Chicken With A Banjo

From twop tips twitter feed today: GET the live Scottish premiership football feel by letting your dog play on FIFA.

The analysis assumes that 'competitiveness' of the league during first half of the season will be the same as that of the second half. I'm not convinced that is necessarily the case. My gut feeling is that as we get closer to the end of the season teams tend to pick up more points due to fear of relegation/carrot of promotion.

The most interesting bit for me was the mention of Calum Chambers as the next big prospect.

Would gladly have him back.

Seconded

the other England players didnt score 3 goals tonight.

Portsmouth managed it a few years ago. Are we not as good as Portsmouth?

I was once house captain of Polymond. Pretty pathetic if true, the world is much bigger than football, and Cantell should be broadening kids horizons.

That would be an accurate representation then. What's the problem?

Why don't we grow our own Jay Rodriguez or Martyn Waghorn? What's Sinclair like? It's been a year since AOC, we must be due another wonderkid any day now.

I've changed my mind. you may be right actually.

Not true, he was regularly rotated with schneiderlin and Chaplow. The fact he was on the bench would indicate he was neither injured or ill.

I suspect that Hammond isn't the first name on the team sheet, and not necessarily even the first pick midfielder, but Adkins obviously rates him, just as he rates Schneiderlin, Cork and Chaplow. Like last season Adkins will pick the midfield to suit the opposition and rotate it regularly to keep the players fit and fresh.

Excellent post. Faith in football fans restored.

I expect top 6 finish. The club have already said on numerous occasions that they are aiming for top 6 finish. The gulf is not massive.

The reason we will never be Barcelona is thus: Barcelona is a vibrant city of 1.6 million people, it has some of the best night life in Europe, it has stunning architecture, it has an extremely warm and pleasant climate it attracts extremely successful people from all walks of life, not just football. As a young player with the world at my feet why would I hang around in Southampton, where the highlight of my week is pulling a third class skank in Oceana and taking her back to my massively overpriced apartment in Ocean Village, for any longer than I absolutely have to. We may become a production line for talent, but we will never be able to hang on to players like Barcelona do unless investment in Southampton, Dubai style, starts to occur for some unfathomable reason.

I am also in agreement with the things you are saying here. However, skin colour is not the only characteristic that football fans will tend to subconciously latch on to. With Fabrice Fernandes for instance it was was his Frenchness which obviously equates to him being lazy and selfish.

Personally I expect us to do a QPR and will be disappointed if we do a Norwich.

and yet Dickson has 5 assists compared to Hardings 2.

they had a spell of 5 games earlier in the season with 3 draws and 2 losses. Find it hard to believe they will suddenly repeat that form but it's possible.

Haven't seen this rumour anywhere on this site before but could explain Cortese's original decision. http://talk-of-the-tyne.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?tid=17259

Why would anyone wear a shirt with that thoroughly charmless IT companies name on the front when they could just wear last seasons shirt.

I reckon this will happen

It was a windy day. It was Impossibly hard to judge where the ball was going, we were always going to let in goals. Too harsh to say we were very poor at the back. It was a freak game.

There was also a free kick lambert took within shooting range where he lofted it through to fonte who headed back across the goal which could've easily dropped for a saints player which took everyone by surprise.