The Kraken

Why not? Jack Butland has played half a season for Shrewsbury Town. Does that rule him out of being a Prem keeper too? If so, why, and until when?

You often get a bee in your bonnet about "where are the signings threads", and fairly often rightly so. But in this case I think you're skimming over the facts. We had a deal for a left back fall through, and in addition the manager had also said he wants to bring in a CB or two and a wide player. The manager also said he wants to do that before the season starts, and the big kick off is rapidly approaching. I don't see too much evidence of massive stressing on anyone's behalf, other than suggesting that its getting less and less likely that we'll achieve the manager's stated ambition of bringing in those players before the big kick off. If the manager has set an objective then its clear he's done that for a purpose, that he doesn't consider the current first team as good enough for purpose. And its only natural that his comments will get tracked to see if he can achieve the objective of bringing players in on time. Still time yet; I think we'll see at least 1 player before k.o., hopefully 2. So we'll see. But all people are doing is judging NA by his own statements and ambition, and I don't see a need to change the goalposts from that to potentially strengthening after the season starts or in January, that's not what NA said he wants to do.

Gazzaniga may be 20 but he's still a senior keeper. Butland is 19 but would have been considered a senior keeper if we had signed him. Why is Gazza different? He will be the competition for Kelvin this year. Emergency loans allow for decent keepers to move very quickly if we need to. I expect Gazza to get League Cup games, development games and if he progresses as expected perhaps even pushing for the first team by the end of the season. There would have been no point at all in buying him just for him to be a 3rd choice keeper, that would be detrimental to his development. As I said, I'd expect any new keeper to be 17 or 18.

Its extremely unlikely that we're going to sign another keeper to fight for the number 2 spot. Any new keeper will be a youngster to go into the Development Squad and improve from there IMO. It makes no sense at all to have 3 senior keepers vying for 1 spot, particularly when it is so easy these days to secure an emergency loan keeper (as we have done ourselves in the past few years).

What an utterly ridiculous notion. A Scotland team would not "struggle in League 1". Of the Scotland teams listed above, any team in League 1 would likely choose every single player to add to their ranks, if they could.

Not sure what you're looking at, but the friendlies are all listed in the main fixtures and results tab.

Its a bit too photo-heavy for my liking, far too slow to load and with annoying pop ups and photos appearing then disappearing. I don't mind the structure of it and there's some good parts to it, its just a bit too busy. In any case, people will get used to it. Its better than the old site, that was sh*te. The navigation seems to make a bit more sense too.

How big are the pictures? 500K is a very large file size. And what file format are they?

The main thing that strikes me is that there isn't even a chain at the moment. After a flurry of being linked with players and making signings its all gone very quite in the last 2 or 3 weeks. The Olympics effect is not to be discounted, of course, but its notable that we're not being linked with players in the press right now. Hopefully this will change fairly quickly, it would be great to have the new players in well before the start of the season.

Not necessarily. By all accounts Les Reed handled all the negotiations in the Clyne deal.

So, up to 18 golds. 1 more needed to match the 19 from Beijing, which in itself was an epic effort. Still got Chris Hoy in the Keirin, Vicky Pendleton in the sprint, Mo Farah in the 5,000m, Laura Trott tomorrow........

Young keeper we got on loan from Arsenal when Bart was injured. He was recalled by Arsenal after 8 days, I think Bart's injury turned out to not be as bad as first feared.

He plays in the UAE. He had two seasons in Serie B after leaving us, with a decent goal scoring rate (15 in 40 appearances for Ascoli in season 2011-12).

Trotman was never a miss, he was decent for us. Waigo and Antonio were also hits. James Shea was recalled by Arsenal after a week so I wouldn't even rate him. Agree with the rest.

Neal Trotman played at the back with Radhi Jaidi; he was like a younger version of big Radhi. Decent for us I thought. Shea never played and was a bit of a pointless signing really.

Jacob Mellis Neal Trotman Papa Waigo Michail Antonio Guly do Prado Richard Chaplow Nicolas Bignall Dany N'guessan James Shea Dale Stephens Jos Hooiveld Iago Falque

Perhaps, but as the countdown to August 19th ticks down it becomes more and more apparent that we're not yet set up for what we need for the season. Especially so at CB, where even the manager has stated we need to bring in one or two players to strengthen. RM/RW, I'd say we're "ok" there for now, even though we could with strengthening its not really a weak area. We simply can't say that about CB, and the longer it goes without addressing the problem the more nervous people will get about it. There's nearly a month of the window to go of course, but its the age old debate about preferring to get players in earlier rather than later. I still think we'll hear about a new CB this week or next week, although the general lack of news of potential signings is slightly strange given the press leaks about our signings to date this summer.

We've done ok so far, but I wouldn't write off West Ham. And they've definitely signed more than 3 players. Jaaskelainen should be decent for them, and he's still only 37 which for a keeper is fine. I rate him as better than Kelvin. George McCartney and James Collins are solid signings for relatively low cost. I'm not a fan of Diame, and Newcastle agreed a £7M fee for Maiga before he failed a medical with them. I think the Hammers have added well, and I think their squad (man for man) was slightly better than ours to start with.

[TABLE=class: wikitable, width: 80%] [TR] [TH]# [/TH] [TH]Pos [/TH] [TH]Player [/TH] [TH]From [/TH] [TH]Fee [/TH] [TH]Date [/TH] [TH]Notes [/TH] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD]GK [/TD] [TD] Stephen Henderson [/TD] [TD] Portsmouth [/TD] [TD]Undisclosed [/TD] [TD]21 May 2012 [/TD] [TD][1] [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD]GK [/TD] [TD] Jussi Jääskeläinen [/TD] [TD] Bolton Wanderers [/TD] [TD]Free [/TD] [TD]1 July 2012 [/TD] [TD][3] [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD]MF [/TD] [TD] Mohamed Diamé [/TD] [TD] Wigan Athletic [/TD] [TD]Free [/TD] [TD]1 July 2012 [/TD] [TD][4] [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD]DF [/TD] [TD] George McCartney [/TD] [TD] Sunderland [/TD] [TD]Free [/TD] [TD]1 July 2012 [/TD] [TD][6] [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD]FW [/TD] [TD] Modibo Maïga [/TD] [TD] FC Sochaux [/TD] [TD]Undisclosed [/TD] [TD]18 July 2012 [/TD] [TD][7] [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD]GK [/TD] [TD] Raphael Spiegel [/TD] [TD] Grasshopper Club Zürich [/TD] [TD]Undisclosed [/TD] [TD]23 July 2012 [/TD] [TD][8] [/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD][/TD] [TD]DF [/TD] [TD] James Collins [/TD] [TD] Aston Villa [/TD] [TD]Undisclosed [/TD] [TD]01 August 2012 [/TD] [TD][9] [/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE]

Sorry but I don't buy your excuse for the staff not seeming to know what they're doing. I have an iota of sympathy for them as there are simply not enough of them, but there's no excuse at all to not know how to do a very simple job. The system doesn't work either; as I say there's not enough staff, but it should be better structured with dedicated staff for pouring, serving, getting beers, and on the till. There needs to be more pay points, I think the bar in the Chapel only has two tills, so you get two huge lines forming. Its so simple to fix, you only have to look at it for 10 seconds to realise there's a huge bottle neck at the counter, yet consistently nothing gets done about it. And the situation is made worse when you get staff who don't know what they're doing. I end up avoiding the queue by coming down a few minutes early, there's no way I'd queue up in the lines after the whistle has gone. I've said we should have the old separate bottle bars, which are really quick, but in addition to the stalls with draughts. Its an easy problem to fix, it seems like the club is just going for the cheapest option and to hell with the quality of service. They'd actually sell more beer if they got it right, so I struggle to see why they don't do anything about it.

There's delays and there's a shambles. The system just doesn't work at St. Mary's. Take a look at Reading, when we played there. Much more kiosks, much more staff, and the mobile backpack fellas too. Hardly any delays, i think i waited 1 minute for a hlaf time pint. Please don't try and tell me we can't replicate that.

Well its not as if they don't charge a premium price for what they're selling. £3.80 for a bottle of Carling FFS. They really should bring back the bottle bars they used to have. Or get loads of the mobile backpack sellers like they had at Reading.

Getting some staff who actually know what they're doing would be a start. Can't believe its such a mission to serve pints, the system just doesn't work. Get more staff, get them trained properly, and get a system of service that actually works. The queues for beer are a complete disgrace.

That's not quite what Brian Mcdermott has said. Here's what he actually said:

Good God, Andy Murray is as dull as sh*te. Great player, but oh my goodness.