VectisSaint

van Damme may be an international now and may have been then, but for Saints he was absolute ****, and I for one am very pleased that soppy old sod remembered him. I was beginning to despair that one of the worst players and nastiest pieces of work to ever don the red and white had almost been forgotten. As far as I can tell he is also no longer playing for Belgium - last appearance in 2008/09 season. Maybe even the Belgians have finally realised he is cack. Think it was a bit harsh to name Best though Soppy, poor lad seems to be forever hated because of his penalty miss, when most people realise he should never have been put in that position by our senior pros.

A welcome return from Dalek, no mention of Hod for weeks. I see he is being lined up for Reading.

Jesus was a legend from the day he joined us, not sure about from birth, I guess it was the hair. Who is he playing for these days?

Just a thought but Willo Flood is looking to go out on loan at least from Celtic. Signed by both Dave Jones and WGS, both reasonably shrewd judges. The guy seems to have lost his way a little and maybe the step down to a successful L1 side (or is it a step up from SPL?) might work well for him. Mowbray seems to be supportive of a loan move.

Rather play Colchester on Monday than have the match postponed and face them with Nobby Solano in the team in the New Year. Can't really see that anyone can be considering the state of the game in 6 days time. Even if there is snow around now it is likely it will all be gone by then according to the weather forecast. Unless the pitch then becomes waterlogged there is not much chance that the weather will cause a postponement.

How the hell did a baby Franny help your Mum? And why did you have a pram? Very strange. Did Franny have a tache when he was a baby?

The woggles are a give away

If he is god, or even God, knowing how to spell his name would be a good thing. It's MarKus :mad:

Bizarre, he played almost the same number of games for us as he did for Forest, and I think won more caps when he was with us than he had previously - partly because up until he joined us he shared the keeping responsibilities with Clemence. I also don't get how you don't think of Shilts at Stoke and Derby, yet recall he made 34 appearances for Plymouth in the twilight of his career - 34, less than 1 season. Lets not forget his time at Leyton Orient as well, 9 appearances that took him past the magic 1000 appearances. Brilliant keeper, best we ever had by a mile (with due respect to Niemi) and possibly the best keeper in the world ever (at least close behind Banks and Yashin). On another note, I was shocked the other day. Remember that I live in Wiltshire, went to get a haircut and was chatting to the young guy cutting my hair, keen Liverpool supporter. Got chatting about Saints, and mentioned Mick Channon. He said, I know that name isn't he the race horse trainer? I laughed and pointed out to him that he was previously one of the best footballers in the country and played 46 times for England. The guy was amazed, genuinely. Its shocking the lack of knowledge of yongsters about football and especially loacl players.

Probably one they stole from Wembley, bloody Germans, they should give it back

Having a break that includes Christmas/New Year would be mad. It is very seldom that we get bad weather in late December, and quite honestly its not that bad now for much of the country, its only because its around London that everyone thinks its bad, soft Londoners/Estuaryites. Have a break now and when the bad weather comes in late Jan/Feb there would be fixture chaos. The argument about players needing a rest is also overdone in my opinion. The last thing players need is a rest, injuries will occur when they come back because they have not been training properly. The only ones who argue for rest for players are those that think the international game is more important than club football. Club football is far more important for the vasr majority of people, internationals are usually a waste of time, resting players so they will be fit to meet the mighty Andorra, complete rubbish. Premier league teams are always banging on about resting their players, then they take them on gruelling tours of the Far East, total codswallop. Even the Scots have done away with the mid-winter break again, because there just aren't enough midweek slots to get the games played. The last time there was serious disruption to fixtures in this country (and I mean serious) was 1963 when there were no games for weeks, since then its been realtively easy to get games played.

Must be you then. Alpine has always spoken a lot of sense, but some people don't like it, or the way he goes about it. Doesn't always put things in the right way, but 9 times out of 10 he is proven right.

9 behind Millwall at the moment as far as I can see. Unless BBC table has not been updated correctly. OK, BBC had not refreshed, sorry

Originally Posted by SuperMikey I know that Saga isn't in the plans, but I still think he's dangerous. He's not a Poland international for nothing! Connolly can't always play 90 minutes, and we still need a 'fox in the box' striker to come off the bench and worry the defence. Someone said about Papa Waigo and Lallana being strikers too, fair enough, but they are starting. I'm talking about having a fresh pair of legs to come on, and not to reshuffle the team. I still think we need an out and out striker on the bench, and Patterson and Saga are just rotting in the reserves. Agree about what we need, but we were talking about the bench today nit in the future. Saga will not play for us again, and Pato is really no better an option than Gobern or Antonio (though I think he will be one day). Fact is today that we have 4 strikers starting, and they could be reshuffled if we need to go more defensive. Think the team is very attacking which is a bit worrying, but without Spiderman is the best available.

Out of interest what striker would you have put on the bench? We are playing 4 strikers (including Waigo and Lallana), and have Antonio on the bench. The only other options are Saga, who has not been used for ages and is not in the plans) and Paterson. To me the bench looks about as strong as we could muster, most of the players have played quite regularly, except perhaps Gobern. Does illustrate that we need another top class striker brought in during Jan though.

Ah, comprende now. Still if thats the case we could do a lot worse than Bassett, knows the game and especially the lower leagues inside out.

Not just snow on the ground, I recall driving through what seemed like a blizzard, my old Mk3 Cortina GT was struggling to keep the white stuff off the windscreen. Me and 3 mates drove up from Reading, ****ing cold in the open corner, great game (I think) and horrible journey back but made better by a swift pint or 2 in Wakefield?). Hope everyone gets there and back safely today, and we grab 3 points.

Unlikely to be scouting if he was at St Mary's, unless it was a match day. If you are scouting you would normally go to Staplewood. I can think of worse people to have as Sporting Director, as long as doesn't get involved directly in the coaching side of the game. If Pardew is happy with Bertie then thats all that I care about, because it is their relationship that would be vital. Stilll think we could have done worse than stick with Wise and Bertie a few years back, we probably wouldn't have gotten into the mess we did, then again, we would not no be rid of Lowe and owned by a decent bloke and winning games again.

Rather see Man City win the Prem than Chelski any day. Chelski was the start of all that is bad in football these days, and I begrudge them everything. The Special One, **** me do people really believe that bloke's self hype. Chelski won the league because of a Russian billionaire, not some poncy Portuguese fella. Please don't ever compare us with Chelski, like many others I think they are the most loathed team in the country these days (apart from Leeds), and I always detested them even back in the 60s/70s. At least Man City play attractive football, Chelski's style of play is awful, simply awful, no creativity and a bunch of aging has-beens. The purpose of spending some money in January is not so we **** all over everyone else, but that we make a decent attempt at promotion this season and then have a squad capable of top half of Championship next, thats all. Its still going to be a matter of some luck getting up, because realistically it is only going to be via the play-offs, and we all know that there is a large element of luck involved with that system.

17 in 95 Premier League appearances, 27 in Division 3 in 2000-01, and 20 in the Champsionship the following season. He's too old now (33), but at this level Ormerod was a very handy striker, scoring about the same number as Lambert. Even in the Premier he was very underrated, and enabled Beattie to score a lot of goals.

Doesn't count, the question was about the last double-barrelled named player BWP was not a player, and anyway he was triple barrelled, Bradley Wight-Phillips-Offside

I remember when we were going to sign Rudi Skacel. Has he signed yet?

No, thats Liebherr. Mali Group do not as far as I know manufacture refirigerators, though even if they did I would argue that is quite heavy engineering :-) If you want to know what Markus' group of companies actually do visit their web site: http://www.mali-group.com/ and if like me you odn't understand much German click on the English version.

Actually no he's English, born in Willesden, North London, so actually more English than me. I guess one of his parents was irish so he qualifies to play for the Republic. So actually he's the Anglo Irish Latvian Michael Owen. Of course Owen may have been born in England, just, but went to school in Wales where he first attracted the attention of football scouts. Crazy world international sport these days.

So you missed the point completely. Liebherr Cranes is not Markus' company. His company is Mali, and as I said even if the publicity is free, I seriously doubt that a heavy engineering railway equipment company would derive any benefit whatsoever from sponsorship of an English 3rd or 2nd level football team - even a Premier League team would probably not benefit Mali much, but hey ho, if Markus wants Mali on the shirts rather than a named commercial sponsorship which brings in revenue to the club, its his Club and he can do what he likes (and I am very pleased that is the case)