dubai_phil

B*gger I was off for a kip before heading out to meet a mate who has spare air hostesses out with him. Tough call, get kip in and night out or should I stay on he.............................................................................

RUDI he5re we go here we go

But you already KNOW there is an excuse...... The coach was held up on the way to the game, they were late and didn't warm up properly......... Followed by after the first 20 minutes when we had loosened up KD's back with him bending down so much I think we competed very well..... Followed by complaint to UEFA etc etc etc yawn

Well, this is fun. Glad I took the time to make my tea before sitting down to listen

A year ago, Christmas was coming and we were looking forward to a push on to the play-offs... We were then utter **** over the Christmas period This year Christmas is coming and we're all expecting a relegation battle..... With our classical inconsistency this will probably be the start of a play-off push just because we think the opposite..... but not until next week of course. Anyway, it's been another beautiful day here working at the Dubai Ladies Masters Golf (some fittehs out there I can tell ya), but it ain't Christmas yet and the lads are bound to spoil my chilled mood 3-1 Burnley (But I HOPE for a win)

Beat me to it.... So I'll just add - and in the bottom of the bag is a player registration form so we can get our replacements signed up ready for the supposed massive exodus in January... But seriously, nice gesture, somebody at the club has started thinking again

What would be really useful would be to tie up some link between us and an MLS team and some in Latin America. We could link up at Academy level, sharing ideas, loaning players around to get experience in different environments, and then when they are in that 18+ we could send some of ours overseas to develop and bring in some from over there. We could send DMG across straight away..... Oops sorry, think I recall seeing that linking up idea somewhere else a long time ago. Anyone we could swap for DMG for a month or 75 Tim? A young version of Brian McBride could be quite useful in our current formation

Ah, a student of the "Old School of Marketing". Say the same thing as often as possible and with no great thought to the content....... Thought they all left the planet when the term ROI was invented. Every Saints Fan is concerned at the approach of the transfer window. Every Saints Fan is concerned for our future finances Not ONE single Saints Fan, other than Leon Crouch, has stuck their hand in their pocket and tried to do something about things. In fact many have decided that deliberately NOT putting their hands in their pockets is a way to drive change... So, we get back to the point that 81 people are online on what used to be one of the best forums around, because it is just getting boring. Free speech and all that, no problemo, next week there will be 75 on line. By February, the 6 people left logged in won't give a t*ss what anyone at the club does - the rest of us we'll all be sitting at home sulking

I'm now worried. Just got back from a German Market in Zurich... You're saying they are in Southampton AND Bournemouth as WELL! The b**stds have invaded Europe again, look at that, 30's recession, they invade. 2008 recession and they're everywhere.... Mind you the Gluhwien was nice and only 5 CHFs (whatever that is in real money)

Hey that was my line last night! Otherwsie what Derry said was word for word what we felt in the pub last night, no self discipline and no shape going forwards. Does Lloyd James have reall bad halitosis? Because there NEVER seemed to be a Saints player in front of him last night on the right, can't think of another valid reason

I'd like to add Lucy Pinder to the list if that's alright. After a few wins but certainly before the gold coins

Actually I think it is unfair on Chocolate Soldiers. DMG's new nickname - hands up. When he actually got the bal (what twice??) in the box he fell over with his hands up.

I'm 50 and I had more chance of scoring in the pub in the last 10 minutes with a 22 year old babe from Glasgow than Saints did all night. Something is now clearly very wrong over there as she's downstairs cooking Bacon Sarnies......... Did BWP sneak off the pitch for 30 mins with DMG for a quick pint? When the Spuds fans in the pub reckoned that the tv coverage of Rupe's expressions was more exciting than our attack you know something isn't right

OK so the verdict from the Dubai Saints boys in da pub. 6 pints. Bullfrogs. Jaegerbombs. Springboks. Blow Jobs. Sex on the Beach. Hot & Cold running air hostesses. None of the above mattered we were still toothless, guileless and just plain couldn't have scored in Rock Bottoms, let alone the Yorke Hotel. I mean FFS even EoA could have scored tonight, but the team..... Jan, it isn't working, DMG is to right wing as Saint Steve is to Babe magnets...... All we can say from down here is yikes it'll be a hell of a party when we win on telly 'cos tonight, the footie was just in the way of a great night out

Mates 50th Birthday in Baden in Switzerland Thursday night landed (airmiles) Friday sightseeing in Zurich. Cold Wet but a nice stall selling Gluhwien Saturday Footie in pub at 2pm, Party at 7pm, am told got home at 3am Sunday Was there one? Got plane home and managed an hour of sleep and landed this morning. Liver resembles an Emmental Cheese 9/10

What a shame, we were going to invite BTF over for a weekend...... Bloody long walk One thing always forgotten about with the arguments about places like Heathrow etc needing to expand, is that a lot of people who fly into that place are NOT British, and they are in transit to somewhere else. A good example would be Dubai to Madrid, or say Boston. You can choose to fly on BA/Virgin via London - OK planes but the nightmare of the airport, or you fly on a European airline (Karp planes but much easier transit) With Heathrow & Gatwick choking to death, the airlines lose that transit business.... The likes of Emirates over 70% of their long haul passengers are transit. Low Cost airlines it's probably less than 1%, but for the likes of BA, Virgin etc, they have a problem because to keep their service levels they need people doing the whole transit thing. If they stopped thinking of the place as simply "London's airports" they'd stop coming up with whacky ideas like building one in the East Thames. They should build a new one in the Centre of Slough. It would do Billions in improvements and be much easier for us to reach. (Sorry, was being a bit Sloughist there) But if they put a rail link in from Heathrow/Gatwick they'd save a fortune in emissions as well

Bunch of us Saints in Dubai will be down the pub (Goodfellas around 10:30 pm to get a few in before kick-off! in case any other stray locals looking in!) Hopefully we'll get a commentary today. We already know what's going to happen, it's on telly, so the truly unlikely landing of an alien spaceship will probably deflect a 25 yard screamer dead set goal from Surman back up the pitch into our own goal for a 1-0 win to Palace, but we'll enjoy the beer and have a good banter..... Just to help out though, it's been a beautiful day here today, high of 24C, hardly a breath of wind, air quality as clean as a BWP offside whistle. Lovely sunset and a potential low this evening of a FREEZING 15C. Better get our thermals out, winters' here COYR's!

lol post of the week

Somehow I don't think even Henry Kissinger in his prime would have wanted THAT role. Would you? Which is probably why Salz and others kept themselves out of the firiing line. Until circumstances bring them all together OR all gone, trying to build any fences is one step too far

Ah that helps matters then. So no matter who was in charge fans would have had the issue of watching the youth team. Perry signed KD this season vs RW? tough call Lucketti v Cork/Pearce youngsters may shade that NP v JP we'd have kept NP but JP is hanging in there and still has 20++ games to go. Fair to say I worried we gambled once to many appointing a coach with no experience on top of all the other changes. But again, conciliatory words - not such a gap between them as we have made out strategy wise. All we need now is the olive branch or the investors... (both as unlikely as snow in Dubai TBH)

UP I was posting some alternative views. Did not say anything about buying out Lowe. Simply that Crouch took over the reins without a plan to marginalise Lowe and keep him away. The simple FACT is that Lowe was able to get back in because Crouch did not find a way to slam the door in his face. Now one way would have been to buy him out. Another would have been to secure political allies to keep him out. Another way would have to brought him IN to the fold but under Leon's strict control. Another way would have been to address the concerns that Lowe used as his excuse to form his own alliance with Wilde And I am sure that there are other ways that none of us could even speculate about. Now, I am not so naive as to believe that these were necessarily feasible, but the fact is that Leon came in and within months he had allowed Lowe back in. To me that shows a lack of strategy on Leon's behalf, if you then argue that any other outcome was impossible, then again I would have to query why Leon went into a political battle armed with rallying calls and forum soundbites, and IF it was impossible to keep Lowe OUT then how does that reflect back on Leon to embark on something purely based on HOPE? As for the other bits, no time is ever good to have to restructure, I agree, certainly in a football team, but IF your ship has struck an iceberg, waiting until the main course is served before doing something about it empirically has been shown to be the lesser of the solutions. My point on NP was not an IMHO, it was simply speculative for discussion. We all use what if? everyday on here, but what if he HAD come in the day Burley left. Perhaps we could have pulled together much quicker, how much of the damage was down to Dodd & Gorman? I don't know. It is POSSIBLE that 20 games or so or even a run by Pearson to the play-offs would have made a stronger case for his retention than the actual facts that we debate. That was just a question that had not been asked yet by any of our what if? threads. We credit NP with keeping us up, but he only had to do that because we didn't show any real improvement in results under the caretakers. My apologies for trying to add some new ideas into the usual repititions. Of course I could have just agreed with Stanley, because we all know everything is simply Lowe's fault, but then that just gets dull and boring

Well from both sides of the argument Well, first and foremost then we have to blame Crouch for taking control at the AGM and NOT having a viable plan to remove/buy out or negate Lowe's influence. He marched in and left the enemy at the Gate Secondly, the club had serious financial issues and he applied sticking plaster in loaning out Rasiak & co, but did not look at the overall cost structure as aggressively as the finances seem to have shown they needed to be. Also in that time, he made promotions of staff when financially maybe we should have been reducing our total labour costs Thirdly, he appointed Gorman & Dodd, their spell in charge set up the mess that NP then managed to rescue us from. Sure the damage was done by Burley but for all our guessing at whether NP would be better than what we have now, we seem to have collectively forgotten that IF he had appointed NP early we may not have had the end of season nightmare AND NP may well have had enough of an impact to make it impossible to let him go/not renew/can him So there you go, different ideas for different sides in the argument. My opinion - he should never have been Chairman in the first place as all THREE of them should have been long gone. Fair for him to have a right of reply, but why not last week?

I worry about you Bates, I really do

Quality post, thanks for sharing that!

The chosen one next season on 15mil a year salary according to my Citeh supporting mate. But 128mil for the keeper, 75 mil for a forward, what they expect to spend on defenders? That's the problem many teams with money have, they build from the front, not from the back. The Abu Dhabi crew talked about 400 mil to spend, SURELY they aren't so stupid as to blow the whole lot in one season? Hmm well maybe