FloridaMarlin

I see Crab Lungs has already highlighted it, but that isn't even Bally's quote. I was there the day he trotted it out, and he never made any reference to the Great War. I do recall that when he said it, most of the journos present either rolled their eyes or s******ed because Bally was given to making such statements (remember how he "would have walked over broken glass" for the Saints job) but he was good copy. Thus, another misty, nebulous half-truth is gathered up, turned around, mis-used and then encased in concrete as hard fact. As for the stadium plans. won't expansion of the north stand involve the loss of some of the hallowed car park? Those parking spaces, so preciously won by the brave men of Portsmouth in the Great War with Tesco. No doubt, the museum will include a memorial to them.

Against the wee, pasty, whey-faced, midge-infested Celts he faces in the Scottish PL, he would be a giant of a man.

I think this is a fair point. You could find another way of expressing it, but I think Alps' view is justified, and I'm pretty sure - not that it will allay his fears - that this will be the club's attitude. There might be a couple of weeks left until the window closes, but I don't think they will hang around too long for van Dyke or Celtic. I'd like to think they have other targets they can move on to quickly.

Interesting that a couple of people have referenced the poor passing today. I got slaughtered on here on Thursday when I suggested post-Vitesse that our passing in that game was below it's usual crispness, accuracy and sharpness.

There are some bloody tasty teams in that draw - Ajax, St Etienne, Fenerbahce, Borussia Dortmund, Sparta Prague. And this is only the play-off round before the likes of the Dippers and the Spuds come in. I know some of them are not the force they used to be, but this is not a mickey mouse competition. You need to be a good side to win this, and it's a prestigious competition worth winning.

Read the post in full, I am behind the team and said a 5-0 scoreline over the highest-ranked team we could have drawn is a reason to celebrate. But that doesn't mean to say I have to be blinded to what I saw as some shortcomings last night; shortcomings which I trust our coaching staff will have seen and will put right for Sunday. Honestly, did you think it was a flawless performance last night?

While Saints did a thoroughly professional job over two legs, I thought last night's performance was scrappy. I don't think I have seen us give the ball away so much in the last three seasons. Our passing was sloppy and either over or under-weight. For a team whose game is based on passing and possession that did not augur well. Having said that, carrying a 3-0 lead into the second leg and increasing that within four minutes of the start meant the tie was effectively over and the result was several players clearly coasted through the game. Wanyama was the main culprit and while it's hard to criticise the husbanding of resources with bigger and more important things to come, last night presented a good opportunity to sharpen up the passing ahead of Newcastle. Although we ultimately won comfortably, I don't think I'm the only one concerned by the ease with which Arnhem found space 35-25 yards from goal in between the back four and the holding midfielders. They must have had three or four good shooting opportunities from around the 20 yard mark, and better quality players would exploit that. Some will find an immediate explanation for that in Schneiderlin's departure. I'm a big fan of JWP, his football brain and his ability to keep things ticking over with his passing, but he is not a holding midfielder. Neither is Davis. I would imagine Targett will start at left-back on Sunday. Yoshida did as good a job as he could at left back, and I presume he played there as Koeman does not think Targett is physically up to the task of two games in quick succession. Yoshida's offensive limitations at left-back (he did well defensively) do highlight how important our full-backs are in getting forward and providing width. I wasn't entirely convinced by Caulker. Sure, he's had a disrupted pre-season and that was his first competitive game, but he does suffer from brain-fade at times. I felt sorry for Pelle last night. He did all that was asked of him as Saints played long balls up to him. He won pretty much every ball in the air and I presume the plan was to get Mane feeding off him, but all too often Pelle was isolated. Over the two legs, I never thought we were in any danger of not going through, and a 5-0 scoreline over two legs against the highest-ranked team we could have drawn at this stage is the headline we should all be celebrating. But I watched that game last night with a lot of frustration. However, I trust whichever of the Koemans is in charge on Sunday to get it right.

That really is a damning indictment of a man who has more than a touch of the Emperor's New Clothes about him. He is the first Liverpool manager since the advent of the Shankly era not to win a trophy in his first three seasons in charge. I hope the Dippers don't reach for the axe too soon. They might get somebody decent in. In contrast to the leniency shown to Brenda, Fenway Sports Group certainly didn't mess around when it came to firing Bobby Valentine after just one disastrous season in charge of the Boston Red Sox. Away from football, he appears to be just as arrogant and lassez-faire in his private life and dealings. His former wife was forced to drag him through the courts for improved maintenance payments after he short-changed her. He has a property portfolio which includes around 120 properties, so make of that what you will. He's currently knocking round with a 31-year-old former receptionist at the club. All round, a bit of a clown who promises plenty more lols providing he's kept in post.

Why is there still a Clyne side? I hope it has been replaced.

Should do. He's a hefty shareholder in ProActive Sports Management.

If we land him, his nickname has to be **** (if it's not already).

I'm afraid that is my abiding memory of our European campaigns. Had we knocked Anderlecht out at the quarter-final stage, the Cup-Winners' Cup was wide open and who knows how far we cold have gone. As it was, Anderlecht reached the final, where they lost to Hamburg. Big Jim had been a rock in the previous season's cup run and that ECWC run as well. But I'm not sure he played for Saints much after that ricket.

Book - The Long Goodbye, Raymond Chandler. Although written in the 1940s, still atmospheric, great dialogue, brilliant plot and displays the vulnerability of Chandler's hard-bitten hero. My favourite boo. I read it every year and always find something new in it. Film - Open Range. Just the best Western ever.

What, like this bloke?

If there's anybody who does know what makes a good central defender, it's likely to be Koeman, who wasn't bad in that role himself. It might be why we haven't gone eyeballs out for van Dyke.

See what you did there. Shouldn't it be Smiley Smiles though?

The commentator is an embarrassment. He hasn't been given team sheets, which makes his job difficult. But he is one of those 'taters who loves the sound of his own voice and feels obliged to feel in the vacuum of silence by saying the first thing that comes into his head. He's not convincing me to shell out an extra £5 a month for BT Sport's European coverage if this is the standard.

And we still finished with the second best defensive record after the champs. Perhaps we don't give enough credit to Koeman and his ability to organise a defence that is better than the sum of its parts. He wasn't a bad defender himself.

The Press Association. The nearest thing we have in this country to a national news agency. Always seen as the most authoritative news source.

It might be a problem if they can't offload two players earning nearly £1000, 000 a week. And there might well be others earning close to that amount. Spurs have got a huge squad, and are carrying a lot of dead wood which they need to shift. I'm mot sure (and going by what other people have told me) that Spurs have a lot of ready-to-hand cash. They have to decide whether they want to blow most of that on one player (Toby) at the risk of losing other targets.

They were out in Portugal at the Vale do Lobo resort in the Algarve last week. That won't have been cheap, but I'm sure they have plenty of money to pay for it.

See my earlier post. Spurs squad is very overloaded and they are desperate to try and shift some of their dross on to clubs in part exchange. Trouble is, the players Spuds are trying to offload are on huge wages, and are not going to take pay cuts. Allied to their desperation to offload players there is an extreme reluctance to pay cold, hard cash for players. From what I've heard from mates, Spurs don't have a big cash reserve to do deals with.

I'm sure I saw somewhere that up to the end of last season Bodgers had spunked the thick end of £260m on 25 players in his three years at the club, during which time he has become the owner of the proud record of being the first Liverpool manager since the Shankly era to not win a trophy in his first three seasons in charge. There have been some cracking signings in among that lot - Fabio Borini for £10m, Balotelli for £16m stick out like cobblers' thumbs, but it's the lesser-known or half-forgotten signings where he has shown his mettle. Anybody remember the £3m spent for Oussama Assaidi? The £7m coughed up to Sporting Lisbon for Tiago Ilori? Iago Aspas? He paid Celta Vigo £7m for him. Liverpool paid £9.8m for Divick Origi, then promptly loaned him out. He might well be an investment for the future, but why not have him learn his trade over here if he's that good. I was astounded to see they paid £15m for Mamadou Sakho, which puts the price for Toby into perspective. It might be why three of his first four signings this summer (Ings, Milner and Bogdan) have been free transfers.

I'm not sure Spurs either want to, or are able to pay £17m cash for a player. As has been said earlier in this thread, they have a big squad, and need to shift out quite a few players. To that end, Spuds would always prefer to do a cash plus player deal. Their problem is two-fold. A) They haven't really got any players that Atletico desperately want and B) Even in the unlikely event they did, Spuds would probably have to subsidies the wages. Despite their best efforts, they haven't been able to shift Adebayor out, nor the likes of Soldado and a few others. The other, concerning their ability to fork out £17m in cold hard cash, is tied in with their stadium development. Yes, usually clubs try to keep funds for capital projects like ground development seperate from playing budgets, and no doubt Spuds would not have embarked on their stadium rebuild if they did not think they could afford it. But it has proved a lot more expensive than they thought, especially with pesky little family-run sheet metal businesses holding out for maximum cash for their plot of land, despite being fire-bombed and subject to death threats from loony fans. Despite their claims to being a big club, I'm not that sure Spuds have got £17m to spend on one player, especially when they have other areas of the team they want to improve.

Interesting that quite a few people on here are ready to castigate journos like Alex Crook as being peddlers of lies, half-truths and mischievous mis-information as it appears in a tabloid newspaper like The Star, but are quite happy to accept a punted story from Sky Sports News. Sky Sports News - along with BBC Sport - relies largely on the same sources for their stories as tabloid newspapers, freelances, agency copy and the wire services provided by the Press Association, Reuters and Associated Press, among others. The difference is how they use the information. It's part of the BBC ethos to check stories for their veracity and reliability and they do this for the vast majority of stories (I won't say all stories, because the Beeb has been caught out like any media organisation could be). The BBC would rather be second with a story and accurate, whereas SSN's ethos is always to be first with the story, and as a result are quite happy to have a punt on a story. Anybody who works in the industry knows that SSN are not 100% reliable, but because they are big and shout the loudest, the public tend to overlook this. That affects the journalists who work for SSN. A lot of people have jaundiced views of them but no journalist (certainly none that I know) wants to publish an inaccurate or untrue story, and will always try and verify their story if they can. Very often, because of their employer's desire to be first, they are not given the scope to do this. If the roles were reversed and The Star has the story that Man Utd could be turning their attentions away from Morgan, and SSN ran the story about him training with U21s, which one would you find more credible?