The Kraken

Let's have Bateman's weekend footy tips and see how accurate you are then?

BBC anti Saints bias kicking into overdrive. How dare he predict us to lose? I'm so angry about this.

SSN reporting that we've announced we'll be doing no business.

Indeed. To add an oldie to it.... Southampton Sign Bent

I see only one sign.

How much extra work is having a reef tank compared to a tropical setup? No doubt reef setups look much better (and have a much more interesting variety of sea creature) but they just seem like far too much hard work to me.

I've heard that he likes a stay at the YMCA. Could be just a rumour though.

There is simply no precendent for this. The Easter date was set by the Football League for clubs going INTO administration. There simply isn't a rule for club's coming OUT of administration. As usual the Football League will make it up as they go along, so I wouldn't be surprised to see it go either way.

Farmery is a blatant liar, and his spin just unravels itself every time he contradicts himself. The administrators will relatively soon have to publish their year one report (as they did in August with their 6 month report) which will identifiy exactly how much they have amassed in bills, court costs etc, and exactly how much has been paid to date. should make interesting reading (as the previous one did). The PDT suggesting they have budgetted for PKF's fees is laughable in the extreme, unless they painted a worst case scenario and set aside £4M for it.

Classic tales!

According to Cortese's interview with Sky, its top 6 within 3 or 4 years. “If we can keep the team together for another three or four years, we have a very, very good chance to establish ourselves amongst the top six in the league." So if a CEO is going to make such a bold statement, its natural that the fans are going to discuss it, and ask how realistic an ambition it is. And to know where you're going, you need to know where you are (and where you've been). Does it matter? Of course not. But its a conversation point, that's for sure.

He doesn't have a break in his loan; his loan goes straight through to the end of the season. According to an interview he gave to Sky at the start of the season it was a clause he insisted upon, that he wouldn't come back here. So unless there's been a change in that I'd say its very unlikely he's back with us. Probably just up there watching Saints as Forest heven't got a game.

And we bought the European footballer of year around the time they got Francis. All in all, yes, probably accurate to say that there's little difference on paper between us, and just one European Cup is an amazing achievement, two is phenomenal.

To give it some balance; I wouldn't necessarily agree. The size of a club IMO is determined only in small part by its history, but more of its general size now and the potential and likelihood for future growth. "Big" clubs change all the time; the biggest 6 clubs in England now aren't the same biggest 6 from 50 years ago. While history shows a record of the past there has to be some sort of timescale on it for how relevant it is to today. For instance, I wouldn't say that our period in the mid 80s where we finished second and qualified for Europe a few times has much bearing at all on the size of club we are right now. The past 10 - 20 years are far more of an accurate baromoter for me. And in any case, Forest won the European Cup precisely by being a smaller type club, and it was testatment to the skills of Clough and Taylor that they were able to reach such success over much bigger rivals at the time.

They're only not spending this window. They spent around £20M in the summer. Since Randy Lerner has taken over they've probably spent in excess of £100M on transfers. Lambert has pretty much been told he needs to get on with what he already has for this season as Lerner has plunged in so much already with little notable return. I don't agree its 50/50. Villa are a more attractive prospect as a club than we are.

Before seeing the Villa game I'd have agreed; but Fox came on for Ramirez for the last 15-20 minutes of that game and we instantly looked much worse. He thought he was playing left back (despite the fact he was supposed to be LM) but offered absolutely nothing going forwards, choosing instead to sit deep and invite their full back on. he didn't seem to have any knowledge of how to play left midfield, and I think he'd be a complete passenger if we try that tonight. We may as well waste Ramirez out there rather than play Fox.

When Steve de Ridder is competing with Jay Rodriguez and Steven Davis for a starting place at LM tonight then, yes, our squad is a teensy bit too thin.

I agree. I don't think they're a huge team. I think they're a bigger team than us, significantly so at the moment but with a potential for us to close the gap over the next 5 years. They're a bit like Newcastle in that they have a decent perception (in this country anyway) without actually winning much of late. But they also have a fair bit more potential than us; in the last 5 years they've seen average attendances of very close to 40K, and that wihtout winning or looking like winning much. I personallly can't see us getting to such a crowd attendance any time soon; against certain clubs for one off games, yes. But not as a seasonal average.

Villa's last 5 seasons in the Premier League have seen them finish 6th, 6th, 6th, 9th and 16th. They're in their biggest slump for many a year yet still have an attendance 4K above ours. By comparison we've sold out our 32K stadium just 3 times out of 12 home games. If we can emulate what Villa have done in the past 5 years but in reverse, I would be absolutely ecstatic. And if we can grow to be as big as they are now over that 5 years it would be a very, very good achievement.

It'll be loads of season ticket holders not bothering. From memory they published that they sold around 8,000 seaon tickets which get automatically counted. Which means tonight saw a walk up home crowd and away attendance of around 2,000. Pack the Park. Edit: I see this has already been covered...

Just to clarify this point; it is true to a certain extent, but won't have a major effect as since 2002 it only encompasses 2 games of a regular season. NFL teams play: - each team in their own division H&A - each team from one other division in their conference H&A - each team from one other division in the other conference H&A plus, one game against two sides in its own conference that finished in the same place as they did the previous season. So if they finished 4th the previous season, they'd only play the 4th placed sides. 1st place and they'd play the 1st ranked sides. So a slightly harder schedule, but only marginally. Anyway, you had me doubting myself and thinking I'd made that up so best to clarify it! In relation to your post; salary cap etc has certainly been mooted in certain corridors. I just wonder if that would ever pass due to the players complaining to the European Courts that their human rights were being discriminated against by having their wage earning potential limited by such measures...

I'm not sure how valid a lot of American sports are to us. American football, for instance; doesn't their season get determined by where they finished in previous seasons? So the sh*t teams get rewarded with an easy schedule, plus higher draft picks. That in itself is a self-levelling measure in addition to curtailing excess spending. And the draft exists in other US sports too. Though I'll accept, if its your contention, that FFP has helped in some way. I don't know enough about it to say either way. In any case, the naive statement was more aimed at the original "FFP will be easier" statement not from yourself, which I saw as a hopeful but naive punt without any sort of rationale or explanation as to why it might be the case. And furthermore, in spite of all I've said, I doubt if FFP will have quite the impact that it was intended for. I hope it does, as keeping a financial check on club's excessive spending is a good thing. But you only have to see the latest revelations from France with respect to Qatar buying Platini's WC vote in exchange for massive investment in PSG (and the fact that Platini's son has recently been added to the PSG board) to realise that the uber-rich clubs will continue to find ways around FFP. And how can SFC compete against that?

Maybe we've got ourselves another multi-million BVI loan? Happy days.

They're spending more than they earn yes; but even if they only spend what they earn that'll still be much, much more than we do. City for instance have a 48K stadium (full every week) and Champions League revenues to fall back on. Chelsea much the same but a slightly smaller stadium. Then you have non CL teams such as Liverpool who have huge global revenues despite not eating at the top table right now. Plus sides such as Arsenal, Tottenham, Everton, Sunderland who have larger stadiums than us and therefore higher revenues. I can't see that FFP will do anything but make it harder for us to compete against the top 6 sides, as we won't be able to rely on outside investment to propel us there in the first place. We'll need to keep spending £30M and upwards as we have been doing but at the same time balance the books. Or wel'll need to increase th stadium size, fill it every game, and ignore any repayments we'll have to make. Saying it'll be easier is thoroughly naive.

Sorry, can you clarify this please? How is only being able to spend money that we actually earn (rather than being financially banrolled by a rich benefactor) going to make it easier rather than harder to compete with the top 4 (who earn vastly in excess of the sums we can expect to see in the short to medium term, with or without a larger stadium). Let alone competing with those outside the top 4 who turnover considerably more than us.