Whitey Grandad

I'm sure it could be trained into him. What really upset me was the moment in the first half when we had a great attack going and he ran 5 yards past their back line and into the penalty area. Mind you, Harding should have seen his position and not tried to cross the ball to him.

Exactly! That's why I ask the question. It's an unexciting draw and I had been hoping for some more interesting lower-league ground but our daughter lives about 3 miles from the Memorial ground so we could make a weekend of it. I presume that it is just a choice between the Saturday and the Sunday? No Friday or Monday nights, for instance? We went there for the previous fiasco so it would be satisfying to get some revenge. Another defeat would be unthinkable .

Go straight to the horses' mouths: http://www.fifa.com/worldfootball/lawsofthegame.html There's an interactive guide to the offside law on this page. The interpretation has varied a bit over the last few years with talk of 'daylight' and such but the present wording is: 'Nearer to the opponents' goal line means that any part of the head, body or feet is nearer to the opponents' goal line than both the ball and the second last opponent.' It's also worth remembering that you can download a pdf of the 'Laws of the Game' from this site without having to pay! Every Premiership manager should read them.

I thought he was offside at the time and looked straight away at the assistant so I was not surprised that the 'goal' was not allowed to stand. 'Technically' it was not a goal because the officials did not allow it, but credit to the lad for sticking the ball away. Too many times at the beginning of the season they were alll scared of taking a shot.

Does anybody know when the tv games get chosen?

Two of my neighbours had first scorer and final score so they were rather pleased.

One major concern amongst the people at EBC was that the 'strategic gap' between Eastleigh and Southampton would be filled in once one corner of the motorway junction had been built over. Like the Prof and Wes, I was also close to the discussions at the time.

I read a book once.... ....didn't like it.

Never believe a rumour until it's denied.

In the words of the great Mawhinney, they are 'inextricably linked'

Indeed, professor, we should enjoy the ride whilst we can. One can only hope that an astute businessman such as Herr Liebherr will have ensured the security of his succession but if, God forbid, anything should happen to our club's saviour who knows what might follow? I once met a president of an american company which made tv studio equipment and he said to me "Nobody's indispensable. Kennedy get's shot and we've got a new president in 5 minutes". This same gentleman died a couple of years later of a heart attack but his company continued without him. At my age, succession planning looms larger every year. Carpe diem!

I respect the fellow and his passion for his club, even if it is misguided. The amended vesion of the artwork is a wonderful piece of skill, but do I detect a Pompey badge still 'hanging' round his neck?

That's the beauty of speculation. Nobody can prove that you are wrong

I'm with you on this one. I like real football that I can relate to, with proper football grounds to visit and sensible ticket prices.

I can't argue with any of that. Once the mistakes had been made and the parachutes had gone then nothing other than sizeable outside investment could have saved us. I still think that the Dutch gamble was an unnecessary roll of the dice though.

The relevant question is whether we would now be in a better situation if we had been under a different chairman. We shall never know.

According to Wikirumours he had a spell running one in Belgrade but now lives mainly in Vienna.

It shows what you can do when you massage the figures!

LOL. And I've got bigger boobs!

I find that the -10 is misleading so I have decided to apply them pro-rata over the rest of the season. At the moment we have played 13 games so we have a deduction of 2.826 points giving us a net 15.17 points and effectively 14th place, just above Yeovil. However, given our improved form and a settled playing squad I expect that position to steadily improve over the rest of the season. Gordon is quite correct when he says that the GD may turn out to be decisive when we come to the later stages.

How's Martin Crainie doing these days?

I was just getting round to erasing him from my memory when he gets dragged up again. Deal with it, move on. Life's much too short.

Even that's no guarantee. My son lives in Chandlers Ford and can't get a satellite signal on account of the trees. You also have to make sure that there are no mountains in the way.

Many years ago in an earlier life I was designing satellite uplink encryption systems for North America. HBO were concerned that people might be watching their services without paying the appropriate subscriptions so they ran competitions which were free to enter and then analysed where the entries came from. If they found that entries were coming from a town where no cable operator had signed up, then they would send someone to investigate. After a couple of nights of channel surfing in a local motel they soon sorted out those who had not paid.

For the technically-minded... It looks like the relevant satellite is Astra 2D which is quite a narrow footbrint. I have a mate at Betzdorf who I could contact if we neeed any more detailed answers. http://www.television-world.com/footprints.htm http://sat.beitinger.de/astra_2d_english.html