so22saint

It depends on the cost of the land I guess. But imagine if we buy the land up the water and created a new stadium on the current site, expanded - road next door in a tunnel underneath, waterfront bars and cafe's, new railway station built. Frankly, as I've said on here before, Southampton is a **** hole really (and I'm from Totton so know all about **** holes), but it has a fantastic location / harbour and maybe Marcus wants to leave a legacy as the guy who transformed it into something special. Monaco of the UK? :-) It's nice to dream...

I'm in Lisbon at a conference and the news of this win spurred me on to drink until 4am. Ouch....

to be honest, we all wanted the ability to borrow like ****ing lunatics to buy our plasmas & cars, and houses etc. and now we're looking for people to blame but we're all implicated. Facts are: *some* banking ****s created obscure derivatives and as is human nature, once they were seen as a good thing our herd mentality took over and it became normal practice to pile into toxic assets - eventually it was obvious that Mr and Mrs Bumble**** USA couldn't afford are 140% mortgage - and in fact neither could the 120% mortgagers over here. *the government* decided to try and create social equality by loading the social welfare system with cash and taking on the NHS etc. In exactly the same way as the previous example this worked at first but the system (in this case public not private sector) carried on with the bandwagon past safe levels so after selling off our gold reserves, as much private sector as possible (DERA, The Royal Ordnance etc.) they had to turn to the international markets to keep borrowing to pay for the welfare state, which by now had stopped just supporting real families in need but had once again started supporting the feckless and lazy (and I personally know 3 families in Winchester who don't work and deliberately had an extra kid for a bigger house and more benefits. The important thing here being "don't" work not "can't" work) *the population* is becoming increasingly dependent on 3rd parties and in my opinion less able to think or take responsibility for it's own actions. There's always somebody to blame, bankers, the government, the council, my boss etc. This attitude is there in some of the other countries I visit, and in some of the recent immigrants to our fine shores either. Note the lack of British people working in **** jobs - I can't remember the last time I saw a white face in a petrol station. I worked in one for years as a schoolboy then student. My point being that hardworking people from other countries understand that with a bit of gumption this country is just about free enough for you to make something of yourself, and it's generally a nice place to live, if you stop ****ing whinging. By the way, I thought GW Bush was a grade A ***** - a scary **** who thought having 3 prayer meetings a day was a good way to run the worlds most powerful nation. I think it's fair to say though that he personally had *nothing* to do with the global meltdown

I thought he came across ok to be honest - blunt but not suicidal

So, seeing as we're unlikely to go up this year but should expect to next, basically we're not going to play them again for ages. I'm fairly gutted about that, though not about them being below us for ages

Heh, closer to 55 than young so yes ;-) You're spot on on the subs though mate - well mentioned. They're something else we lead the world in - and I do know of what I speak there ;-).

Right. Falklands - I love the hypocrisy on here - **** the Falkland Islanders, why are we in Britain trying to keep them - nationalism etc. Frankly, one of the best things about our country is that we invented democracy in it's modern form and took it around the world. On the whole we're a tolerant nation who accept ideas and run with them, have free education and health, while still leading the world in high technology (particularly materials science and high-tech light engineering). So, the simple answer for the Falklands is - hold a referendum of the people who actually ****ing live there - if they want to remain British then let them. They live there. For Argentina to "want them back" is nationalism in it's worst form, as is all this Empires are over bull**** from Chavez. So, having probably annoyed TDD with the tolerance comment (joke mate), I'll totally back him up on the armed forces thing. With the exception of the 1200 men we have down there, we'll struggle to defend the Falklands. We lost our real ability to project power with Hermes - the Invicible class are really helicopter carriers and we don't have Sea Harriers with radar anymore. If we want to support the right of the British people to have the right to live in their own homes that they've grown up in we need to rebuild our forces somehow. How can we afford it - probably we can't to be honest. Over the past 50 years we've outsourced our manufacturing to offshore companies losing a skills base, and an ability for heavy manufacturing and retooling our economy primarily to services - an industry that manufactures nothing physical so is even easier to offshore (I talk as the owner of a small multi-million pound software house) and so this is now leaving in droves meaning that basically our workforce is now living on government money, which basically means money we've borrowed from other countries. It's unsustainable, but there's an interesting sting coming. The USA are in exactly the same place x 10, but with the worlds largest military by far. With the recent selling of weapons to Taipai, the meeting with the Dalai Laama etc. I can't help thinking that China is about to find the old adage "if you owe the bank a tenner, they own you, if you owe them a million, you own them" is about to come back to haunt them. Or in other words "President Obama, why have you defaulted on your trillion dollar debt? President Obama, President.... 'he's hung up'".

To be honest, I'd *love it* if we both managed to get into the Championship next year. *love it*

If and when we're back in the Premiership, with the the stated plans of NC and ML (i.e. they will invest to see us "up there", then the stadium extension makes much more sense. As mentioned it will make SFC a more saleable asset and if we are in the top half of the EPL, we'll sell it out no problem which in theory should shorten the payback considerably.

Do you want the youth team job in 3 weeks time?

Exactly. Thing is mingling outside the ground, though there'll be flashpoints, means that most of the idiots will go where they've prearranged and the odd (maybe 30/40) arrest aside, it'll be more like a normal game. With that cordon in place there'll be a massive "them and us" with both sets of fans baying for blood outside and then the potential for random punter violence all over the place. I don't remember needing this for any of the previous recent cup or league games, or for Alco Knights testimonial. It's nanny state bull**** again Though I do like the fact that the money to police it should impact the money due to the blue few

Surely we'd pay them less the amount they owe us for the tickets.] Simples

What a massive over-reaction. FFS, what is the world coming to

This bit makes sense. The HMRC's point will be that as they are no longer preferential creditors that there should be *no* preferential creditors and could wind Pompey up to get at the FA in general i.e. "if we don't get equal dibs we'll wind up your members". Ooo err. I've always been in the "let them rot" category but I'll be honest, I'll be gutted if Saturday doesn't go ahead. I wonder if they do go out of business if there will be a gate increase for us?

and all in the same building, sharing infrastructure, secretary staff etc...

Not least of which, with UK PLC £200B in debt, HMRC are clawing "everything" they can and with the levels of foreign ownership in the UK in Football, no doubt leading to all kinds of creative accounting, they need to send a signal...

Love that cartoon strip - LOL'd at "ding ding ding". What a bell end that bloke is - I know it's not clever, or even original, but true

Actually, we did, and the Saintlist had a meltdown. I've got no problems with changing the kit for one season, especially if it's a kit we used to have. I think the plan should be: Get promoted to the Championship in the 125th kit Marcus to buy FlyBe Marcus to rename it Air Florida Get promoted to the Prem in the Air Florida kit - Rickie to grow a curly perm

Royal Artillery, first in the BEF before evac at Dunkirk, then North Africa before the jungles of Burma etc. Demobbed 47, rejoined 49 and was the Sgt Major who greeted new recruits at Bovingdon for the last years of his time in (Sgt Maj. Gerald Herbert) He died aged 95 the night we beat Southend to stay in the Championship.

No mate, it will continue when you keep bringing it up. His terrible record after us speaks for itself

As we all know, the FAPL can do what they like, and they might let them get away without 9 pts this year. If they do though, and they go down, which is likely, then I'd expect -35 or something from the FL. Now, I'll be gutted about that in a way, as I expect us to go up next year, in which case no local derby

Though having said that, this Chanrai bloke can pay the remainder to the HMRC and other Winding Up Order claiments anytime before Wednesday and then they are fine. well, fineish

To quote the administrator on Solent last night: "if they lose on Wednesday, then that's it. They need to be in administration before next Wednesday and what worries me is that the word on the street amongst administrators is that they are not talking to anybody. They either believe 100% they will win next Wednesday or are heading down a track they shouldn't even consider" (something like that, at that point I was getting bored). cue much gnashing of teeth from the skate commentators and Andy Awful. Personally, it does sound more and more like it's in somebody's interest for them to go under to me...

Does your wife know, Does your wife know, Does your wife know you are here. Does your wife know you are here. It's like Shilton all over again

It's official - no sponsor next season! http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10280~1952533,00.html