VectisSaint

Perhaps the bus was not available, already booked to bring Ramirez to SMS from Gatwick

1-0 Saints, "Japanese striker Tadanari Lee converts Billy Sharp's 53rd-minute cross" according to Beeb.

Seems that way, unless he is injured, although frankly not surprised. He does not seem to be as good as we all hoped when he signed. Wouldn't surprise me to see him involved in a p-ex deal this week.

Most footballers just want to play, so I bet Billy is not hacked off. He has hardly played since the start of the season, despite having a good pre-season, so needs to get amongst the goals to remind NA of what he can do. The more interesting point about this line up is that it shows up our serious shortage at the moment in 2 specific positions, GK and CB. KD (assuming its K and not S) has to be on the bench because we have no real alternative, and Frazer has to play at CB ahead of Stephens despite the fact that he played CB on the pre-season tour and got good reviews when he did, it seems like NA is not willing to risk our 4th choice CB and would prefer to play Frazer out of position.

Yes it is 75% in last 2 years, of internationals that he has been available for. Olympics are not full internationals by the way (they are U23 matches) and so would not count, but would probably be taken into consideration if there was a borderline case. I really don't think a work permit is something to worry about, and I'm convinced that this would have been considered already. There is no way in the world that NC would be so naive as to pay this sort of money and then think, oh feck I forgot about a work permit.

You are confusing £ with Euros in some cases (not all). So its quite a bit less than £37m, perhaps £30m is more like it. Not all cash up front (though perhaps more than originally budgeted for) and most, though not all, with potential to increase in value.

This. He also set up the best chance in the 1st half, was it Lallana's pile driver (sorry I guess I could check on the highlights)? He made the move of the match driving diagonally across midfield and then providing a great pass, but no-one notices the set up 3 passes before the final touch. He is not the greatest player in the world, but the abuse he takes at the ground and especially from a few on here is just unacceptable.

Far from it in fact, the eyes often lie, as proved by this remark. Everyone was poor, but Guly was one of the least poor players on Saturday. His poorer moments came when we changed formation from the 4-3-3 to 4-4-2, when Guly dropped back into MF, his best moments were when he was playing as part of an attacking 3 (you may want to call what he and JRod were playing as MF, but it was a very different MF role than the one that he was asked to do after Sharp came on). I was actually quite pleased on Saturday, we sat a little way away from where we sat all last season, 2 blocks, and it was very pleasant not to hear anyone around me mouthing off about Guly, the bigots that used to sit just in front of us were thankfully nowhere to be seen or heard. I was only disappointed a bit later when we were in the shop getting my daughter a new shirt (with Guly printed on the back) to heara bigoted bloke in front spouting off about being happy to have anything printed on the back of a shirt as long as it was not "any Guly crap". Quite an old guy, probably my age, late 50s or so, wish we didn't have these type of ignorant ****ssupporting my team, but sadly I guess they are entitled to their misguided opinion.

You are confusing work permits and international clearance, they are very different. One is a sporting regulation (by FIFA) one is a UK (or EC) law. He will need both before he can play, international clearance is not an issue, it would be granted, work permit could be if he doesn't automatically meet the very precise criteria, but we would almost certainly still sign him anyway (I'm sure we would not have got this far if there was any question of not getting a work permit). It might go to appeal, but even in very dodgy cases, such as Marian Pahars, the appeal is usually successful.

Why do you think the work permit application will be rejected technically? On what grounds? I thought he had played enough internationals for Uruguay for which he has been available for selection in last 2 years. There certainly is no issue with Uruguay's ranking. Or is the technical issue that we are not Manure or Citeh or Arse?

He was one of our better players Saturday, though that's not saying much, along with Lallana and Guly. Unfortunately with Davis not fully fit and Cork injured the MF is currently lightweight to say the least and a lot of responsibility is falling on Morgan as a result. But his ability to break up the play of Wigan time and again is very important, and I was shocked when he was once dispossessed, as it is so unusual. I think Ottery's coaching is working well.

Its not a question of passing or failing medical. The medics will assess the injury and whether he will recover fully or whether there would be some lasting damage. We would probably still sign him unless there was a serious risk that he would not fully recover. As long as we don't use the same medics as we did for Tin Man a few years back we should be OK.

We don't play Arsenal for nearly 3 weeks. Unlikely new signings would start against Manure on Sunday anyway. Reality is that very few transfers have actually completed in the PL as yet (of course there are exceptions), the reality is that all clubs do their business at the end of the window. We are actually quite fortunate to have brought in 4 new signings early on. It is ridiculous that the transfer window remains open after the start of the season which is why we have this farcical situation, but thats how it currently is, and until that is changed the way of doing business will change little, if at all.

Fonte made 1 mistake on Saturday, which admittedly was a BIG mistake and lead to their 2nd goal. Quite frankly it made no difference to the result. We were already 1-0 down with a couple of minutes to play and we would not have scored if we had played until midnight. But hey, make 1 mistake and some dumbasses on here will call you a donkey. Presumably didn't see the heaps of mistakes that Lambert made with some awful passes. Fonte played well at Man City, Jos made 1 glaring error. In fact are 2 CBs who are not good enough for the PL have really made 2 serious errors between them in 2 games.

More likely that it has to wait until tomorrow to conclude officially since it is a bank holiday today, so the FA offices are closed. Would be purely paperwork issue, but no way can a new signing be officially unveiled until the papers are all officially signed. Doesn't make a jot of difference to the work that needs to go on or has already gone on behind the scenes of course.

And all this happening on a day that some on here didn't think counted as one of the days left before the transfer window closes. Everyone was supposed to have their feet up today because it is a holiday in England. So 4 more days of transfer business left after today.

Really can't understand how come Ajax ever had JvD, one of the worst players we ever signed imho, and really has never made it that big since, despite 29 caps for Belgium. Odd thing is that he had only played 18 times for Ajax before he signed for us, only a few more than Boilesen.

Intrigued to know how you would know that they refuse to answer any correspondence "from us" - assuming you mean SFC and not letters or emails that you have sent personally. It seems quite clear to me that they have been in correspondence already, perhaps not with Oyston, but with their Chief Exec, as Holloway has stated, so doesn't seem that much of a problem to me. They are only being difficult in the sense that they want to keep what they have and don't want or apparently need to sell. On the other hand Philips is clearly not as crucial to them as many believe, after all they managed to win 6-0 on Saturday without him in the starting XI, they were already 5-0 up when he came on. I think they are probably working on the basis that he will be gone soon, one way or another. Must admit in my view, Ince would have been the better target, he really does look the dogs dangly bits, but would just be concerned long term that his old man would try to get him into one of his spiritual home teams.

I don't think "discarding a Scottish international" is really relevant. Boilesen has same number of caps as Fox, and Denmark are ranked 10th by FIFA while Scotland are ranked, oh I don't know I got down to 40th and gave up* :-) Your note about experience is more relevant, although clearly the experience has not resulted in Danny learning as much as one would expect, at 26 he is probably at his prime and is clearly struggling at PL level. I still think he will be very useful in the squad, and it will be good to have 2/3 FBs fighting for a place. But its also probably clear that NA does not think Fox is the answer, hence the 3 shirt has been left vacant. *46th actually. Just winding Kraken up.

Only if he does not meet the criteria, which is based on FIFA ranking of his international team and number of international appearances in last 2 or 3? years. Pahars took ages because Latvia were very lowly ranked. Uruguay are currently ranked 4th, so no problem there. As of Feb, Ramirez had played 9 times for Uruguay in last 2 years, so probably no issue there either. Found the rules: 1. A player must have played for his country in at least 75% of its competitive “A” team matches he was available for selection, during the 2 years preceding the date of the application; 2. The player’s country must be at or above 70th place in the official FIFA World Rankings when averaged over the 2 years preceding the date of the application

You always have to get international clearance for a transfer between 2 countries, whatever level, standard practice. It is normally a formality, and is not affected by the quality of the player. It was only complicated a little with Steve Davis because of the Rangers situation, in that effectively he was not registered with a team affiliated to the Scottish FA.

Feck, apart for 10 minutes their level of skill and control was bloody awful, though still seriously better than ours. I think this is part of the problem, some people, including Adkins it seems. believe the hype that skill and control in the lower reaches of the PL is so good. The only thing that really separates these poor PL teams and the best of the FL is ruthlessness in front of goal. But you are right, he didn't seem to know what to do to change things, and with due respect to JWP, replacing Steve Davis with Prowse was not a stroke of tactical genius, it was simply that Davis was ****ged out because he is not fully fit. We were a bit bereft of options on the bench yesterday, only Sharp and maybe Puncheon looked like game-changing options.

Lee is not a winger. He may play left or right of a front 3, but that does not and never will make him a winger. He is a striker. And the sooner he is available again the better.

Problem for anyone would be wages, not the fee.

He's 17, nearly 18 actually (1 November). The number on the back of his shirt does not represent his age. Hammond was struggling in the Championship to be fair, but he has been very important to us, but think he will probably move on. Strangely, if he had been on the bench yesterday I might have brought him on for 15 minutes to try to drive things on a bit, and wake up some of the other dozy players we had on the pitch.