sandwichsaint

Eurosport live coverage here, run it in the background and listen-while-you-work to the 'commentary/chat' in a TMS stylee, enjoy. http://www.fromsport.com/v-0/0/148/v-14923.html

Most games we'll do OK, some games we will be brilliant and there will be a few shockers in there as well; I wonder if AP has decided which games will be which yet?

Anybody on here ever go out to watch it? I'm going out to the Pyrenees next Thu, we will be taking our bikes and will ride and watch four mountain stages on the Sat-Sun-Mon-Tue. Awesome event to attend live, just one big all-day party - bikes, beer, food, music, all wrapped up in temperatures of nearly 40C. This will be the third time I've attended live, we went to the Alps about 5 years ago and went to the Pyrennes and Andorra last year (also seen the TDF twice in Kent but that doesn't really count!)

Has Holmes been released? It certainly does look a bit threadbare if that's the best bench we can offer.

Don't all binmen work for private companies now? (mine certainly do and have done for prob the last 20 years)... Guess what? Mine run round early on bank holidays too ... how negligent of their private sector bosses, to think they could be running around their rounds everyday.... Boooooooooooo.

Red and White striped away shirt? Black and white striped home shirt sponsored by ZEBRA finance? Relocation to Basingstoke and renamed the Southern Saints? Instalment plan for pie purchasing? RL co-opted onto the board to 'rebuild relationships with fans'? Pay toilets installed at SMS? Swipe-card, fast-track system introduced to avoid queueing over the bridge after games? Don't come moaning to me when all these come to pass.....

Have a word with yourself, these are OUR legends, and it is entirely fitting that we remember and celebrate them. 'Champers and padded shoulders', are you sure you are supporting the right team?

Not sure quite how you compute the maths but when we got to Cardiff and were flying high high under WGS ST holders had one ticket each (18-20 ST holders at that time?), plus corporates, plus players etc; then it went to memberships, they counted down the database 'games attended' and the cut off for a cup final ticket was 8 games (I know that because I had myself and my two lads exactly on 8 and Mrs Sandwich on 7 games - despite my special pleading we got three tkts rather than 4!). When we were doing really well only a few thousand people had 8 or more games against their number (tho obviously balanced out in part by much larger number of ST holders). On that basis there probably can't have been more than a couple of hundred last year with 14+ pay as you go attendances.... I went to 10 homes and 10 aways last season ... has NC factored in that having a ST ties a lot of your money and your time to attending home games ... without an ST you are much more able financially and everything else to attend more away games? The break-even figure for non-renewers and for 'regular' walker-uppers of FOURTEEN GAMES looks massive from here ... if I had been SFS I would have tried to sell 20k STs at whatever price it took ... money in the bank.. a fairly full crowd every game... hooking in familes and groups 'for the journey' etc etc. The only conclusion we can say is that we all know which is going to be the hottest seat in the stadium next season ... the one that AP sits on! Let's just hope that on the pitch we don't see an England-style crisis of over-confidence and paralysis by expectation. Any let-up in results and crowds will be smaller than last season, an extraordinary result given the feelgood end to last season.

If we assume that 2 of the 8 QF refs won't be seen again that leaves 6 teams for 4 games - maths says they can't all get one! Perhaps our boys have been fast forwarded to the last 3 games, the weakest team dropped, and positions 2-5 have been given the QF's? Gives them the chance to use the best 2 from the QFs plus our boys in the last 3 real games (and a consolation prize for somebody or other to take the meaningless 3/4 place game). Only IMHO of course .... but I would be very surprised if the 'top 4' had been given the quarters .. and we have been ranked 5 or 6.

Anybody see the stats in the Telegraph yesterday? They printed 'distance covered' and 'top speed' (stop s******ing at the back) for all of England's outfield players. Not sure what crit they use to measure 'top speed' presumably 'quickest player' over say 10m(?). England's fastest player, as measured by whatever they measured it by was ...... Lampard England's fourth fastest player ..... Heskey Lennon not in the top 6-7 England's slowest outfield player ..... Crouch The 'pacey' Glenn Johnson ... not in the top half Sorry, don't have the actual figs to hand nor can I find a link to the online version but some food for thought?

I feel your pain!

Far too reasonable, that'll never catch on round here.

And therein lies the rub; on top of anything else our players simply lack the intellectual maturity to compete at this level. They appear to fall between two stools, on the one hand they don't have the crazy gang, all-for-one-one-for-all type spirit that perhaps some of the 'smaller' teams, or even Argentina seem to possess. And if you don't have that then you need to have a system based on self-motivation and all the individuals contributing selflessly towards the team, everybody knows their job and everybody does it ... clearly we didn't have this model either. The squad would appear to be cliquey with far too many egos and far too many players too sure of their place in the pecking order and their place in the starting X1. Players who don't/won't/can't play for the team, the obvious examples being Rooney. 'Lamps'. and Gerrard. Team England is just a money-making band wagon for the FA and the players who play the fans for mugs at every turn. I know someone in the media who covers England at the highest level and sees all the training etc and he says that the stand-out player in the 30 players in Austria was Scott Parker (who came off the back of an excellent season at WH), this was also commented on in at least two papers at the time.... was he picked ...was he flip! We wouldn't want a work-a-day ex Charlton Athletic player mixing it with the giants of CL football would we? Bless...diddums..the players were 'bored' were they? Visiting a foreign country, taking part in the biggest event on planet earth, spending time with your mates in complete pampered luxury, hell, even having to go to work somedays for a couple of hours! Nice WAG and family back home, more money in your bank account than you can spend in a lifetime, and the support of a whole country back home who pay their wages and look to their team to give everybody a lift in these difficult times..... sorry we couldn't do it (they haven't actually said 'sorry' by the way)...sorry, we didn't do it ... we got a bit bored ... we don't really like our boss.... but we'll definitely win it next time! Complete and utter tripe ... England will never a world cup till a core of 6-8 players have experience of playing 'abroad' in different leagues and in different 'cultures'. If you want the England World Cup experience in a sentence it would have to be Alan Shearer's pre-match question. 'How many of the Germans would get in our side?' Err, 9 or 10 Alan? And Brazillians, and Argentinians, and Mexicans, and Dutchmen... feck me ... Algeria passed it better than we did!

Have to say that Cashley (for all his off pitch nonesense) is one of the very, very few 'top class' players available to us; on the showing of this tournament possibly the 'only' top draw player we have? Not saying he played particularly well over the four games but he was terribly exposed in this formation and the complete lack of any discipline from Gerrard in front of him.... He is one of the few players in the squad that mixes pace,athleticism and technique, he always looked a threat when he got over halfway, unfortunately due to our abysmal ball retention and completely non-existent midfield he only managed to get forward on very limited occaissions. He also looked fit and determined, much fitter and more determined than most other members of the team. For the record I dislike him as a person as much as the next person but I think anybody that thinks we have a better option at LB really would be throwing out babies and bathwater. Glenn Johnson on the other hand ..... absolutely shocking at RB, and very over-rated as an attacking option.

What 4 games have you just watched?

..................................... Hart ........................................... ?? ?? Dawson Cashley Lenonn(Walcott) ?? Huddlestone J Cole Gerrard Rooney BIN: Green/Terry/Upson/G Johnson (single most OVER RATED player in the whole side, terminally gash as an orthodox RB)/Lamps/Heskey/SWP(FFS!)/Carragher/King KEEP IN SQUAD: Barry/Defoe/Crouch ADD TO SQUAD: Scott Parker/Danny Murphy/Zamora/Rodwell/Jenas

And England would have beaten Ghana....? might have got 0-0 on a good day.

Interviewer to Capello "Individually England have some of the best players in the world ...blah..blah... blah...?" Not sure how Capello kept a straight face!

Sky 1 NC O c16,358 A low-key start to our promotion season.

I had that inkling too: great minds think alike, or fools seldom differ? Have to say I've more time for SRS than for DBP tho.

Why was DBP banned (if I haven't missed it elsewhere)? Multiple personality disorder?

TBF the club's email marketing/news/infotainment is pretty shocking at the best of times. They have had my email address for prob 10 years and in that time I have received perhaps half a dozen completely random emails. When I held a membership (when they existed) they were pretty consistent with their snail-mail mail shots but not sure they have completely got to grips with this interweb thing?

This won't happen, too expensive for the club. It would take an admin type person at least a couple of days to put it all together (say 1000 quid absolute tops) and then to send it to any of the following cohorts: people that had a season ticket last year, people that had a ST lastyear and haven't renewed yet, people that bought tickets say 6 times last year, people that bought a ticket once last year, 'everybody' on the database, apparently in excess of 200,000, (all obviously subject to these people having up to date and valid email addresses - let's take the worst case scenario and say the club only have valid contact details for 25% the 200,000, and only 75% (improbably low, it's probably 95%) of the main target group (previous STs). For a cost of £1000 (2 STs) the club can contact somewhere between 75%a nd 95% of last year's ST holders or, on a sliding scale, up to 50,000 of the database of previous customers; why have they not done this? Interestingly Kent Cricket Club (like a lot of others) are in the stum and this year moved from an all-in membership to a more PAYG/RyanAir type model; raising the price of full-memberships and taking away some of the match types, having a range of add-ons, and raising T20 ground prices from £15-£18 to £25. The rationale was to make cricket 'more affordable' (by raising all their prices!) and to target their audience to diff tyes of games, based in part in the popularity of T20 'with families' (it is now £75 for a family of four) and in part on their 'success' over the previous seasons, Kent have reached 'finals day' twice in the last three seasons. The Outcome has been an unmitigated DISASTER! The club have sold fewest 'full' memberships in living memory, the T20 team is struggling and in the bottom half of the league, they normally have crowds of 6-8000 for home T20 games; the crowd for this season's first game at Canterbury was3000 (lowest ever for this format) - the club are 'not panicking' but 'are reviewing all options for the remaining rounds' (price cuts!). Check out their message board if you want to see some hapy fans!

Hart (RB, haven't got one, play Milner) Dawson Terry A Cole Lennon Gerrard Barry J Cole Crouch Defoe Tonight was a fecking embarressment - Rooney has not been fit for the last 4 games; I'd be very interested in Fergie's thoughts watching him push himself out of the first three months of next season.

Quite extraordinary that it's come to this! Last season was by common consent one of the best we have enjoyed for many years, we have almost certainly the strongest hand of any team in our league and there are probably only a handfull in the league above who could currently hold their own with us in terms of squad/manager/facilities/support; we have just won a trophy at Wembley in front of nearly 50k fans, we are in a great position to win our first league title for 50 years. Only Saints could mess up with that sort of poker hand!