The Kraken

Seems like a bit of a rum deal.

Stamping on people's dreams is serious business.

A fair analogy, IMO.

If RL gets injured then we're struggling. JRod just hasn't done it when playing up front, he's much better when playing from a slightly deeper position. And Gallagher, while full of promise, can't be relied upon to get us goals. So I'd say we need a striker. But won't get one, clearly.

It's an entirely theoretical question, but ask yourself this. Would you prefer our last ten years as it happened, or would you prefer we had spent 10 years in the Premier League finishing between 8th or 9th and 16th, and with no visits to Wembley in any of the cups? I'd take the last 10 years every time. The championship holds no fears at all for me, I thoroughly enjoyed our time there even when we were relatively sh*t.

I actually met the chap Rich before he opened up, he came to a game at St. Mary's with us through a mutual friend. To be fair to him he seemed very open to ideas and gaining as much opinion on restaurant choices as possible, from us just as regular punters. He was very passionate about the venture too, so fair play to him, it took a lot of hard work to get there but they've done well.

Is it just me that barely registers that Sherwood ever played for Pompey? And couldn't give a f*ck in any case?

Rockstone are good but 7 Bone are decent too, the brioche bun is lovely. The chili fries are excellent too.

It's an hour for free now. The9 will be overjoyed. Round of applause for Kat.

They fancy Sunderland have a chance of causing a major upset.....??

Well there clearly was because Chesney got taken out by Gallagher and was down for at least 2 minutes. Lallana was down for treatment too.

He doesn't (yet) give us the attacking options that Clyne does. But he's clearly got bags of talent, is learning all the time, and is very much improved since his first games of the season. I really don't know which one of Clyne or Chambers I prefer right now, which is a great problem for the manager to have.

As I said earlier in this thread, my mate used to scout for a now PL side, and I went with him from time to time. Speaking to him about it, it seemed that as often that not he was just on a general watching brief, with no pre-defined player to run an eye over, and provide recommendations for further viewing by the chief scout. So yes, that often is the way scouting works.

Nope. Statto.com is a decent site, it lets you see the league table from any time throughout the season. http://www.statto.com/football/stats/england/division-one-old/1989-1990/table

I spent a few games watching with a mate of mine who scouted for a PL team; he was typically watching 2 or 3 players in a game, and more often than not just generally watching for any stand-out performances with no pre-planned watching brief.

I've heard this said before but it's a bit of stretch to say we "should" have finished third. We could have, as we were 5 point off Spurs in third place with a game in hand with just a couple of games to play. But we were down in 11th or 12th place with just 6 or 7 games left in the season, so really we did well to finish 7th. No matter, still my favourite season as a Saints fan.

You surely don't mean that the football was negative??

This one always got me, for some reason. The couple just seem really sad and disconsolate, staring at it in utter bemusement and a strange feeling of anger building up in them.

Totally agree with that, watching Saints was so much fun and so unpredictable, you never knew what was going to happen. The 4-1 Liverpool hammering will remain my favourite Saints game, we absolutely tore the best side in the land apart.

Our defence was always absolutely shocking under him, even in our season where we finished seventh we had the third highest goals conceded, and we were very fragile at times despite looking irresistable going forwards. Thinking back, Nicholl used to get absolute dogs abuse at the Dell, particularly when coming out for the games, he was often roundly booed. I remember being happy when he was sacked but in retrospect he actually did a decent job. And then we got Branfoot...

Right, as I thought. I'd suggest something happening once is no clear evidence of any type of trend.

When? I can't remember Wanyama being hauled off very much, especially in the first 10 games that you referenced.

That the Ted Bates Statue thread doesn't exist any more is an absolute travesty. I genuinely couldn't read that thread without laughing out loud every single time.

Over on b-anter there were some excellent photoshops of the statue.