trousers

Here’s a question for you – and an answer you may well dismiss as perfectly ridiculous. But which Premier League chairmen are looking at this Dortmund team, and justifiably thinking: “That could be us in five years?” Daniel Levy? Possibly. Nicola Cortese? Most definitely. Of course, we know what they do have in common. This season, both had the temerity to replace a popular English manager with an aloof whizz-kid from Iberian football – one who talked down to the press, and another who couldn’t talk to them at all. But if very few Spurs fans would now take back ’Arry, and duly remember their original outrage with quiet shame, then how bewildering must it feel down at Southampton? Both the aversion and the therapy have been far more extreme at St Mary’s. When Cortese replaced Nigel Adkins with Mauricio Pochettino in January, he was denounced from every rooftop. Here was the effigy for the bonfire of football’s vanities. The club simmered with mutiny. Even lifelong Saints anticipated relegation with grim relish. Fans of other clubs expressed scandalised fellowship. Just when the team had found its feet, it had been lurched into a tailspin: it was sickening, embarrassing, enough finally to extinguish the last embers of your love for the game. Only now it turns out to have been a stroke of genius. As their team glides stylishly up the table, taking the scalps of Manchester City and Liverpool and Chelsea, Southampton fans have quickly acknowledged that they owed Cortese more respect. " There were a few of us that didn't overreact...

I've just checked with Carlsberg and they still have no plans to do a "ex football club owner with £17m charge on football stadium leaving quietly without a fight" range....

Congratulations! I've got two...aged 12 and 15. A nightmare together, great when they're on their own... Good luck! Edit: to be fair, they do get on together better now than the first 10 years....I sense I'm not helping here....

The council loan "will need to be paid back over a 4 year plan"? I thought it was a 6 month bridging loan...? Either I'm reading that wrong or they've reverted to type at record speed...

@pn_neil_allen: A late #FF for Balram Chainrai. I've never met you, although I have seen correspondence from your lawyers. All the best for the future.

@OliverCooper: The battle over Margaret Thatcher's legacy has come down to who buys the most things from the world's largest company. Thatcher wins again.

Am I alone in thinking it's slightly strange that Chainrai has gone from 'bullish protagonist-in-chief' to 'Trust loving roll over puppy' in the space of a few days? Something doesn't quite add up to me...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22124015

Looking forward to it.

So, are we all in agreement then? That today's Labour should lurch more to the left?

Carlsberg don't do avoiding the crux of the question, but if they did...

A reporter reported that's what he said....

Did my question about what they would do with a parachute payment windfall get through? I suggested they might want to consider donating any above budget PPs to the creditors as a gesture of good will. Down the pub so can't keep track...

Another great question... Shame about the answer...

Good question Trousers...oops, I mean Darren...

I believed the day he entered the building but I'm not allowed to say that because it makes me sound smug...

[MLG MODE] The original Corriere dello Sport article, that is referred to in that link, reported the quote thus: http://www.corrieredellosport.it/calcio/calcio_mercato/2012/08/17-259600/Ramirez+al+Southampton.+Bologna%2C+giusto+cederlo%3F Putting the actual amounts in brackets suggests that the reporter has inserted the figures after the interview rather than Ramirez actually reeling off the figures in direct answer to the question. As such, we can't necessarily assume that Ramirez gave the reporter the figures as part of the answer to the question. Ergo we can legitimately deduce that the reporter MAY have sought the figures from another source (which may or may not have been accurate) and inserted them after the interview. [/EXIT MLG MODE]

Remind me, who's the nasty party again? http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/labour-official-apologises-jibe-margaret-2586869

We don't get a mention....the ungrateful b*****ds.... http://twohundredpercent.net/?p=22623

Deliberate spelling mistake...?

[video=youtube_share;uL27Sezboto]

If I was down to my last £1 that would still hold true

I did vs Reading as it was an away game. Don't try and find any logic in my actions as there isn 't any! I also put another tenner on Reading when Saints went 1 up as the odds of a Reading went out to 33-1 or something silly at that point. Madness I know but I did something similar during last seasons run in and it made me feel better! (And obviously helped Saints win...)