sandwichsaint

And if we can't ... we'll just have to hang in there. We keep (another) clean sheet and we take a minimum of one point. This is a bit of a Stoke away (first half!) for me, very aggressive when we have the ball, hit hard in numbers when we can, be patient when we can't. 0-1 or 0-2 will do just fine, 0-0 or 1-1 not the end of the world, we follow this with a very winnnable game against Citeh, anywhere between 2 and 6 points from those two will be great.

You know you've arrived when ..... you're in Mourinho's mind games! Can you go unbeaten? No, there's United, City, Arsenal and especially Southampton!!!

Hart's 'double kick' was probably the jammiest thing I've ever seen in 45 years of watching football!

Best uncapped player in the Prem? Assuming a) he hasn't got one and b) anybody else can come up with anyone better? Read bits on here today that he has 'stepped up' this season, rubbish. He never went away for me, one of our very best players last season, he stepped up to the PL when some doubted him, he was great in the Championship too. How good is he? He made Lovren look like £20m worth of footballer .... .

Koeman, end of.

What's eating Gary Monk in his post-match comments .... he's coming over like a Roy Keane wanna-be the last couple of weeks.

Palace West Brom Swansea* Newcastle* Leicester Saints Stoke Burnley* QPR Spurs West Ham Sunderland Hull* Everton* Man Utd Man City Liverpool Villa Chelsea Arsenal That would be my take with the following caveats: all away fans are more animated than home fans if you go to pretty much any ground the away fans will (generally) be the ones making the most noise, this applies to us away and to other teams when they come to us (this is not underselling our away support which is generally excellent as per Stoke and Hull last week, with the odd exception, for example Spurs away last season), I'm basing my purely subjective thoughts on how well the home fans back their team through the whole 90 minutes irrespective of the score - there's a lot of truth in you-only-sing-when-you're-winning - if we had a different league table for how passionate/noisy fans were when their team scored we'd see a completely different league table ... glory boys like Chelsea and Man U would be right up there. Also have to say I've not been to the *teams' grounds! Having to use my TV skills, feedback from places like this and all-round perception to give those teams a ranking. Still reckon I've done a better job than Jim White though, Saints 18th out of 20 for home support? Really? He's 'aving a giraffe isn't he?

I saw that last night, utter ****take for a Monday night televised game. Fair play to the people who will pay it (and 1500+ will), I'm 'lucky' in that I can get a disabled tkt and I hope to be going but it's a ridiculous price (that won't change until people collectively stop paying it). I feel a little bit compromised that my support supports this level of pricing but as it's a game that will go to general sale and me and the nipper love our midweek football any port in a storm and all that.

Fantastic love our 'professional approach', a simple foul on Clyne at RB and we must have taken 30 seconds to get the ball back in play. Love it (when we do it!)

Not surprising we are tired! We've just gone 186 minutes against a very physical Stoke side. Koeman's played a blinder for me, ne avoids the 8-0 hangover/banana skin and collects 3 very solid points at home to Stoke and then plays a really solid selection away in the LC and progresses into the next round, saying that the LC is a realistic and welcome goal for us. It's a bit of a free shot today really, away against a decent Hull side and with a goal start, hopefully we can get something out of the game today and go again next week. What's not to like?

Like football grounds? Went to Stoke for the first time this week, 50% was actually as you expect it to be from TV and the other 50% is like wow, I didn't realise that bit was there, that was so big, that was so small etc. Amazing that when you have been to a ground you can always picture the whole thing on TV but if you haven't then TV is prob only giving you half the picture.

Delgado Kanchelskis Idiakez KevinPhillip's head always looked somewhere else. Not Lovren, excellent last season.

I had a little chuckle at this when I got in at 2 this morning - the BBC match report had Saints 'two games from Wembley'.

From the Invincibles to the Untouchables, forever in Arsenal's shadow. There used to be a mong board down there, with apologies to Bill Nicholson.

Good grief, who worked all this out? You can only beat what's put in front of you. I'm driving over 400 miles on Weds night to cheer Saints on in small cup. Newsflash, the season is only 9 games old, if you win 6 out of 9 you will degrade your opponents score quite significantly. Enjoy it while we can, second in the not-EPL on merit and marching on Wem-blee. Where's Ottery these days, always a good poster and I've a very positive mental image of his Daughter! COYRs.

Cheers for info, now I just need that spreadsheet and I can start to triangulate what's on offer v what I can afford v what I like. Who'd a thunk treating yourself to a new car could be so complicated?

Does anybody on here do PCP to finance their car? Not something I've had experience of, I don't change my car a lot (we've had 4 cars in 20+ years) and have always bought a car outright with a mix of cash savings, bank loan and PX. Mortgage now done and we can afford the payments on something a bit reasonable and looking at PCP as one option. My car is prob worth 3k - 4k PX and we can rustle up a bit of cash as a deposit as well. Bewildering array of choices where to go from here: bank loan and buy outright, lease, PCP, HP, finance rates available from 0% to 15%-plus etc etc etc. Any tips on what would be the best way to go from here? We do quite high mileage (18-20k), it doesn't necessarily have to be a brand new car, ambivalent about keeping it beyond three years, would consider buying it after three years if it's value for money, though there is the issue of saving for or financing the balloon. Also thinking it could be expensive to walk away and start again. How accurate are the GFVs? Are we likely to have any equity in a car to trade on after 60k miles? How strict are they on fair wear and tear etc, I know what a car will look like after I've had it for 60k miles. Lease could be one way to go (some of the prices on that link are ridiculous, what's the catch?!) - one simple affordable payment - but no capital in the car and the day you stop paying you don't have a car and have to start again from scratch. Tempted to buy a low-mileage ex demonstrator or similar, they seem to be regularly available, often loaded with (expensive) options, for the price of not having a brand new car you seem to get a lot more for your money. (though finance seems dearer than on a new car, no 0% special deals available!) I'm sure I could work it all out on a spreadsheet based on total cost of ownership over 3, 5, 10, 15 years with variations built in on changing my car every 2/3/5/10 years ... but I really can't be bothered.... Any advice from anybody in the car game, finance game, or in a similar position scenario gratefully received.

Cup competition have ties - they are 'cup ties'. League competitions have fixtures. Either of these could alternatively be regarded as matches or games. Ties and fixtures are not inter-changeable (IMHO). The round of league games this weekend are fixtures, our game at Stoke next week is a cup tie. Nothing to do with Americanisms as such, just (young?) people not understanding the traditional ways in which the game has evolved. Don't get me started on 'EPL', American-derived or not that's just wrong on so many levels.

Is the shop title deliberate? Might as well conclude he is gay or a paedo as a rascist from that picture. I'm sure he's none of those things, but it's still a major PR gaffe methinks, though perhaps not. A lot of people seem to like this sort of thing. Casual racism and race hatred seem to be making a major and mainstream comeback.

VFT has nailed it right there, very few of the candidates are 'local', most are parachuted in from central casting (for all parties) and are only after your vote to secure their place on the Westminster gravy train. A large number have no connection to the local area they are standing in and most don't appear to have an original thought in their heads, being content to either trot out the party line or more commonly to rubbish their opponents in a mud-slinging contest. Incidentally this is nothing new, I remember in 1979 Labour bringing down a young 20-something big shot, glitzy lawyer from Liverpool to stand in East Kent, Cherie somebody or other I think it was; she had no connection with the area and flopped spectacularly, or maybe we just weren't ready for Cherie Booth/Blair at that time? Shudder to think what this time will bring, we have Farage standing in our constituency (Thanet South) which should mean saturation media coverage, the Tories have lost a popular standing MP for family health reasons. Labour and the Tories have held the constituency about half and half historically though boundary changes make direct comparisons difficult though in similar vein to the national picture Labour appear to be a busted flush locally with very limited organisation or man power, not sure they even have a candidate yet (for next May!). I would expect the Lib Dems to be toast here after their performance since the last election, though they do have strong and active local supporters, as they seem to do pretty much everywhere, at least in the South of England. I guess they could pick up some votes here and elsewhere (protest, protest-votes?) through virtue of not being any of UKIP/Con/Lab, there doesn't seem to be much space on the ballot paper for any sort of modern/progressive/European point of view and the Lying Dems could surprise a few and maybe hang onto more seats than people are predicting. Can't see past a very solid Farage majority, people round here are predominantly white, small-town, small-minded and very much represent the left-behinds compared to their richer, better educated and more metropolitan city cousins. Farage will hoover votes from older right wing Euro-sceptic tories, retired people, and white working class voters who are totally disconnected from Labour. Nige might be a lot of things but he's not stupid, he will have done his homework carefully and will have found the constituency that best fits his demographic. Guess the only consolation now is that I will be able to genuinely say I didn't vote for NF. See what I did there? I won't vote Lib/Lab/Con, it is a wasted vote in this constituency and nationally too, the only policies that would appeal to me would be the Greens or an independent left field anti-war type candidate. My recipe for broken democracy and to get some credibility back into the system? 1 PR is a no-brainer for me, the next Government will be elected on the swing votes of probably 10% of voters in fewer than a 100 constituencies. Under the current system all votes are clearly not equal and large numbers of the voting public are never represented. FPTP encourages negative 'tactical voting', everybody should be able to vote positively for who they want to. 2 Fewer and bigger constituencies, probably multi-member constituencies, combine every five existing constituencies and streamline that down to 3 MPs. 3 Pay MPs more - but stop all expenses, completely including subsidised restaurants and bars etc. Tier the pay to cover travel costs and accom for those that need it. Effectively make each MP-ship into a mini-franchise which they hold for 5 years, pay them a fixed sum per year and they can organise themselves and pay what staff they need from their budget. They do a decent job and provide value for money they will be elected next time, a poor job and constituents can kick them out mid-term. 4 Introduce a residency qualification for all MPs, people seeking election should either have been born in that constituency, or have lived in it for at least 10 years of their life, or have lived in it continuously for the previous say 4 years. With an average constituency of c70,000 voters it is not unreasonable to expect every constituency to produce it's own representatives. 5 Lower the voting age to 16, spectacularly successful in Scotland recently and would bring some new thinking and might also encourage younger people into a life of citizenship. 6 Devo Max for Scotland,Wales, NI and England and a return to local Govt/local tax raising powers (in fact let's not reduce those Westminster MPs from 3/5ths of their current number, let's reduce them to 2/5ths and invest some of the financial and human savings in building up strong local structures). 7 Euro referundum with a straight IN/OUT proposition and the outcome binding for say 25 years and then get on with it! Happen to think it would be 60/40 Yes but it would be interesting to see what sort of a turnout that vote could raise! Those are some of the things that would get me interested in politics and voting again, but unfortunately bitter experience tells you that whoever you vote for the Government gets in, and then they just do what ever big business tell them to. Go Nige! you mold breaker, you hero, you!

In terms of 'memorable' they would have to go some to beat Channon's testimonial night as the second best.

We go to Samoens every Easter, Brit free, the way we like it.

Silly old public, putting the best goal first and the second best goal second.

I've never been more serious! I take it you do pay 40% tax (even thought it's not really 40%)? Considering you are in the top 15% of earners how much do you think would be a reasonable amount for you to be paying? Which areas of current Govt spending would you cut to pay for the shortfall?

I would have thought it was self-evidently a problem that 1% of a society take nearly 20% of the output? Where would you draw the line? Would you be happy if the 1% took 30% or 40% or 75% of the available resources? There must come a point where their position in terms of any sort of civil/ democratic/ consensual society becomes untenable? How do you think the 1% have doubled their share of the pie in the last 40 years if not through their own actions? They keep a firm grip on power, property, land, politicians, the media, law and big business, and all in their own narrow class interest, this hasn't happened by accident or chance. Warren Buffet, one of the richest individuals in America writing in 1995 'There's class warfare all right, but it's my class, the rich class that's making war, and we're winning'. That was written nearly 20 years ago, and they haven't stopped yet.