VectisSaint

Only an issue if you seriously believe u21 teams will make it to the final. Highly unlikely in my opinion. Decent L1 or even top L2 teams who are playing together week in/week out will beat u21 teams who have been brought together purely for these games. Would be quite surprised if any u21 teams even make it to the semis. If it had been the u23 teams, as in PL2, then maybe things would have been different. Good to see Cheltenham Town in the Northern Group, unless Cheltenham has been relocated overnight.

It did when I wrote that.

I know, but you said in all 3 pre-seasons since he joined us. This is only his second pre-season since he joined.

He signed for us after pre-season in 2014 (14 August). Leverkusen friendly was on 9 August. We played Liverpool on the 17th in the first league match and he was on the bench on the 30th August (West Ham away).

Arguably, but certainly while Gardos is injured. I would expect: Forster, Cedric, Fonte, VVD, Bertrand, Clasie, Romeu, Davis, Redmond, Tadic, Long Subs, Gazza (or new GK), Stephens, Yoshida, Targett, Hojbjerg, Austin, JRod [using this site at the moment is absolute ****]

With George Curtis as their head coach.

You said "press", by what stretch of the imagination is Townsend "press". Media, OK. Does he write for a paper? Can he even write?

Really, always think of the **** as Villa, through and through.

Pshycologically a good team consists of 7 Road Sweepers and 4 Concert Violinists, if you are really lucky you get one lead violinist (according to Lawrie when Alan Ball died, "Alan started life as a road sweeper but became the best lead violinist Southampton ever had" - arguable of course, but neither MLT or Micky were ever road sweepers)

The new Saints TV Channel, exclusive to Virgin. Next we will have a radio station and then the catering will be the best in the world.

Can't guarantee it, but I suspect only Registered Users will be getting these problems. Thats because Full Users don't get the adverts. Its the adverts that contain the links to porno sites and so on. The adverts generate income (from GoogleAds) and the income is surprisingly high (I know because I run web sites with GoogleAds), probably significantly more than is generated by the £5 annual fee. Thing is the ads can be configured, so that only certain categories of ads are displayed, you can filter out crap like dating sites, definitely porno and so on. Steve needs to do some admin configuration work and then this problem ought to be resolved. Its particularly bad if you are using your smartphone where it is easier to fat finger and click on ads by mistake. This really needs sorting, I've stopped accessing the site from my smartphone because it seems easy to get infected messages. I could of course pay my £5 again but while certain users remain on here and continue their abusive posting I refuse to do so. But soon the site will lose more and more of its income because it is not being managed properly.

Guess that depends if he plays or not. Noted that he doesn't appear in any of the training pictures/videos (as far as I can see) taken since the club returned from the USA. No news why he didn't travel, and yet he was back in full training before the end of last season. So what has happened? he is a nice guy so hope he comes back, but personally think we have decent back up for him anyway in Stephens and Turnbull.

You must have known about this on Tuesday. League and Clubs have kept it very much under wraps until tonight. Kudos/ITK points. Question is why we have not entered the International Cup? 12 of the 24 PL2 teams have "entered" (Aston Villa, Chelsea, Derby County, Everton, Leicester City, Liverpool, Manchester United, Middlesbrough, Norwich City, Reading, Sunderland, Swansea City). You would have thought it would have been based on the league position last year, but seemingly not. The only Division 1 teams not in the International Cup are Arsenal, Man City and Saints. Thinking this may be part of the reason why some teams have declined their invitation to the Football League Trophy.

Derry, do you know this is true, or are you basing this on MLG's reply on Monday on the Dom Gape thread? MLG is usually right, but I have searched evrywhere for news that this has changed and found nothing to support it. The change was one of those mooted by Greg Dyke back in 2014 (together with B teams), but other than that there is no reference to it. All the PL clubs including Saints seem to be preparing for an u21 league (although no fixtures yet around), as well the EFL Trophy is u21. Surely if this change to u23 was happening the clubs would be playing u23 friendlies as a build up. Genuinely interested to know, u23 is probably the right way to go, but just can't find any evidence of this actually happening yet.

Beginning to think you may have made this up...

Two words - growth spurt.

Are you sure about this? Never seen or heard about this change that was mooted by Greg Dyke back in 2014 along with other changes. All the Clubs, including Saints, seem to be preparing for an u21 competition this season (though there are no fixtures out yet) and u21 also coincides with the Football League Trophy rules (albeit with slightly different dates for the definition of u21). If you are right (and you usually are) I'm genuinely interested to know why this has not been publicised more widely, where it is confirmed and why the club is preparing for u21 football this season. [unable to come back on this earlier as I had used up my 3 posts for the day]

Dom was in the reckoning though, even Koeman gave him a PL debut against Everton in 2014 (sub for Long), albeit very short one. He got a new contract last year until 2017 and was captain of the u21s last season. Why did we bother extending his contract last season and then making him u21 captain? Of course he is no longer u21, so something has to give I guess. Sometimes think we hang on to some of our youngsters too long, we should probably be more ruthless.

You sure, his name appears just below Mugabi's, about the 6th post down: Josh Ezewele, Bevis Mugabi, Snorre Nilsen, Trialist X Josh Wakefield, Joe Lea, Dominic Gape,

Thinking that the introduction of safe standing would also mean cheaper tickets is naive at best. If anything I could imagine clubs charging more to compensate for the additional investment. Also can imagine that the safe standing areas would quickly sell out to the 20-40s age group and kids would not get a look in. I'm very much in favour of safe standing though. Even at my advanced age, stood through the whole games at Man City and Arsenal last season (with no stewards even attempting to ask us to sit), and do prefer it generally.

No. Wealth is relative of course, but I think growing up on a council estate on Guernsey would not mean they were "very well off".

He wasn't. He was dropped to the bench for 10 games, some of which coincided with his eye injuries, which affected him more than some seem to think. He missed 3 games due to a groin injury, and then was inexplicably dropped by Koeman, I would suggest that Koeman and Cedric had some sort of falling out, as Koeman seems to have done with a few players. Also Martina scored his wonder goal when he got his chance and lived on that for a few weeks despite him being not very good defensively. Still Cedric played 24 league games out of 38, so he was hardly dropped for "nearly half the season". Hopefully one who will benefit from Koeman's departure, he is a very good RB, not really any need to get an improvement.

While it may not be restricted to a development squad, the rules for the PL Academy teams are similar (but not the same) as the Premier League Under 21 league. The FLT rules allow one extra over age player (PL U21 allows 3 over age plus goal keeper) and the date for u21 consideration is June, instead of January, hence some players are u21 for the League, but not u21 for the FLT. We have one or two players in this category (i.e born between January and June 1995). Since the point of teams being able to enter their u21 teams in this competition is to provide more competitive match opportunities for these players it would be rather pointless if the teams did not enter essentially their development teams, with the same proviso that they have in the League, i.e. they can play some over age players, usually ones returning from injury or 1st team squad fringe players. The idea that the clubs would bolster these teams with a host of senior first teamers, whilst possible, would be completely pointless and I doubt any will do this. I would be very surprised if we don't field what is essentially the same team as we do in the u21 league. Unlikely we will play any regular first team u21 players, unless they are recovering from injury or have not played for a while. As for the organisation, it does seem a bit strange that the FL did not get confirmed entries, but then organising the fixtures so that they clash with the European Youth (U19) competition is a touch stupid, as clubs such as Man City and Chelsea (holders) take that competition very seriously. Not sure that Chelsea have qualified even though they have won it for the past 2 seasons, English entries this season should be Leicester, Arsenal and Spurs (based on 1st team Champions League group stage qualification) and Man City as winners of the domestic u18 competition.

Major blow to the UK hair care industry. Hope the weather is good enough in China for him to perform. Shame for the young fans of his at the club, but really no great loss, and was obvious this was going to happen when we signed Charlie in January.

http://forvo.com/word/pierre-emile_h%C3%B6jbjerg/ "Hoy Bier" is pretty close