sandwichsaint

You missed Waterfall - an obvious reference to parking charges,ticket taxes and getting rained on from a great height..

Surely the Smiths? Heaven knows we were miserable then, but now, Every Day's Like a Super Sunday.

Calm down dears! There is no evidence that Saints want to sell him and I'm sure we are doing all we can legally/finanacially/vision-thing-ly to keep him - what we won't do is pay unproven teenagers 30k/week - and quite rightly so, that type of silly-money is beyond us at the moment (and only available to two or three others). If the player wants to go (for any number of reasons, and many of which may well not be in his long-term interest) then ultimately there is sweet Fanny Adams that the club can do about it. These are human beings operating in the rawest of free markets, not slaves or tied labourers. If he did want to go (and there is no evidence he does) then on past performance we can reliably expect NC to get top dollar for him, maybe 6m-7m based on the figures reported so far. We could then use this money to buy an established premier league standard left back and use the change to fund the ongoing costs of the Academy. I'm not sure a single case 'proves' anything either way but we can conclusively say that we are continuing to produce some top talent in the academy and long may that continue. All clubs are selling clubs, get over it, console yourself with the fact that Saints are a very good selling club.

Probably he (Hodgson) had more than half an eye on the sh*tstorm that Graham Taylor endured when he took off Linekar against Sweden. Taylor was pilloried for that for years even though it was absolutely the correct thing to do at the time. People don't remember the game now, just that he took off 'our top scorer' 'our best player' ' our match winner' 'Saint Gary' 'he stopped him breaking the English scoring record' etc etc. What a load of twonk: I for one had been screaming at the telly to get Linekar off who was playing complete gash and wouldn't have scored if they had played all night. The joys of international management, damned if you do and damned if you don't - with hindsight we need not have taken Rooney at all and England looked much more coherent at times in the warm-up games with Young playing through the middle - but would Hodgson ever have lived down that call? He played safe and who can blame him? His was a safety-first face-saving appointment and he would argue he more than met his brief getting us out of the group and drawing 0-0 with the eventual finalists .... let's see what he does with a two year qualifying campaign and a WC and with maybe Wilshire to return ... probably lose on penalties in the last 16 .... LOL!

Presumably at his age we face losing him to a tribunal fee if he chooses to walk, and that wouldn't pay anywhere near £4m? Tricky one if he wanted to go; in an ideal world the club would get him on the contract that's needed to keep him here, and give him the ownership of the vision so that he wants to stay. Unfortunately (?) he has the sort of talent that only the very top clubs can afford so any 'offer' will be attractive and we will have to pay the going rate to keep him; I'm sure NC and NA are well aware of this and I've every confidence in them to do the right thing. If the player chooses to go then on past performance we would get top-dollar, use it to buy an established PL LB with several seasons remaining on the clock, and move on. Nothing in this scenario to say we are a 'selling club' - that would only apply if we took the 4m and forced him out, I think that's extremely unlikely to happen.

What a bizarre opening stage but maybe a good move by the organisers? The massive uphill finish avoided the big pile-ups we are used to seeing in the first week with all the top boys getting home in level time, the only one missing out was my EW bet Froome who punctured very late and lost 1.25. Good day for Wiggins tho.

45 posts and only I nomination for BT? About 12 months ago my mum moved about 500m down the road. She's very organised and got it all sorted, she wanted to take her number with her and filled in all the forms etc. Top and bottom - BT didn't stop her old phone nor move her number over. They then issued her a 'new' number for the new house. Interminable phone calls and correspondences later they then disconnected her phone at the new house. When she then contacted them to say that this wasn't what she wanted they tried to bill her for a whole new line to reconnect it. Fair play to her, she's 71 and she stuck at it and after 6 weeks she got her old number back and no reconnection fees (having followed their procedures to the letter it should have been there the day she moved in). Even better she then binned them and went to plusnet who have been excellent. Mother-in-law is 85 and best described as 'doddery' - we pay her phone bill on a rolling direct debit. The credit on this reached +£200! before we decided to do something about it. I phoned and asked to get the payments reduced - would be easier to get blood out of a stone. I asked for the £200 back and to reduce the payments to what they should be based on the last two quarters - I was on the phone to Indian call centre for over an hour until it was resolved. Absolutely shocking (and the cynic in me wonders if they target older people?)

Wiggins has to stay out of trouble in the first week, and remain competitive while he's doing it. No easy thing, especially considering how windy it's been recently. If he gets through the first week he's got a great chance - the Tour won't be won in the Nord Pas but it could be lost here. Hardly outsiders but I expect Menchov and Valverde to go well on this course, think Cav will struggle to keep green (his focus is on the Olympics and he will have to do his bit for Bradley too). What about Chris Froome E/W for a place in the first four?

I thought it was a noun? How come I can manage this without going to Uni but you can't?

This is what an old man looks like on Alpe d'Huez, maybe we can get this Saints-raid going next year? (I can't do anything this year unfortunately). Just joined ridewithgps.com this week and loving what it can do ... totally free to join! The files are slightly corrupted for the bottom km of ADH but you still get the picture! Relentless!! Came down in a group of 4, reckon I could have gone faster on my tod. Isoard was probably the prettiest climb I've ever done, Cas desert is absolutely as weird and wonderful as they say (not helped by them having had a big landslide the day before we were there and half the road having slipped over the edge!) http://ridewithgps.com/trips/741009 Alpe d’Huez ascent http://ridewithgps.com/trips/741010 Alpe d’Huez decent http://ridewithgps.com/trips/741007 I’soard ascent http://ridewithgps.com/trips/741006 I’soard descent

Guess there's nothing to pay to old or new Rangers but there will still be agents' fees and signing-on money to pay? Maybe we can get mickey mouse Scottish players for 1m rather than 3m-4m? Personally I would have thought we could do better?

I can't see either of the rides in 'mapmyride' .... it just goes to your profile ... where are the rides? I've joined this today, totally free, http://www.ridewithgps.com Import a gpx file from the iphone and you get full profile/speed/gradient graphs and superimposed on google maps. http://ridewithgps.com/trips/738471 don't know if this in my area or it's public access?

Walsall, how didn't we score? Southend in the pouring rain on a Friday night. Hartlepool... Alan Carr, Alan Carr, Alan Carr Derby play off semi The 5-2 at Ipswich last season... Saints do a Brazil on one of the more fancied sides in the Lge. Total capitulation at Hillsborough as Saints go down with a whimper and not a bang. 2-2 midweek at Norwich with goals from the Saga enigma. Celebrating in the concorse at Midds as Pompey's relegation is confirmed. Midweek at Brentford on the terraces, worldies from Lloyd James and Super KD. Dagenham, just surreal watching Saints with KD, RL, AL, MS playing in what is 75% a non-league ground - felt like a cup tie. That's a few of the more memorable ones, happy days (I couldn't get near tkts for any Brighton or B'muff games).

My fairly hilly Sunday afternoon (I'm 50 and carrying a few pounds more than I should be) ... : http://maps.google.com/?q=http://share.abvio.com/56ae/824f/4ef2/e642/Cyclemeter-Cycle-20120624-1427.kml Good luck on your L to B, you've given yourself plenty of time to get up to speed/distance; never done it but it looks good. Don't worry about Ditchling Beacon, it's no big deal; do it if you can, if not walk up like 50% of riders will be (friends did it and they couldn't ride up because the hill was clogged with walkers anyway). Anybody going to Boulogne next Tuesday? - TDF stage finish for stage 3. There are six of us going over to Calais early doors for a day of beer and bikes. Calais to Boulogne is approx 32 miles down the coast and quite hilly with several decent lumps of chalk between the two. Could be a tough ride down if this wind keeps up but I'm sure the beer, pain au chocs, baguettes, frites and vin rouge will provide ample compensation.

Gully RM?

I'm not necessarily buying this, just putting it out there like. Whenever these threads have been up before it's been mooted that Saints/NC didn't need to cut prices ... history would appear to have borne that out.We have achieved 5 yrs worth of success in 3 yrs, the marginal income/marginal support hasn't been missed and here we are in the PL with PL prices and all set for sell-outs/near sell-outs for the foreseeable. NC didn't cut the prices for the last three seasons a) because he didn't need to, and b) because he was conducting a real-time evaluation of just what was the 'pure' level of demand for Div3 and Div2 football at SMS? Who can say?

The day's never wasted is it?

Though they will probably want to see a couple of season's revenues first? Probably need to get into a season-ticket-waiting-list-type-scenario before we see anything concrete? All together now: - let's go round again, baby we'll turn back the hands of time, let's go round again, one more time.

TBF that one has never really recovered from the time Telfer smacked it with one of his rare efforts at goal.

Where's the quote from? Would be an excellent signing.

What should happen now? The PL to require all clubs as a condition of membership to reduce all ticket prices by 20% across the board for season 2013/14 and by a further 20% the following season. This would recycle some of the TV money to the ordinary punters who do so much to make the 'British' game what it is and to widen access to what is increasingly an entertainment for the well to do, more so in that home and pub subscriptions will have to raise sharply to pay for it all, and it wouldn't weaken the relative status between different clubs (domestically) if it was applied unilaterally. The PL also needs to find a mechanism (prize money?) to re-cycle some of the money into Divs 2, 3 and 4 which produce some of their players and provide the foundations and culture on which their 'greatest league in the world' is built. What will happen? None of the above. Clubs will be given the lot and will spend the lot on players and agents who will see their already obscene salaries inflated further which will in turn provide further disconeect/disenchantment between the game and the fans. The bubble may not have burst yet but all bubbles do burst eventually.

I we were playing tomorrow. KD FR JF JH DF JC MS GDe RL AL JR That'll do (depending who we are playing), probably good enough to stay up. If we are playing hard ball we can do better at GK, RB, CB, LB, holding Mid, RM. What wedge have we got left? Interesting times.......

That's a helluva statement: 'Newly promoted Saints start with record £6m signing on the bench'.

Who was the last genuine box-to-box midfielder we employed? Jimmy Case? In that case a) they are quite rare, or b) we've rubbed along without one for quite some time? Sign him up! (Did anybody else think Grant Leadbitter, Ipswich, looked good at SMS?)

Bet they were wearing mini-skirts too?