The Kraken

There's a reasonable chance neither Cork nor Davis will be up to it if they keep missing games. The longer Team GB go in the tournament, the worse for us. Davis I simply can't see being match fit for the start of the season, he's not even in full training yet and hasn't played a game. cork I would imagine would be much more likely to be fit, but its just a case of him learning very quickly how to fit into the new system. I don't see Hammond getting much game time at all, perhaps just the odd 10 of 15 minutes here or there. I agree throwing JWP into a Man City cauldron is far from ideal, but if NA thinks he's up to it then I guess he'll do it. I think we'll get utterly thumped by Man City whatever team we put out anyway.

It looks like 4-3-3 will be our choice formation, so we'll very often have 3 CMs. I can see that being with Lallana playing more centrally and JRod left wing in some games, whereas we may look to keep it tighter for some games with just one striker and for those potentially play Lallana on the left and 3 of Cork, Schneiderlin, Davis, JWP, Hammond in the middle.

Ordinarily I'd agree, but I think its telling that JWP started against a side as good as Ajax while Cork was unavailable and Hammond and Chaplow started on the bench. I imagine Cork will come back as a starter and JWP go back into reserve, but if he keeps putting in decent performances then he's still in with a chance, what with Cork missing out on so many games for us and with us now playing a completely new formation to last season.

Naivety and Saints over-enthusiasm at its very best.

Sorry for your loss Vince, and full credit to your Dad for such great service to the game.

Adkins has said he wants to bring in "1 or 2 new defenders", and before the Man City game. Those were his own words; I doubt he was lying. Especially so as I don't consider either Fonte or Hooiveld to be good enough first choice options for an upper to mid-table Premier League team, so its an area that very much needs improving.

You don't half talk some cobblers at times, Dune.

Looks photoshopped to me.

I love living here whilst also accepting its actually a pretty sh*t city, really. Our city planners have done us no favours whatsoever, going way back to when half the city was levelled in the war. The Common is genuinely brilliant though.

Adkins has said that he plans to bring in 1 or 2 defenders, so its by no means at all a given that Hooiveld will be the fist choice. It's entiely possible we could have a brand new starting CB partnership for the season.

Tsk, such a dell-sized mentality. Believe.

I certainly would. I actually think we'd be better off ignoring The and tempting The Ox back. Now we're big time and Champions League bound he'd surely be up for a return.

I can't believe so many people are being negative and ruling this out. If our chairman says we're going to qualify for the Champions League then, dammit, we will. What has he done before that suggests he can't come through on his promises? If NC says we're signing Theo, then we're signing Theo. Welcome home, son.

I may or may not be there watching

I'm not sure if that would have been either tuneful, or decent family viewing.

Hats off Danny Boyle, that was absolutely epic. Didn't make the mistake of trying to out-Beijing Beijing, just stayed to being British and IMO it was better. Really thought it was going to be absolutely naff, akin to the dreadful London bus debacle from Beijing's closing ceremony, but i was wrong. My only "criticism" was the lighting of the flame, which I thought lacked a real wow factor like Barcelona and others. But I liked the concept so no real complaints. Overall excellent.

It goes to olden style formations, basically 2-3-5. 2 and 3 were full backs, 4 was the half back, 5 and 6 the wing backs. As the game became more defensive minded 2 and 3 stayed as full backs while 5 and 6 reverted to the centre backs, with 4 traditionally the more defensive minded centre midfielder. There are of course various examples where this wasn't the case in more modern football (before squad numbers came in and made it all redundant). Steve Bruce wore 4 as a centre back, Neil Webb and Ray Wilkins wore 5 in central midfield, Roy Keane wore 6 at Nottingham Forest, amongst many others.

We've had regulations for smaller sized pitches and smaller sized teams for younger players for years. And there has been a recent move to make sure kids don't play on full size pitches until they hit 13 or 14.

I wasn't the one who mentioned Harding in relation to Fox. I don't rate him at upper Championship level, but he was exceptional at League 1 level for us. Good luck to him if he ends up at Forest, he was a good servant for us as one of Pardew's first signings.

You won't get shot down at all. Fox is poor at defending, his crossing is excellent but he rarely beats a man or raids down the byline to do it, he predominantly crosses from deep in his half to Lambert at the back post. Not surprised at all that we're trying to replace him, there are plenty of others that I know who also think this.

Are you joking? Or a bit thick? You cant even think of one?

The thing that will bring through quality is a huge amount of qualified coaches. Which we don't have. Who are the best technical side in the world right now? Spain. Is it a coincidence that they have nearly ten times as many FIFA-qualified football coaches as we do? You choose if that's relevant or not. This new direction will only regress us further in that respect, I fear. We have the most successful league in the world. Our second league, the Championship, is something like the 4th of 5th most attended league in the world. Why is it we are so backwards when it comes to having a coaching structure that does the same? 10% of the amount of qualified coaches that Spain have. Why? This whole change to our coaching structure is a further step backwards IMO, as it removes any sort of ambition from lower clubs to actually contribute. The top clubs will do OK, the nation will suffer.

The feature of his game IMO was how much energy he had, he was a properly overlapping full back who got to the byline, yet quick to recover and get back in position. I reckon ProZone must have showed that he was up there with most distance covered every game. A bit limited in his actual delivery and end product but in league 1 he was a great attacking asset and a real good foil for Lallana cutting inside.

Yes, seemingly all of his fellow pros thought so too when they voted him into the League 1 team of the year for 2010-11. Moron.

Wow. Well done, good predicting.