The Kraken

He was given extremely short shrift by the presenter, and came across as being very bitter and really quite thick. I don't think Mike has got too much going on up top, bless him.

Aside from your figures being miles off, what is the point in this thread? It's tedious, pointless, and as jam rightly says, covered elsewhere.

With effect from next month I shall be taking up residency in Meribel for the winter season. Allez les Alpes Francaises!

I'm hopeful that Barnard can't be too far away from match fitness; he seemed to get through his 20 minutes on the pitch last night ok. And given that Connolly seems incapable of playing for any longer than 60 minutes at a time, I don't think Barnard can be too far away from giving us at least that. I'm really not a fan of Guly up front, I think he plays his best when running on to the ball and much less so when back to goal and holding the ball up.

I think the return of Barnard would be a better option, myself.

Go after the game?

I can't imagine it will do anything than go on general sale. We've previously struggled to sell out a reduced allocation before on the ballot, add in the "bubble trip" restrictions and I imagine anyone who has been to 1 away game will get a ticket if they apply.

Yep, as also perfectly illustrated with the trip to the Madjeski.

I spoke to some Palace fans who went there for the game; they said the stadium is good (as you'd expect for that price) but the location is not good and the public transport links are abysmal. Also, there's very little segregation after the game to get on the trains, given it was two rivals they were just all lumped into a massive queue together and then got pelted with stones thrown at them. I think the inside of the ground looks utterly sh*t, the huge spaces in the corners are completely ridiculous.

If Martin O'Neill gets the Leicester job I'd suggest that would make them genuine promotion candidates; it was a bit of a scattergun approach from Sven but he still signed some very good players for this level; even on 19 points they're not miles away, and as they've probably under-achieved so far if they get their act together with a new manager they could be a proper force yet. I still maintain playoffs will be a fantastic achievement this year; West Ham will be up there of course, Leicester could kick into gear, even Birmingham look like they're now putting results together (4 wins and a draw since we humbled them) and could go second if they win their games in hand. Middlesbrough also look strong, which makes this Saturday's game very important to set a marker, and we're relying massively on our incredible home form at the moment.

Chapel.

Well, there is already power there supplying the tills that are there. No idea if they're networked, and yes I agree, there probably is a reason that I haven't considered as to why it hasn't been done. I just find it disappointing that Cortese himself identified beer queues very early on as a singificant problem, and vowed to fix it as soon as possible. Yet here we are a year or two down the line and seemingly absolutely nothing has been done to improve the situation. As we've seen, Reading had the beer-backpack lads, we previously used to have bottle bars, just 2 measures that would go a good way to making the situation better.

I don't know how much the purchase and installation of a new till is, but I can't believe it's all that restrictive. And if clubs like Reading have them installed already we're only bringing our systems in line with our competitors rather than pursuing some form of innovative sales technique. In any case, it's not just about the money, its all about enhancing the customer experience (as Cortese himself has claimed). He personally said that it was thoroughly unacceptable how long it took for the customer to get served, and that the club would be looking to rectify that as soon as possible. Given the significant sums being invested in the club, surely an upgrade of sales kiosks is very much small potatoes?

I think the immediate thing that strikes me is that we just don't have enough pay kiosks behind the bars. I don't think there's a problem in pouring drinks fast enough, just that there's often only two kiosks to pay for a drink (at least it's been that way the last few times I've been there, admittedly in the Chapel so might be different in other parts of the ground). A very simple way to halve the sze of the queues would be, instead of having just 2 tills behind the counter, have 4. The system of having people pouring is already there, just there's a massive bottleneck in not having enough pay points available.

Fosters. So no, not really.

Fair enough, not heard that myself. But I also heard we enquired about Gorkss extremely early in the window too, before the idea of a Puncheon swap found media attention. Also, Adkins comment on the OS when signing Hooiveld was this: So who knows; and it matters not, really.

I don't. Which is why I also said this part. "It's conceivable of course that discussions with Celtic were going on throughout the summer"

The logical thinking would be that Gorkss was ahead of Hooiveld. If he wasn't, why didn't we just go for Jos first of all rather than wait until the last day of the window? We got to an advanced stage of discussions with Gorkss before pulling the plug, and then moved on to Fontaine and finally Hooiveld on a last minute loan. It's conceivable of course that discussions with Celtic were going on throughout the summer, though I consider it unlikely given the advanced stage of negotiations we got to with 3 different players that Hooiveld was anything other than the final choice.

I think that's about right, at least as far as I'm concerned. Yet he has started every single league game this season. I do wonder if, away from home, we're not maximising our results by ignoring de Ridder from the start. At home we're likely to have more posession, which obviously suits Guly's game much better. Away from home we need to play on the counter a little more, but yesterday's team had no pacy outlet, someone who looked like they were going to sprint beyond the last man. I've thought this season that, with Lallana and Guly on both wings, while both are clearly good players they are a little similar in style. De Ridder gives something much more different, he's fast, direct and will look to attack players on his own or can get in behind with a ball over the top. With Lallana/Chaplow and Guly, I just don't see that we have that option. As a consequence yesterday Reading were able to play a very high line with us and squeeze play into our own half.

They're in second place.

Weston seems to have a better-than-most scoop on all things Lallana; here's his quote on the injury.

Agreed; he decided on a glancing header when a powerful attempt back across goal would maybe have been a better option.

Nigel Adkins' interview with the BBC explains it all. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/15319677.stm Fonte was feeling his hamstring, hee didn't feel he could sprint and so was dropping too deep, only felt like he was at 70%, no point in him pulling a hamstring and being out for 6 weeks.

Fonte went off as a precaution. Pretty sure we'll see Martin play in midweek but if Fonte is fit I imagine he'll start again on Saturday.

I remember back in the PL days there used to be separate small bottle bars in the concourse; just half litre plastic bottles of lager, and it worked really well to both get served very quickly and also reduce the strain on the normal queues. A good idea, yet we seem completely intent on ignoring sensible ideas like this and the beer-backpacks in favour of having not enough pay-kiosks and stupidly long queues unless you leave your seat 5 minutes early. And this was an area that Cortese himself said the club needed to look at as it was an unaceeptably poor service they were providing.