The Kraken

Hang on, its WGS.

Jan Poortvliet?

It also depends on being able to separate out hating someone for being born 17 miles away. Having been born in and lived in and around Southampton for most of my life, plus having done my fair share of work down that end of the M27 (including now) I still find I'm able to accept the fact that, while I hope their club remains in obscurity for a very long time and they suffer miserably on the football pitch, I can't really bring myself to hate a whole population who I'll likely never meet. Plus I've had plenty of banter with Pompey supporters who are mates and/or I've worked with. Horses for courses, everyone takes the rivalry differently, but "exposure to it" is a relatively minor factor IMO.

William, I don't misunderstand at all. I'm talking as someone who has actually seen an array of player contracts, whereby the performance bonus makes up an extremely significant portion of the take home pay. In some cases up to 50% extra, with a lot of it based upon the position the team is in the league (typically using banding such as 1st - 4th, 5th - 10th etc etc). This was particularly the case with one Championship club who were promoted to the Premier League for a short stint. So being as I've actually seen it in action from quite some time ago, your insistence that it hasn't been around for some time is misplaced.

Definitely a Maskell goal, a very close range header.

Tick. I was at uni when that game was on and watched in a pub full of plastic Liverpool fans. I may have rubbed it in a little bit when we went 4-0 up...

OK, I watched this game again the other day, so: On 14th February 1994 Saints beat Liverpool 4-2 in the snow at The Dell. Matt Le Tissier scored a hat-trick, who scored Saints other goal?

Matt Oakley.

F*ck me

FC of Manchester.

In pre-season it’s important to have all players working together, so Lovren’s signing is a very good job by the Chairman and all of the staff at the Club.

And what happened the season after that one?

Young, hungry and bound to improve, yes?

What are their ticket prices. And hot dog/drinks prices inside the ground? Can you give us a comparison for Dortmund's 80k gates compared to our 30K gates in terms of revenues?Nice editing of Turkis's whole quote to try and make your point have more emphasis too, good work.

It seems to be the English thing to see them as "little old Dortmund". Despite them winning the CL in 90s and as you say having an enormous ground that they fill out whilst winning their domestic league 5 times in the past 20 years.

4-4-2? Pah, backwards thinking Glesgie.

He goes on to clarify that he means not just as a one off but as a club that repeatedly finishes top 8, season after season. So his 5 years is valid. Someone else on there chidingly makes the comparison to Everton, but Merseyside rivalry apart its actually a very fair comparison and a decent ambition for us to have. Still a bit of a way off yet though IMO.

Been thinking a bit more about this signing, and despite the negative feeling in some parts of the media I'm still genuinely really upbeat about it. Look at it this way; if he were a starting centre back for Lyon, about to play in the Champions League next season, there's simply no way we'd have signed him. Us signing first choice players from top level Champions League teams simply isn't going to happen. This is the next best thing though, a good prospect who didn't quite live up to the hype of a big 4 club. And apparently for less than £10M, which for a 23 year old international for one of the top 5 clubs in the world isn't a huge outlay. I'm all for going for younger players but this dude has plenty of top level experience too, which could be invaluable. I just hope we don't adopt the Forren model of signing with him, and rest him for 9 months....

You need to bear in mind who the OP is, and go a bit easy on him. Lucid thoughts tend to be quite rare in the world of ART.

Good Lord. Performance related pay has been around in English football for years. Decades, even. It's completely common for players to receive bonus payments depending upon the team's league position at the time. I've seen instances of mid-range Championship clubs doing this almost ten years ago, so the idea that we're copying Barca by doing something similar is naively laughable.

Yours seems to be working fine, pal.

We should build a 7 star hotel into the new Cortesedome. That would make the footballing world sit up and take notice.

Lovren the effort there, Gay Crabs.

We may be a 5 star boutique hotel, but only for now. Just wait until we achieve our ambition of becoming a 5 star international brand of top quality and renown. Its in the post.

Miltonroader MkII