Whitey Grandad

He slipped twice, if I recall correctly, but that's what can happen when you water the pitch at half-time after days of torrential rain. I suppose the pitch is covered? I agree, he doesn't seem overawed and slips comfortably into the role. I'm sure he will turn out ok, but can we afford to wait that long?

Now you're being silly... The £20bn is more than offset by the wasted billions. Besides, there's more to sound government than a Profit & Loss account. As far as bank bonuses go, I find them deeply repulsive. They also encourage excessive risk-taking which was one of the main causes of the collapse in financial confidence.

I really don't think that Pompey players are any more erudite than those at other clubs, TBH.

Oh no! By referring to the Nazis you have now invoked Godwin's Law and the convention is that once this has happened the thread be closed

If so that might be significant. If a player hand in a transfer request then they forego any golden goodbye that they may be entitled to.

Good point. That just about sums it up.

At the moment the British taxpayer is about £20bn up on the deal, and rising.

All these workers that you have named are in the Public Sector so the taxes that they pay are taken out of their salaries which have been paid by taxes on the private sector, which includes bankers.

That's true. There's precious little animation amongst our players, they must be a joy to mark. Perhaps they can learn something from watching Man U and the match won't be a complete waste of time?

All suiccessful teams are founded upon a good defence and when you are building a team you always start from the back and work forwards. Keeping a clean sheet gives you the best chance of winning the game.

If taxes were at a sensible level of, say, 20%, then there would be no need for anybody to try to avoid them.

But at no time in the game did he play the ball out quickly, before the opposition defence had time to get back into position and were still back-pedalling. Now it may be that this is the way that they have been coached, but I do feel that we sometimes need to up the pace of the game in order to put pressure on the other team. This is not the only game where I have noticed how slow we are to get the ball back into play. If the opposition keeper is slow then he gets criticised for time wasting, yet Kelvin takes just as long over his goal kicks.

Maybe, but there's a time and place for the cautious approach. Towards the end of the game I felt that we needed to up the tempo somewhat and Kelvin didn't give me the impression of a man in a hurry.

Well spotted! I've not been well over the last few days and struggling down to the game on Saturday didn't help me to feel any better. (I really must change this keyboard. Sometimes it turns out the most amazing drivel)

My criticism of Kelvin is that he took so long over releasing the ball that it took all the pace out of the game. Sometimes it seems to me that he is playing for time.

Tricky question that, but I would have said the Man Utd game.

Very, very annoying.

Yes, me too. I wasn't thinking about the opposition until our second goal went in and then I realized what it meant for them and I never wanted Saints to ever be in that position.

It's people like Fred Goodwin that annoy me. He was responsible for the collapse of RBS and should have been dismissed for gross misconduct, not paid off with what any of us would call a fortune.

Any level is a higher level than Hull, in my opinion.

I'd rather we were top at the end of the season, to be honest. I'm sure there will be twists and turns before then, but we've been heading in the right direction for some time and are steadily climbing the table. All we have to do is look after our own results and the rest will follow.

Thank you sir, you are a true gentleman.

Really? They have hundreds of men in green suits and mopeds to scoop it all up. There were some poo wars a few years ago between companies fighting over the contract.

Very true, but it would only have been one more game. Would you count a playoff final as some sort of success, or just promotion?