VectisSaint

Of course Turkish is overstating it, that's what he does and takes great delight in doing. In reality was there even one person who said such a thing exactly, many would support the idea sometimes of keeping information under wraps but not always, but sadly Turkish is unable to see anything between black and white, and certainly would have problems with 50 shades of grey, or even one or two. Most people don't have the time or interest to look back and find out whether anyone really said such stuff but I bet Turks will do so and find some people, might even be me, that said something that could be twisted to make it seem like such a thing may have been said. Its a sad life.

We might need 2 or 3 points rather than 1 or 2 if Spuds beat the crap out of us as they may well do if Shaw did not play. GD is a factor in our favour at the moment but it is easily tipped by a good drubbing.

In or out?

Well its good to know that the manager knows he can play LB. We could have told him that if he had asked given that many of us saw him play there earlier in the season, and frankly looked marginally better there than at RB, wasn't it the day he scored? If I had a memory I would be able to say who we were playing.

Don't you have to be at least 18 to go on a 18-30 holiday?

Real concern is why Luke is wearing flip flops when everyone else is sporting proper footwear.

OK, although I did not say transfers never happen in June, I can see where you may have picked that up from. But if you refer to my previous post what I actually said wass "very few transfers take place before the end of June". This is borne out by the facts, last year 17 out of 117 took place during the month of June, which is 14.5%, which in my view equates quite well to "very few". Most (not all) of those that do are where clubs have made a prior agreement, or where perhaps the buying club is paying silly money such that the selling club bites their hand off, as was possibly the case with 1/3 of the transfers in June which were made by QPR, the club that has showed us all how to make the transfer system work. You seem keen to support Alpine's argument even though you don't seem to have actually read what it says, instead picking up on some responses, but as the original point was that Manure were highlighted as being great models because they do all of their incoming activity very early in the window. But you have twisted this by saying their key players - by this you have to mean Kagawa and RvP were available for the first game. Well in the case of Kigawa you are absolutely right, in exactly the same way that J-Rod was available for our first game. RvP was only available for the first game because Manure's first game was played on Monday night, he would probably not have been eligible if they had played on Saturday, and even SAF decided that it wasn't right for him to start that game, instead bringing him on for 22 minutes plus Fergie time. The argument Alpine makes every year and which is so wrong and so boring is complete fantasy. In reality we signed 4 of our 6 players not only early in the transfer window but in most cases early in the pre-season build up, and were more effective at bringing in key players much earlier than the role model proposed, i.e. United. JRod, Davis, Clyne & Gazza (key from the POV of having a backup keeper rather than relying on Tommy Fourpast). Only Yoshi and Gaston were signed late on. The biggest issue was that we missed out on a LB because of the Buttner situation caused ironically by Manure's late transfer window activity. I'm done arguing now on this, I've set out what I wanted to achieve which was to completely blow Alps silly arguments out of the window. If you are unable to comprehend a coherent argument and want to support Alps contentions then so be it. Truth is no PL clubs will be making many significant transfers in during the month of June and during that time no doubt we will all be subjected to Alpine's whinging posts bemoaning the lack of transfer activity. We shall see :-)

Interesting though that when he came on on Saturday that was where he played. Clearly not a direct replacement for SRL, but it is his preferred position. He sure as **** is not a winger though, and a winger is not someone who plays up front as one of three strikers as you very well know.

Do we have a new chairman? I thought ours was Italian.

Well there's no reason why he wouldn't be back, Southend's season is over so the loan spell is over as well. There is nothing odd about that. Would have been different if they had made the play-offs. I guess all our L1/L2 loanees are back now, I can't think of any involved in play-offs, except Ryan Dickson at Bradford if he is not injured. Seaborne, Barnard, Forecast, Reeves, Martin & Hoskins. Come to think of it perhaps Seaborne could play if Luke is not ready. Jonno Quick still at Sheff Utd.

My point exactly in the previous post to yours, don't think it is a deliberate policy though, just the way the academy system often works at the moment. We did actually produce 2 decent looking CBs, in Cranie and the other lad whose name escapes me. But neither translated into anything other than average CBs when they finally matured, despite Cranie captaining the England u21s many times. Walcott may be a striker to some extent now, but I think its reall old-school CFs that the academy system struggles with, and of course Bairdy was not a CB, but a LB who managed to play well at CB when we were in deparate straights in that area, due largely to his phenomenal leap, but he has hardly played at CB since his departure to Fulham. Blackstock and Best have proved to be half decent at Championship level, and although we did bring them in from outside they were clearly part of our academy, but again they are hardly shining examples of top strikers. Of course we did produce a certain A Shearer many years ago, but that pre-dates the current academy system by many years. Michael Poke is about the only keeper to have graduated in recent times, and even he has struggled to make a go at anything above L2 level.

Its one of the down sides to the academy system in my opinion. CBs and GKs are not well suited to the academy system (not forgetting of course that AM was not academy). They mature later and really the better ones are not seen in the age groups up to 18, when physical development has not even finished. There are exceptions of course and some of the best will always shine through. You could argue this about old fashioned centre forwards as well, but as football moves away from these types it is less of an issue. It is something the FA should address, it is no coincidence in my view that England is so short (excuse the pun) in these 2 areas, that said I'm not sure that other countries address this in any better way than we do, perhaps its just that other countries do not look for the big CBs that we are used to and which we still try to breed. Interesting thought. I wonder if Jack Stephens will eventually make it?

Agreed, and to be frank on that day Clyne looked better at LB than he sometimes does at RB. That was one of his best performances, and Frazer did not let us down either.

Martin is really a much better central defender than Dan will ever be. Seaborne had the advantage though that he could play LB at a push. Martin will I am sure prove himself in the long run, much like as someone else said Mike Williamson has or even Gary Monk. Many CBs mature later than other young players and Martin is still learning having not been part of the academy, so will be an even later developer in some ways. Physically much better adapted to the life of a professional CB and actually could play a little, his hoofs into the stand were really part of his inexperience, but to be honest its a better tactic than some of the comedy defending we have seen from some of our experienced CBs this season, especially early on. Good luck to the nipper, perhaps PL 3 years after non-league for a CB is a bit much to expect.

The long answer to this is "no". There is nothing odd about the Shaw situation other than that he is illness and injury prone. Too many visits to Nandos may be the reason for the illness IMHO.

RvP

Bale usually plays more through the middle these days.

Lennon played 17 minutes last game, unless he had a reaction think he'll be fit. Agree with you that I think we will lose as well.

So your plan is to put Jos "Captain Slow" Hooiveld up against Lennon. A cunning plan if ever I saw one.

Bale has changed his game and plays more down the middle these days. Of course he may switch again if he senses we have a weakness, but we have to deal with Lennon as well. Must keep Yoshi in the centre, and not make mistake of sacrificing him to LB again. Maybe best best assuming MP won't play Richardson at LB, is Cork to RB and Clyne to LB where he is just as good as at LB. We do have a definite problem against Spuds, their pace will punish us, but then most teams have the same problem. Anyone who thinks Spuds will have an eye on Chelski only should dream on, not much good thinking about Chelski if they don't get 3 points from us. Can't see anything but a Spuds win this weekend, and probably by 3 or 4.

But you missed the point, by ignoring what the argument was about. Alpine was saying and you were agreeing that Manure do all their key transfers early in the window and we should follow their model so that we have players in for a full pre-season etc etc. The reality though is that it is just not the case. Very few transfers to Premier League teams take place before the end of June - last season there were 17 in total, and about a third of these were players to QPR. Manure signed two players in this time frame, Kagawa and the kid that went to Wigan on loan. Well ignore the Wigan bound lad, clearly he was not key. Kagawa, well he has come good in the latter part of the season, but really was hardly key, in fact his season somewhat mirrors our own J-Rod who was similarly signed in June, about the same time. So RVP was signed just in time to play first game of the season, hardly early in the season, and with no pre-season time with this new team mates. In summary then Alpine was basing his argument on fiction, when in fact our summer activity was really very similar. Again if you want some facts, there were only 17 transfers in to PL teams in June, 37 in July and 63 in August. Fact is that only one team was busy in the incoming transfer market in June, so if we want to model ourselves on that team fair enough, but it seems to me that QPR is not really the model I would choose based on results. Good players are not generally allowed to leave their clubs during June for a variety of factors, including the fact they are usually still under contract, they are on holiday, the manager is on holiday, the players are on international duty (every 2 years, or in the case of 2012 on Olympic duty, a la Ramirez), clubs have not finalised their squad needs etc etc. Alpine bleats every season about getting in players early, but in reality it does not happen and will never happen while the transfer window operates the way it currently does. In reality we did a lot of our business quite early last season, with J-Rod coming in during July and Steven Davis and Nathaniel Clyne in early and mid July - now they were actually 3 key players all available for most of pre-season. Accept that Yoshi and Gaston were late, and we were also somewhat screwed by Buttner having his head turned late on. So, I think Alpine's boring argument about getting players in early llike Manure is well and truly bunked. [source: Wiki list of English football transfers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English_football_transfers_summer_2012] Incidentally although RvP was signed in time for the first game of the season, he only appeared as a second half sub, and I wonder whether he would have played at all if Manure hadn't been playing their first game on MNF. Buttner of course signed after the first game.

Fox looked more like Beckham this weekend.

Unless of course they beat us, then they would get more points than us. Problem with tonight is that it is now less likely that Villa will be fighting to avoid the drop on the last day, meaning Wigan will have a better chance of getting 9 points from the last 4 games.

Not an Academy product. He was 20 when he signed from Eastleigh. Fellow Caulkhead, still think he is good enough for the Championship, hopefully Coventry will get him back there soon.

Imagine thats only until the rebuilding is complete. For the u21s there is a stipulation that a certain number of games are played in proper grounds with access to the public, hence why we have been playing these games at Eastleigh and in one case at least at St Marys. Presumably we have fulfilled the quota and so could revert to Staplewood for this one. Some plans for the u21s being mooted earlier in the season and still being pulled together are for games to be played at the main stadia after the PL game as a double header, whether that will ever happen I have my doubts, too many possible technical issues with pitches cutting up and so on. We shall see.