise as long as Primark et al keeps being able to use the same labour to allow you lot to buy cheap clothes. It is never as simple as made out. A Sri Lankan Housemaid earning an average of 100 Euros per month will usually support an extended family of around 20 people at a level that allows them to build a house for them all. Show me any country on the planet where people do not get screwed by other evil people, even with so called "inspectors and legislation" Now if you want to look for ways that people (not necessarily the good Sultan Bin Trump) made money and exploited people from the property boom then just google UAE, Property, Corruption cases. there are an awful lot of them pending in the courts. Some of them involving European passport holders as well. It is NOT a simple "let's make a simple statement because we are so superior in our society" type issue. But then Sound Bites and spin that's all the Brit population like to watch on telly these days

Jeez that was SO bad I went and did my own ironing.... Mind you the bowling was almost as bad Maybe I should just watch a couple of episodes of House instead........ nah......... That was a stupid idea, it's NEVER Lupus Red Dwarf anniversary DVD instead Meanwhile on topic, as we know what will happen, perhaps one of those non-descript pubs off Oxford street full of casual shoppers would be a good move, then at least one could PRETEND to be only passing by and avoid those sympathetic looks as we go 0-1 down after 36 seconds