VectisSaint

mange tout, mange tout. Do you think we should stop referring to the Skates and call them Portsmouth from now on? It seems that usage of an extremely widely used nickname for the Blues is frowned upon by the humour police. LOL at MLG trying to make out that the word is Polish rather than Russian as well (it is based on Russki by the way). Its not either you plum. Its a play on words, and would be of English origin. I guess references to Spuds, Manure and the Arse would be similarly frowned upon.

Oh **** offski

You do know that Iceland and Switzerland are quite a long way away from each other. Daughter and her mates were in Iceland end January and they thought it was absolutely brilliant, best holiday ever. I guess if you go there hoping to lie on a beach you might be disappointed. Its currently -3 in Davos, sounds wonderful to me, amazed at how many people think relaxing means lying on a beach, recipe for total boredom in my view.

Would have made no difference, Burley would still have played him, probably as striker.

Sadly he won't go away, and in this case you will get two for the price of one, since his bosom buddy will also troll you as you may have already noticed.

Transfer window is closed, loans not allowed. Out of contract players are still possible, but its not allowed for discussion here unless you can personally name the player, the forum Gods accept that he is good enough and you have a personal written assurance of their availability to join from the player and his great grandparents.

So am I, but please don't try an pretend he hit the ball well, it was a very poor attempt, which if Speroni had saved as he should have done we would all be saying that it was typical of our inability to shoot.

Scored in his second season with us. Why do people insist on comparing JWP with Schneiderlin. It is a ridiculous comparison. One is one of the best defensive midfielders in the league who scores a few goals, the other is an attacking midfielder.

You put one too many words in that sentence. If he had done what you said he would have scored. Because he didn't Mane got the opportunity.

You may be getting confused with Steve Jobs

His performance at St Marys would suggest otherwise. He looks a better prospect than Targett (and that's no disrespect to Targett) but possibly not as a FB in the longer term.

Perhaps we may also be looking to bring Tyrone Mings back.

Most likely "upsets" would be Wet Sham and Swansea. Swansea are able to beat Top 7 teams apparently. Of course Chelsea losing is not really any benefit for us, but I think I would be happy to see Swansea draw or win, the gap between them and us would still be effectively 7 points if they win.

He's been training since about July last year (he posted on Twitter). Ball work or serious running is most likely the issue. Think you#ll find in most other aspects he is as fit as a butcher's dog (fitter than me f'sure).

We may be 7th in that table (as of Feb 6) but the gap between 1st and 7th is 4.75 points. 6 Feb includes Bertrand's red card I believe. 3 of the teams above us will likely finish above us in the League. Just hope and pray that we don't qualify this way, it means starting a qualifying campaign in July with juicy trips to the Faroes or Moldova or Wales.

Strange game last night, but great to get a goal and 3 points. Thankfully traffic on way down was OK and arrived really early unlike West Ham game, so things were looking good. Even the weather was a great improvement. Team seemed anxious, nervous even, snatching at things in the first half, and making uncharacteristic errors. Yoshida (I am a big supporter of him) proceeded to have his worst game for a long time, perhaps realising that this place is in jeopardy with the return to fitness of Toby. His miss in the 2nd half was typical of the issue we have scoring at the moment. Forster displayed his apparent lack of confidence with the fumble, but more than made up for this with a couple of very good saves, uncharacteristic that he actually had a few shots on target to save. Clyne played well but did have to concentrate more on his defensive duties, and there were a few occassions when it seemed like he and Jose had never even met before, strange to see these two having misunderstandings. Bertrand was not very effective, especially in the first half, most of our good stuff coming down our right. He was perhaps not helped by Elia having a very poor first half. In the second half Elia just seemed to be getting into his stride when he was hauled off by Ron. Schneiderlin was back almost to his peerless best, he was immense last night. His tenacity and workrate were superb. I say almost back, he did give two silly balls away, but on both occassions he fought like hell to redeem his mistake and won the ball back. Corners were also pretty good, just not sure I want to see Morgan taing corners when he is also good in the box. His mate Vic was also superb as well, he really is so good at spoiling anything that the opponent tries in the middle and he was getting forward much more and effectively. Thought Filip was also very good at least early on, but he is a bit lightweight, would like to see him "muscle up" a bit, he is clearly very talented, but pushed off the ball a bit too easily at the moment. Mane was excellent, and won us a lot of free kicks with his running. Graziano was actually having one of his best games for a long time - for the first time recently he was winning headers regularly and some of his lay-offs were sublime, but still he was snatching at chances rather than showing some composure, and he does seem very slow nowadays (though looks can be deceptive for big guys). But the change taking him off worked perfectly, Long stretching the Palace defence was exactly what was needed. Really didn't see much of any worth by Tadic. Leaves us with JWP, of course he will be given credit for making the winning goal, and fair play his direct running and making space was good, his shot was absolutley woeful, thankfully Speroni was presumably expecting something better and uncharacteristically spilled the shot which gave Mane the chance that we had been waiting for. Sadly JWP then proceeded to have a complete nightmare with everything he did in open play putting us into some degree of trouble. We looked really awful in those last few minutes, sitting back and inviting Palace to try to score, instead of doing what we were doing well and pushing for a second without leaving us exposed at the back. So great to get back to winning ways, and even the traffic getting out was great, back home before 11.30, despite a a French **** trying to take me out on the M3 and then another complete bozo in one of those toy cars (Chevrolet Maritz?) virtually stopping in the middle lane right in front of me and then travelling at 30 mph for the next mile and causing all sorts of danger to other road users. How some people are allowed to be on the roads is mystifying to me at times. Good night all in all, not the greatest game, but home with a smile on our face again.

Surprising he wasn't spotted in Skatesville Harbour in that case.

Agreed on this one, clearly it was nonsense to expect us to give the ball back to Palace in this case. Agreed also on the advantage. To be fair though, Atkinson actually had a good game last night, one of the better referee performances seen this season (though that's not a great compliment). Given his abject performances of late it was good to see.

Let's hope Bert is "good".

Interesting that Forster was time wasting in the last few minutes. 4 minutes of added time could only have been to compensate for the time wasting by Speroni (and others) in the first half. So although I don't condone time wasting by anyone it was karma last night. Speroni's tactics fr time wasting were very devious, making sure it looked like he was getting on with it when the ref was looking and waiting for the ref to look the other way. To be fair to Speroni he is not the worst culprit seen, but indicative of the issue these days.

FA Suspensions site: http://www.thefa.com/football-rules-governance/suspensions

whoosh!! Apparently there was no-one available, I know because some clever people on here have said that unless strikers available can be named by us then it means no-one was available and therefore we were not able to sign anyone. The people on this forum to whom I refer are so all-knowing that I cannot believe this is incorrect. Sounds like you think like me that that is bull****.

If you could read the OP he was asking for someone "It's an art to strike and ball or to have an eye for goal." Sorry but if Ron doesn't know how to coach someone to strike a ball and have an eye for goal then really there aren't many other candidates that could. So its not bull. the only thing that is bull around here is your posts, as always.

Yep, just put it down to some of our players having "a bit of a dip in form" and wait for the next game and the next one and the next one ad nauseum. Sadly we don't have many options anyway because of the lack of action in January, but then we all know as well that is because no-one can name a striker that could have been brought in to help out.

Ronald scored 193 first class goals in his career, about 30 more than Matt. Generally regarded as one of the best strikers of a ball ever, even MLT has acknowledged that. Really think you would be hard pushed to find an attacking coach who could provide better guidance than Ron himself. Even then Erwin was a fine attacking midfielder who scored a lot of goals, even Sammy lee weighed in with a few in his time (not sure about Jan Kleitenburg whose footballing career was cut short by injury, don't know where he used to play). Really don't think an attacking coach is a real need, considering Ronald as a defensive coach is really a bit of an insult.