Sheaf Saint

You STILL don't get it do you Alpine? Sheesh! You start this thread to try and highlight to the mods about supposed bullying. If that was your only concern then you could easily have done it via PM, but no - you started a completely new thread on the main board no less. This is attention seeking - nothing more nothing less. You don't see it because you don't want to. What's more, you started the thread to get some feedback and now that you have decided you don't like the feedback you have received, you claim the thread is getting boring. You made the bed - you lie in it! Having read through most of this thread I can find only a handful of posts I would describe as unfair or 'whipping' as you put it - the vast majority have made very valid points that you have chosen to ignore. You complain that there is a lack of real debate, but you flatly refuse to accept any position that is contrary to the pessimistic drivel that you constantly post, so if there is a lack of real debate then you are the guilty party IMO.

Alps, you complain that you receive abuse because you dare to have a different opinion from the party line but this is not true, simply because you do not offer opinions, you post absolute statements of FACT (or not, as it turns out) and that winds people up. For example, stating in yesterday's match thread that we would lose by 3 clear goals when we were one down. You didn't know that, but you still insisted on telling everyone else on the thread that it would without a shadow of a doubt turn out to be true. That is what annoys people - your absolute certainty that your negative position is correct and everyone else is wrong. Well, look what happened yesterday - we won and you made yourself look completely stupid. I don't think there is a single person on here who isn't concerned that we will not remain in the promotion hunt if our recent form continues much longer. But you seem to have this warped idea that you are the only person who can see it and that anybody else who shows a bit of positivity and belief that we can turn it around is delusional, and yet you have the audacity to complain that you are the one being picked on when people take exception to your constant negative slant on things. Can you really not see that everything we have achieved over the last 16 months or so - and I do mean everything - is due to the positive mental attitude that Adkins has instilled not just in the first team but in the entire club. We may not have the most expensive, most experienced or most talented squad in the league, but we are where we are because the players and the management team BELIEVE that they are capable of achieving their goals. So is it really any wonder that people get irritated when you turn up on the matchday threads and start insisting that we will lose?

How in the hell are they going to afford stuff like this then?... [video=youtube;SSbZrQp-HOk]

Here is an interesting idea... Why don't the FA / FL introduce a disciplinary system whereby teams get docked X amount of points every time they reach a certain amount of red/yellow cards. If they started using video panels to issue punishments for incidents missed by the officials then we would soon see a massive reduction in the type of gamesmanship that the clowns think is a perfectly acceptable way of playing the game.

Just watched all angles covered on Saints player and these are my thoughts on it... Brighton players are the worst bunch of whiny, theatrical, cheating tossers ever to grace the world of football. Harding was unlucky to get booked cos he won the ball and wasn't showing any studs that I could see. Reaction of the Brighton fans would have you believe he just decapitated their player. Lallana shot was clearly a foot over the line. Guly's open goal miss was a little more excusable than a lot of people on here made out as the ball was just behind him and he couldn't stop and hook his foot round it. Lambert sending off was comical. There's no way that was violent conduct and I am confident we will win the appeal. I stopped watching after that - didn't see the point of watching the inevitable horror show to come.

Why do so many people keep repeating how immense he was at Barnsley earlier this season? I was at that game and I thought he was actually quite poor. He's certainly no better than Hooiveld, so it really comes down to a question of if he is a better backup than Martin I guess, but I haven't really seen enough of either of them to make any kind of judgment.

Why should it?

No, not until it's mathematically impossible. In case you didn't realise we will still have a 3-point cushion at the top after this result. Some people are just unbelievable, but then I guess given our recent history it isn't that surprising.

Can you give me next week's winning lottery numbers please?

Because he's just like you Alpine: can't actually enjoy the ride when things are going well and instead continually moans so that when it does inevitably go wrong he can say "see, I told you so!"

Oh go and f***ing exterminate yourself you tedious wind-up merchant c*ck!

Clearly there are people on here with a much greater understanding of nuclear power generation than I, so I would be interested to hear your thoughts on this... http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2011/dec/05/sellafield-nuclear-energy-solution?intcmp=122

I'm struggling to work out what formation we are playing, looking at the team lineup on BBC. Are Guly and De Ridder playing up front?

All well and good PFC123, but where are they all now that things aren't quite so rosy and FP isn't playing host to the superest dooperest glamour teams and players any more? Being a good 'supporter' means sticking with your team through thick and thin.

Does anybody know if I will be able to pay at the gate for this game? I can't seem to find anything on the OS about it.

Dammit. I took so long typing that last post that Alpine beat me to it regarding thorium.

You are certainly not alone in having these concerns about nuclear technology, but it is such a shame that there is so much opposition to it based on bad information. For starters, the safeguards in place in modern nuclear plants, such as in France, mean that what happened at Chernobyl could never happen again. What's even more sad about Chernobyl is that it could have been contained if it had been managed properly, but rather than immediately call for assistance, the people in charge allowed it to go past tipping point because they didn't want to bother their superiors and were afraid they would take the blame for it. As for Fukushima, well I can see people's concerns because it is so fresh in the memory, but you have to realise that it is a 40-year old plant that doesn't have the same safeguards as newer ones, and it was built on the most tsunami-susceptible coastline on the planet. Not exactly good forward-planning that. Of course, we wouldn't have such problems in the UK because we are nowhere near any fault lines and only experience extremely minor tremors at most. Yes nuclear is expensive, and there is still a lot of debate about how to manage the leftover waste, but in recent years there has been a lot of research done into the possible use of thorium as fuel instead of uranium... http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/ff_new_nukes/all/1 This could be some way off being usable yet, likewise the ITER project which is researching nuclear fusion as an energy source, but both have excellent potential to become long-term clean, safe methods of energy production. For now though, I'm in agreement with James Lovelock (the climate scientist behind the Gaia theory) who not so long ago insisted publicly that nuclear fission is the best short-term solution to achieve the necessary reductions in carbon emissions.

This reminds me of the debate that erupted on here after the play-off game against Derby at SMS in 2007 where Pele gave away a penalty. My argument was that the initial contact was outside the box and so should not have been a penalty, but the consensus was that he was still holding on to the attacker when they crossed the line at which point the Derby player decided to fall over. Bit of a grey area.

I vividly remember this as I was so incensed about it at the time because we had been on a bad run, finally put in a great performance and deserved to get something out of it only to be robbed by the single worst refereeing decision I have ever seen. As I recall we had a corner and Monkou had come up from the back. Razor Ruddock was marking him and when Monkou turned to make space for himself, Ruddock lost him completely, so much so that he ran into one of his own team-mates and fell flat on his arse. Rennie decided that because of this it must have been a foul by Monkou who actually didn't get anywhere near making any contact with him.

Agreed. But the incident after that, where Lambert was ungraciously shoved off the ball by the same guy who was guilty of pulling his shirt in the first half, was the most blatant example of a foul you will ever see. It's fair to say the ref had a shocker today.

Yeah true, but a quick look at the table (any excuse right now TBH) shows we are currently 17 points ahead of them. Yep, that's right.... 17 points ahead of the team that all the pundits were tipping to walk this league because of their summer shopping spree. I keep expecting to wake up and realise it was all a dream.

From the replays I saw on the stream I was watching, the first was a blatant bodycheck on Guly as he went to go round the defender. No attempt to play the ball and every intention of stopping the player getting past him. About as clear a foul as you will ever see. The second one looked like the defender was trying to lift Lambert's shirt off his back (well, he is from Brighton after all!) and I don't see how anybody could watch it and claim it wasn't a foul. There was a handball in the box before these but it was point blank range ball-to-hand and although I've seen them given before, it would have been very harsh.

Bit of a strange game I guess with two dodgy penalties but they evened out the two we definitely should have had in the fist half. Perhaps the ref saw the replays of those at half time and realised his error so gave us a couple of soft ones to balance it out. After the red card it was a walk in the park, but even before that Brighton had nothing going forward (no shots on target according to BBC stats) and resorted to dirty tactics. Isn't is jut sooooo coincidental that a team managed by Gus chimp-face Poyet has the worst disciplinary record in the league? The table is 'as you were' with WHU coming back to win at Coventry, but Boro dropped some points at home, as did Birmingham who everybody was so concerned about if they won all their games in hand. After today's results they would still be 8 points behind us if they did. Can we start dreaming of the premiership yet?

Wonderful stuff, but why oh why oh why does my stream have to disappear every time we score FFS!?!?!? I've missed all the goals now. On a different note, I reeeeeeeally can't wait to hear what Poyet has to say after the game. No doubt he will tell us that Brighton were by far the better team and that the ref has cost them the game.

Summary of first half: frustrating. Saints clearly a little bit rusty from the international break and a ref who really should have gone to Specsavers!