FloridaMarlin

There is some wonderful self-delusion over on the Fansonline message board. They are talking about sacking the board at the same time as saying the owners of the club - the fans - have no say in the decision-making processes. There is talk of them having the biggest budget in the league which should enable them to go out and get who they want. Their preferred targets include the likes of Paul Tisdale, and Mark Warburton, besides the likes of Adkins and Neil Warnock. "With our crowds, we should have a healthy bank balance," says one sharp observer, completely ignoring the fact that most of the money was spunked on making people like Connolly and Tubbs among the highest earners in the division, and will continue to be spent on journeymen in the mistaken belief they are to players. The one or two realists who point out that a) they don't Redknapp back as he was responsible for their current plight and b) they are not likely to present a hugely attractive proposition to the sort of names the deluded want the club to pursue, are - as usual - hounded down. Also, it appears to have occurred to very few of them that one of their preferred choices - Tisdale - is a farkin scummah.

Their media facilities are poor. The press box is not big enough and certainly cannot cater for the numbers required for the Premier League. Neither do they have a press room where post-match press conferences can be conducted. Interviews are currently carried out pitchside which is OK in August, September and April/May, but not too clever the rest of the season. Like most clubs, they don't really like the media and try to inconvenience them as much as possible. They kicked the media out of the community office under the stand which used to double as a press room and journos currently have to tramp back up to the press box to write their post-match pieces; again, not easy for frozen fingers in December and January. However, you do get a tear-off attachment to your press ticket which allows you to get a pie/pasty/hot dog and drink from the snack bar under the stand. I expect there will be some on here who moan about how the pampered hacks who cover Premier League football should have to rough it and their working conditions bear no comparison to those of coal miners or deep-sea fishermen. But if you accept the most popular sport in the country should have an elite league at its pinnacle, then everything about it should be as good as possible, and that includes media facilities (which are very good at St Mary's, incidentally, including the pre-match catering).

I am told there are people at BBC Sport in Salford just waiting to shove that down his throat at the end of the season. He is not populare at Media City.

Utterly reprehensible human being. I'll happily repeat what I have previously posted on here, what my old mate Derek McGregor said about him. Derek now works for The Sun in Scotland, but covered Bompey when Redknapp was manager and said: "You can always tell when Harry is lying, It's whenever his lips move." But what is even more interesting is that there is still a journalist willing to swallow Redknapp's carp; Ben Smith, the man from BBC Sport who had a direct line to Cortese. I could be wrong, but I haven't seen any other national newspaper pick up and make a lot of this interview. Granted, a lot of the chief sports writers are over in Augusta at the moment, but could it be they have fallen out of love with Harry? Yes, he might be good for a quote and story, but it's clear he is (and has been for some time) a busted flush, and it might be a toxic to the reputations of papers and their top writers to be championing his cause. In its list of the top 10 most overrated managers (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/picturegalleries/11507021/The-top-10-overrated-football-managers-in-pictures.html?frame=3252631) the Daily Telegraph sums him up perfectly; "Loved by the media for always having a ready quote, a skill that took him to within a whisker of being appointed England manager. Always claimed to be “down to the bare bones” even when managing squads chock-full of expensive talent. Won just one trophy, with a Portsmouth squad so expensive it almost bankrupted them."

I was going to mention Charlie George, but you beat me to it. I suppose that as we signed him from Derby (he did play for Minnesota Kicks in between, but we paid Derby the transfer fee) he technically wasn't a London club cast-off, but I take the point. He had probably just passed the peak of his career when he joined us, and Derby had three good years out of him. We probably squeezed the last drops of juice out of him as he never played as many games for another club as he did after us. Some might argue he was a bit of a cast-off, but I remember being bloody excited when he signed. Interestingly, looking at his record, I never realised he only won one England cap. Rather than dub him a cast-off, he is a prime example of another hugely talented played grossly under-used by the national team.

Or as my old mate David Armstrong would say, "His second touch is always a header."

I must admit, I am enjoying the obvious discomfort that Rodgers is going through. It could all lend rather nastily there. The media love-in has ended as he doesn't look like delivering Champions League football to the media's Merseyside darlings and it's clear certain players aren't playing for him. Stevie G has clearly wiggled a stick inside the hornet's nest and will take off for The States having stirred things up nicely. I would not be surprised to see the smug smile wiped from Brenda's face ere long.

Still the best passer of a ball I have seen in a Saints shirt.

Meanwhile, today in Japan they have been celebrating the birthday of the oldest surviving kamikaze pilot. Or as he's better known, Chicken Teriyaki.

I would imagine the wait for marquee signings will be in tents. Dods he mean 'marque' signings? In any case, that is a word that is widely used erroneously. The definition of marque is a make of car as distinct to a specific model, or a letter of marque is a licence to fit out an armed vessel and use it in the capture of enemy merchant shipping and to commit acts which would otherwise have constituted piracy.

My memory of Forsyth is of Peter Shilton's long, wind-assisted punt on a foul day at The Dell bouncing over his head and into the net, to give Leicester their final goal in a 5-1 win. Shilton was embarrassed, as most keeper's are when they score against a fellow union member, but Forsyth always blamed the lines, claiming they were painted too hard and too thick and when the ball hit the 18-yard box. it took a freakish bounce.

Bit left field and surreal. He'll be on board a trawler and followed by seagulls soon, if he's not careful.

All those on here criticising referees should try once - just once - refereeing a Sunday League game, just to see what it is like. I guarantee you will never be as quick to chastise referees again. Of course referees make mistakes, and they should not be above criticism. But the wholesale witch-hunts against referees is a relatively recent development, borne out of the increased coverage of football, and the need to have a target for criticism. With up to 16 cameras at every Premier League game now, every cough, spit and fart on the pitch is under close scrutiny; scrutiny that takes place - as others have said - at leisure in the comfort of a TV studio, by former players with a large mugful of hindsight to hand. Also, having paid huge amounts of money for coverage, TV companies are so far up the Premier League's backside in an attempt to curry favour to gain more access, they rarely criticise players. Even when it warrants criticism, the ex-player pundits will pull their punches and pull up just shy of dishing out deserved stick. So if you won't criticise players, the easy target is referees. It's reassuring that most sensible people on this thread agree that it's hard to criticise referees when players are constantly trying to con them, and some of them have developed that particular skill into an art form. Referees are no worse today than they were five, 10, 20 or 50 years ago. What's happened is their decisions are now more open to scrutiny. Years ago, when a referee made a decision, people might not have liked it, but to an extent they accepted it and of course the other by-product of this mass scrutiny, is that referees' authority has been undermined. That's bad enough in the Premier League and professional football, but the implications for referees having their authority undermined become more serious the more you descend football's pyramid.

I must admit to a laugh or three of incredulity at Sky's pundits panel on Sunday when they damned Saints with faint praise over Matic's foul on Mane. They gave Saints a modicum of credit for not crowding the referee following a foul which should have produced a second yellow card for Matic, but then openly criticised them for not doing it and in effect claimed they were not professional enough, and that would cost them a Champions League place. They highlighted how referee Mike Dean's first hand movement on seeing the foul was to his pocket, but as he wasn't harangued by Saints players, thought it was OK to put it away. Or as Sky's pundits simplistically saw it - Mike Dean was going to book Matic, then suddenly remembered it would be a second yellow and the implications of that, but as he wasn't surrounded by Saints players he assumed they did not think it was a bad enough foul to warrant a booking. So in other words, according to Sky's pundits, players' actions will influence referees, whose ability to make important decisions is based largely on players' apathy or apoplexy. The problem when you employ former professionals as pundits is that they retain the cheating, conniving, conning instincts they had as players and instead of playing a part in trying to clean the game up by criticising the likes of Chelsea, perpetuate the cheating by pointing out that if you don't gang up on referees, you are not being professional and selling yourself short as a team. Football's morals baffle me sometimes.

Define a 'dumb' question. People always say it's dumb to ask a manager whose team has just been thumped how he feels, and we all recall Strachan's answer to this sort of question which he regarded as dumb. But the dumb question is often the one that everyone wants the answer to. Most supporters want that question asked for some form of affirmation that the manager isn't chuffed at being beaten and is concerned. Most managers are affronted by these questions but it's right they are asked. I thought Pearson dealt with the initial questions well. It's then down to the journalist as to whether hue has got the answer he wants and how persistent he then is to get it. Having had his original question answered he then runs the risk of earning the manager's displeasure if he persists.

His guest appearance as a model at Paris Fashion Week wasn't going as quite as well as Morgan expected.

£5k a week? Closer to £8k a week, I was told.

I shudder to think what the League Two Player of the Month award will do to Jed Wallace's valuation. Anybody care to start the bidding at £10m? And now they'll be fighting off the big clubs with a stick for Awford's services. We should all be breathing a sigh of relief. If Juan Laporta wins the Barcelona presidential election in May, you can fully expect him to forget Ron and go for Awfs. After all, there are so many similarities between them it's difficult to tell them apart. Both are blond, both were central defenders, both....er.....um....they both.....mmmm.....

You would expect Ralph to be able to skate and at least hit a puck. Likewise, most Dutch people are good on ice skates. I regard myself as a fairly proficient skier. But anything on ice skates scares me to death. In the call of duty, I was once press-ganged into trying ice hockey. Believe me, trying to swing a stick to hit a puck while trying to maintain your balance is one of the most difficult things you can do. The problem is that when you lose your balance on ice, you tend to stick your hands and arms out to break your fall, and you end up with a broken wrist, or broken elbow if that takes the weight of your tumble. This has "key player (insert name here...........) out for the rest of the season in ill-advised ice hockey-based team-building exercise" all over it.

And the common denominator would be?

Correct. And, of course in football's pecking order, if Man Utd think they're ever going to be big enough to think joining Real Madrid isn't a step up, then they are going to be disappointed for ever.

Sorry to **** on your chips but both Ron and Erin were there, although they might have buggered off back to Holland afterwards. It must have looked a better game on YouTube than it did in the freezing, perishing flesh. Spurs team generally older and physically stronger than Saints players. Gallagher looked a long, long way off fitness. Did not win one header all night and his touch was off. Subbed after an hour òr so. Dom Gape and Mccarthy probably pick of the players. Gape very busy and good use of the ball, McCathy strong powerful.

I've said before. you would be amazed at the number of Saints fans who work at BBC Sport. That might have changed since BBC Sport moved to Salford, but I know quite a few are still there.

"Locals and the bus company, First Group, are uncertain as to what exactly caused the crash. However, the Mail reports that the bridge is signed as being 3.6 metres high, while a double decker bus measures 4 metres" Ports-maths now even extending to bus drivers. Height of bus; 4metres, but following two administrations reduced to 2.2 metres. "More passion than a little furry fruit" - Russell Grant?

Don't worry, he's run the gamut of all anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli slurs. He just does what Israelis always do. Get on with things and not give a flying f**k what other people think. You might want to check the meaning of the word semite, by the way. It does not apply exclusively to Jews.