The Kraken

Good post Mike. Although I think you meant Craig Brown, not Craig Burley. Maybe VectisSaint could tell us all how your team would fare in League 1. I'll list it again. GK: McGregor RB: Hutton LB: Fox CB: Caldwell CB: Mulgrew RM: Morrison LM: Phillips CM: Adam CM: Dorrans ST: Naismith ST: Rhodes How about it Vectis. Where would that team finish in League 1? What would be the extent of their "struggle"? Especially if they got Steven Fletcher and Darren Fletcher back, one of whom is being touted for around £10M at the moment due to 3 years of scoring decent amounts at Premier League level and one who is (when fit) a starter for Manchester United.

Could still go one gold better with the BMX to come! Shanaze Read used to ride track before switching, and is favourite.

Massively successful, articulate, gracious and so, so hard working. Brilliant for youngsters to have role models like that for a change. Until the football season begins anyway....

Sir Chris Hoy Such an emotional time and can still be such a role model in what he says; absolute class there with Sir Steve Redgrave. What a games.

Fair decision unfortunately, Meares would have won without VP going outside her lane, she looked absolutely rapid up to that. Predict a 2-0 here, Meares looks too good

They need to actually have some money in order to be able to spend it. They don't have anything. The bank account will be pretty much empty; season ticket money getting released on a match by match basis. And an owner who will have lost millions of pounds off the value of what he is claimed he is owed. Getting the high wage earners off the books is the first step in Chainrai running the club on a shoestring, plundering the parachute payments and spending only the very bare minimum for transfers (free) and wages.

I could only see it working in an attempt to cut out the relentless criticism and abuse of referees by players. 10 minutes in the bin for shouting at the ref or linesman wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, and might get these pampered f*ckwits to actually think about what they're doing. Unfortunately thats something in the game which has permeated to all levels; a lad I used to play with was scouted by a Wessex League side and the manager said he was especially impressed with the way he "controlled the ref", i.e. constantly in his ear whinging. Players are now encouraged by the manager to get in the ref's ear and put the officials under pressure. Its a very sad state that its been allowed to happen.

After watching him on Saturday I think Stephens still has an awful lot of development before he can be considered an option. His mistake let in SEB for what should have been a goal, and after that he seemed to lose his head a bit with some basic errors and misplaced passes. Looks like he needs another year or two of Development Squad to bulk out a bit and get much more confident, he looked very scared of making a mistake. Still a good prospect though. Shaw on the other hand looks like he may well be able to make the step up fairly quickly.

We've got some promising youngsters, but that team choice would get absolutely rinsed in the Premier League.

Course he did; apologies, my bad

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.