The Kraken

You're right Ron, I shouldn't mock that he's obese. I retract that comment.

Once again; why do you need to get so angry, abusive, and aggressive? It's needless. You seem to take this aproach to posting on here every time. No need, surely? Are you this reactionary in real life? I hope not. And you may believe you were right about giving up about the playoffs. You weren't. You are wrong in hindsight, of course you were. But there is no coherent argument for why you were right at the time, certainly none that you have put forward yet. In any case, I digresss. There is surely no need to continue this on the main board. If you wish to discuss this further, and as it is nows clearly only a conversation between you and I, please send me a private message. Either that or cease this tedium.

F*ck. I've fallen into the trap hypo! I went for the troll bait. He got me, the fat c*nt that he is. Dammit!

I'm still amazed how you get so angry. Calm down "pal", its not an argument. Why get so upset? But I do love your senseless dedication to the nonsense and idiocy you espoused on that playoff thread. And the fact you don't take it back, which continually highlights you as, ignorant, wrong, an inernet troll, and incapable of anything but argument.

£2.5M, when Palace were in admin. An absolute steal, Brendan Guilfoyle (the adminstrator) getting pelters for it.

Imagine a comparison, if you will. It's not too hard to imagine. Theo and AOC, just before AOC went to Arsenal. If someone said to you "will AOC be better or worse than Theo", what would you say? Would you say "you know what, i have no idea how to judge how much improvement he has? I can't possibly make such a judgement". Would you say that?

Same as. I know a few Palace fans and they say that while Moses is the better player right now, Zaha has much more improvement in him and will become the better player.

Your write off the notion that credit card sales could be ruled out, cash sales only, and the actual receipts for tickets get "lost" or manipulated. Been done before, will be done again. Chinny will get all cash he can get his mits on and then scarper, it will be a sham where legal means go completely out of the window.

You know what gets me, though? Its not the relative simplicity of it (although I'm disappointed I didn't forsee it years ago). It's that I'm staggered the likes of Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea haven't done it before. Roman Abramovic could have saved himself hundreds of millions of pounds if he had chosen to take our approach to European success. The Glazers could have taken over Fulham and achieved all their objectives, with a little more managerial nouse. And the Arabians needen't have paid out a King's ransom to secure one premier league title. The thing that gets me, this is not even being noticed by any of those supposed footballing experts in the media; but thankfully the forum experts here are on the ball and in tune with our owners' commitment to success.

Indeed, those were great threads!

Why rise to his aggressive and desperate attention seeking? Just remember the "let's not go for promotion and settle for the playoffs" thread, and chuckle at the sheer inadequacy of his thinking. And then laugh some more at how he stands by that initial thinking, and still claims it was correct. He genuinely is a troll, in fact the very definition of an internet troll, he is only ever looking for an argument all of the time; well, either that or some desperate search for attention by starting threads on topics that (most of the time) already exist. And he consistently makes himself look spectacularly stupid and petty in doing all of that; he knows it, and everyone knows it. I find it easier to laugh at how tragic that amount of effort is, than to actually breathe in the nonsense he continually thinks worth the effort of spewing out.

Norwich & Swansea maybe; QPR, not so much, did you see who they signed? Plus I don't recall Norwich or Swansea shouting from the hilltops about their ambitions for Champions League football.

A very worrying sign if that's how we're viewed by exactly the type of player we need.

I think you must have missed MLG's various reassurances in this regard. Apparently its not the amount you spend, its how cleverly you spend it. So, you see, we don't HAVE to spend £10M each on players to get within reach of the Champions League. We can use half of our graduating academy, and then do what other clubs currently don't do, which is to spend less money but spend it cleverly on players. That way we can save money and be successful.

You have to give credit where its due. After the initial fiascos of playing the wrong anthem and displaying the wrong Korean flag, you feared for the worst. The spectatcular opening ceremony put those fears to rest and made you proud to be British; and since then the games have been an absolute triumph in every single department, most notably the crowds who have been immense and of course the performance of Team GB. The arenas have been incredible, the BBC's coverage has been completely first rate, and the commentary teams have been very good (although often let down by the celebrity commentators such as Reggie whatshisname and Michael Vaughan who haven't really got it). Overall, absolutely brilliant and it reflects so well on the nation. Really looking forward to seeing the closing ceremony too, I think it could be really spectacular (I'm assuming Danny Boyle got that too??)

In fairness its been one of miltonroader's better efforts.

I don't know why anyone takes Alpine seriously. He's just a very angry and bitter man who loves confrontation, flies off the handle and gets uber-aggressive with anyone who disagrees with him, and is spectacularly wrong on a significant number of occasions (yet will never ever admit when this happens, the "let's rest players and aim for the playoffs" incident being a point in case). Quite tragic really.

Google searches show a few outlets putting the Maiga deal at £4.7M. And Collins at £2.5M. Could be wrong, but there's a few independent sources quoting those figures. Jarvis offer rebuffed for £9M being reported by credible news sources, so I don't think I agree with you there. My personal opinion is that WHU suffered from the weight of expectation last year. Much more than we did in League 1 when we came 2nd. And I think, player for player, they should have achieved much more than they did. They were the better side in both games against us and, but for the sending off when Billy went down like a sack of sh*t, the result could well have been very different. I think Sam will have them doing a Norwich or a Swansea, but again it won't be all that pretty to watch.

Agree very much with that. Hence my statement that I'd love to see us sign an experienced head akin to Radhi to bring it all together. We've got a lot of youth throughout our squad already; Clyne, Cork, Scheniderlin, JWP, Rodriguez, Gazzaniga all comfortably under 25, Lallana an experienced head at 24. 2 of our 3 older, experienced heads are the centre backs we're looking to improve on, so I think its imprative we replace experience with experience (albeit of a higher level).

Well I'd disagree then; but only very slightly!! I'd say we were up there at the top in terms of being able to play it about. But I thought our main strength as a side was that we could mix it, and that when we didn't/couldn't play through sides we had a superb outlet for going long or more direct, which is why we were more successful than, say, Blackpool. In any case, beauty is in the eye of the beholder so I genuinely don't think there is a right or wrong answer, just differing opinions (of which my one is the correct one, of course....)

The team that plays the best football aren't necessarily the best team. Swansea were extremely attractive to watch and finished bottom half. Arsenal are famously extremely pretty on the eye yet haven't won anything for years. A lot of our fans seem a bit precious about comments that we aren't the best footballing side. We play some nice pass and move stuff, and we play some good, direct stuff particularly to RL (diagonal balls to him at the far post were rather our speciality). It doesn't make it any less entertaining for the fan, it isn't a criticism, but neither does it make us the best stylists. Which was what was asked.

We played functional football last season; great at times, long at times, direct at times. It worked for us, and it was very entertatining, but it wasn't like watching Brazil. Blackpool played some great football, I enjoyed watching them (apart from when they took us to the cleaners). Our new kit has been done to death, I'm yet to meet anyone in real life (Saints fan or otherwise) who actually likes it.

Sorry, but this simply isn't true. It was an excuse wheeled out last season and the season before; that the 25-man squad restriction would mean that we needed to wait for squads to be announced and then go for the out of favour players. It doesn't work out like; most clubs will have their squad level under control, I think last year only something like 4 or 5 notable senior players didn't make their team squad list and thus became available for transfer. The year before much the same, Michael Kightly was famously one left out as he was injured. I'm not sure if I agree totally. Yes, the UK transfer market is stupidly inflated, but that doesn't mean there aren't bargains to be had. I personally would quite like an ageing CB, say 32 or 33 with a couple of very good years left in him and who can come in and marshall the defence and get a grip on the team. In much the same way that Radhi Jaidi did with us in League 1. I think QPR have made a very good signing in Ryan Nelsen in this regard.

Stephens has had a poor start to the season, he looked extremely shaky against Wolves. Certainly not up to a senior place yet on the basis of those two showings.