The Kraken

Wolves have just completed phase 1 of their stadium expansion. They've put on hold plans for phase 2 right now; partly because of relegation, partly because they're diverting some of the funding towards development of their academy. Reading, agreed. They've had a massive boom on season ticket sales but I imagine once the novelty starts to wear off they'd often struggle to get close to regularly filling a stadium of the size they're considering.

Colonel Sanders was an honorary colonel.

Yes, I know that, but thanks for the irrelevant comment. I was stating that I was suprised it was announced as lower than the 15K figure being talked about.

How does it show we're one of only a handful of clubs spending cash?

A bit surprised about the season ticket level; the document states "more than 14,000". I thought the figure previously being talked about was 15,000 or more.

Man City Chelsea Man United - - Norwich Wigan Reading Saints 17th.

Their club is seriously f*cked, I'd suggest. Players won't leave until they are paid what they are owed. Birch has said they will pay what they owe in staged payments over a number of years. Birch claims some of the players will attract a transfer fee. Birch has also let it be known that the wage defferals mean that players can give 14 days notice and walk away from their contracts if another club comes in for them. So; no immediate rush for players to leave (they're still getting paid plus topping up their defferal pot). Hardly any movement of transfers right now; even if there was, what club with any business sense would add players to their wage bill when pre-season training doesn't start for another few weeks yet? And even then, with players available on a free, who is going to want to get anywhere near Dave Kitson's £19,000 per week (for 4 goals last season)? Or Kanu's thousands per week, for the privilege of not even being able to get through a training session! And we haven't even mentioned Super Tal yet, with his £2M wages for the year still required to be paid. One David Lampitt; there's only one David Lampitt....

Absolute nonsense. Even a struggling QPR with 10 men last season took a lead against Man City into injury time. Blackburn beat Man United last year. Man City lost to clubs including Sunderland, Everton and Swansea. Any team can beat any other team at some point. An no Premier League team goes into any game resigned to a defeat, genuinely believing they can't compete.

If you're saying we can't compete with some teams in this division during a one-off game then we shouldn't bother being here.

I'm less worried about whether Nigel Adkins is up to and more shocked and horrified that we've only signed one person so far, and we're already into late June. Its typical of this club that we don't have all of our signings wrapped up by July, like every single other club out there. Adkins is setting himself up for failure with that type of lazy, carefree approach.

I think West Ham under-performed last year. They were overwhelming favourites for the title and, akin to our time in League 1, were the one side that most teams in the division really revved up for. Also some of their players didn't consistently handle the pressure of being the side to beat. Despite having money problems they still seem determined to spend a fair bit; and despite the criticisms of him Allardyce will have them set up to be hard to beat, which is something we really need to learn very quickly, I have big fears that our style will be far too open against sides in this division, we too often looked a little bit leaky in defence last term and teams of a better quality will punish us for that.

I've seen a few slight variations on that Liverpool thrid kit mock-up. I absolutely hope that they bring it out, its an utter abomination!

My ex was a veggie and used to use that as an argument against my meat eating; that if I wasn't prepared to kill the meat I was eating then maybe I shouldn't be eating it in the first place. I thought it was an entirely redundant argument; should I have to be able to build a car in order to drive one? Should I be able to brew beer in order to be able to enjoy a pint? In any case, bacon sandwiches are awesome and one of the primary reasons I could never go veggie.

Definitely a stronger league this year. West Ham should (like us) be able to push on and have a good chance of staying up. Reading, it entirely depends on what they do in the transfer window but McDermott is a good manager and if he has some cash to spend I think he'll spend wisely. In terms of the teams that struggled last year; QPR have now got a decent manager in Mark Hughes, they'll have a bit of cash to spend, and have the nucleus of a half decent team already. Aston Villa had a shocker last year, their lowest ever PL finish. The bones of their team is certainly capable enough, and if Lambert gets to make 3 or 4 signings then it shouldn't be too much of a job for him to turn them around for at least a comfortable mid table finish. Wigan and Stoke, I think those two could struggle this year. Stoke had a poor second half of the season, Wigan were the opposite, but they're definitely both be up against it this year. I think West Brom may also really feel the effect of Roy Hodgson leaving, he's shown that he's an astute manager who can make the best of a relatively limited squad. I think Norwich may also come unstuck, particularly if they lose Grant Holt and don't replace him properly. The 3 that went down last year (Bolton, Blackburn, Wolves) were extremely poor. I don't see a similar 3 teams this time round, I think its ever so tight from mid-table downwards, and any finish above 14th should be seen as a significant step forwards. Of course it all depends on what happens in the transfer window, but I think we've got a fair bit of team stregthening to do yet before that's a realistic target.

So bitter :lol:

Well its eminently possible. We simply don't know her definition of a big club, and there may be some factors we simply don't know about.

They clearly don't do market research; if they do, they don't take any notice of it. They get a nice juicy wedge of license fee every year to continue paying all of the empty shirts that they employ. They have become, quite frankly, a disgrace of a sporting network with absolutely no innovation compared to the masses of (public) funding they receive. BBC Sport in general on TV has undergone such a dumbing down of quality in the past 10-20 years that its frighteningly embarrassing. Football we've already discussed. Golf used to be flawless, now we have Linkeker and Michael sodding Vaughan making an arse of himself asking Tiger Woods factually wrongly-based questions. An assortment of other sports have declined at the lazy and effete hands of the corporation.

It's such a shame; the BBC used to be good. Now they are are far worse than even ITV, who are shockingly sh*t. Alan Hansen. Mark Lawrenson. Jacqui Oatley. Tony Gubba. Alan Shearer. Colin Murray. John Motson. The shocking promotion of Motson above the best commentator the BBC has ever had, Barry Davies. Jonathan Pearce. Just terrible, terrible, overpaid broadcasting.

Odd choice of benchmark there.

I'd suggest you're the weirdo if you can't appreciate that some people grieve their losses in diferent ways.

There is, and the BBC also employ him. Step forward Alan Hansen. The most tired and pointless pundit there is on TV, he offers absolutely nothing to any post-game analysis.

He was brilliantly funny with how angry he was about Ireland though. "Only there for a sing song".

I wonder if you will receive an answer, Turkey? I hope so, but the poor lad can't even use benchmarks of his own choosing to provide even one example to my suggestion of areas where Saints are bigger/smaller than Everton/Aston Villa. I genuinely think he is utterly terrified of providing a definitive answer to questions that cannot be proven by empirical evidence. And that must be a terrifying world to live in.

Well there we go. MLG once again proving too afraid to give a defintive opinion about a direct question, in fear of being proved wrong. Pathetic.

I much prefer Jack Cork. Morgan could be a very good player; but I consider him far, far too casual far, far too often. Really good central midfielders of his style rarely make mistakes, and rarely give the ball away. Morgan does both with alarming regularity. Jack Cork does far more for me as a player overall; I would contend he had a much better start to last season than the end, but if we recall the start of the season he was a huge breath of fresh air and a great improvement on what we had. He also played in every single one of our league games. Saying that, I hope and trust we will sign a CM better than both of them, for some real competition for places. Cork and Schneiderlin are still very young and will only get better with experience (hopefully).