FloridaMarlin

Point taken, but I still think it's indicative of the fact that despite the public pronouncements of a new regime and new ethos of living within self-generated means, when push comes to shove, they will still go out on a limb and revert to type to sign players other clubs could not afford, which they should not be able to afford, and would not contemplate singing if they intended to remain true to their announced values.

Some things never change. Apparently Simon Ferry is on £5,000 a week, which explains why they were able to tempt him ahead of other clubs. At the Football League's pre-season jolly in Portugal, Champagne Iain lived up to his name and had the other club reps rolling their eyes and face-palming as Pompey's chairman dumped chief executive Mark Catlin into a fountain fully-clothed as a jolly jape. And here's something for our investigative hounds to unearth. Which one of the trust board members has done time for Unionist activities in Northern Ireland?

Israel. Tel-Aviv, Herzlyia, Netanya, all got great beaches, still warm there in September and you will never lack interesting places if you can tear yourself away from the beaches. Eilat, down on the Red Sea, will still be boiling in September. You're a bit distant from the main tourist action (Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth) if you want a day away from the beaches, but you can do a day trip to Petra in Jordan from Eilat. Trouble is, you might need more than three or four days.

My old man was an airframe fitter on Mossies in the RAF during WWII. He was based on the Scottish island of Tiree. Never really got round to asking him what squadron it was, or any details before he died three years ago.

Wow! Some of that could go into a movie trailer. Cue, a deep, throaty American voice. "They put him in the crosshairs." "It may be. Yes. "Maybe. There is the Southampton."

Lettuce know how you get on. Coat!!

Went a couple of years ago and enjoyed it by and large. Stayed in an all-inclusive resort at Jibacoa, about an hour or so from Havana. Most of the all-inclusive resorts are Spanish/Jamaican owned and are excellent. Food and facilities excellent, as was the service. If you're the sort of person who is happy to spend two weeks on a beach or beside the pool and not move, then it's as good as anywhere. We're not big on that and stayed there as we thought it would be easy to get into Havana under our own steam, but that's where the shortcomings were. There isn't a joined-up public transport system in Cuba. we could get halfway on the bus, but after that it was a case of thumbing a lift, which might have been standing up in the back of a truck, or taking a taxi which can be expensive. To get to Havana we had to go on the organised trips, which are OK but don't leave you a lot of time to do your own thing. You can hire cars and I've driven in all sorts of countries but I wouldn't drive in Cuba. The roads aren't great with big potholes and few markings, and at night it's pitch black as they switch off the street lights to save electricity. Havana must be the darkest city in the world. Tourists are free to travel around Cuba (although they don't seem too keen to let the locals go where they like) and a mate of mine went all over the island back-packing a few years back and had a fantastic time, especially as he did home stays, which are a sort of B&B where you stay with locals in their houses. It is a third world country and has all the trappings that go with it. The country desperately needs money pumped into it, but you hope that once the Castro brothers die, the Yanks don't barge in as they will just try and convert it into the sort of offshore playground you see in Godfather III and which partly prompted La Revoluccion in the first place. Since The Wall fell and the Russians and East Germans buggered off home overnight to make money in their own countries, Cuba was left in the lurch and has accepted tourism as a vital source of foreign currency, so they are trying to build a tourist infrastructure. I must say it didn't feel like an oppressive communist state, and you have to say that the revolution to an extent served its purpose for a lot of Cuban people. Life under the Batista regime was pretty rough on the poor peasantry and now everyone in Cuba is guaranteed free health care, free education (they have the second highest literacy rate in the world), housing and food. Housing and food may not always be top standard, but everyone has a roof over their head, and nobody starves, even if some foodstuffs are rationed. Free enterprise is creeping in. Farmers are now able to sell some of their produce, instead of it all going into the common cooperative, and there is now a small but thriving property market. But it's not so good when a doctor (and Cuba has some of the best doctors in the world, and they export them to countries like Venezuela in exchange for oil and other goods) earns the same as a bus driver. Everyone who travels to Cuba goes for the chance to visit Havana. It is an amazing place, with some fantastic Spanish colonial architecture, but it's the condescending travel writers who revel in its down-at-heel faded grandeur, when in fact the place is falling down. Most of the old town of Havana is a UNESCO world heritage site, but it needs money pumped into it. Club Tropicana was a spectacle but I couldn't get my head how this decadent and ostentatious relic of the pre-revolution days had been allowed to continue by the regime. My advice would be to go, and go with an open mind. It's a fascinating place, with its share of drawbacks, but you might want to see it now before it changes.

I didn't think they were going to bother with the JPT, it being a two bob trophy and al that.

"GazM wrote: The Fat el Hombre wrote: Very exciting time for southampton, good luck to them. Good to see them bringing some quality overseas players to the prem Yeah. Great. What about some home-grown talent ?" Manuel Pellegrini says he is under no pressure to win the PL title, and that he intends to spend this season developing Citeh's youth programme. So when he carries through on that and they end up without a trophy, let's see how that goes down with the Citeh faithful.

That's a bloody steep hill he's driving up. He'd need a 4x4 to get up that.

I know all's fair in love and war and business, and I've no doubt Saints had their sound reasons for doing this. But Ellison's is a Merseyside company and this is a bit of a slap in the face for local businesses.

Mike Neasom is probably spinning in his grave.

Why is it completely out of the question that a club like Saints could sign a Brazilian wonder kid? Middlesbrough signed Juninho.

Why is there an assumption that SRL is not fit? He was carrying an injury in the last few games of the season, and as a result, did look a little jaded. Agreed, he may not be the quickest in the world, but he's no slouch. And apart from those games when he has been carrying an injury, in the games I've watched him in, I've seen no real evidence that he lacks latent fitness. Again, there is an assumption that he won't be able to take part in MP's pressing game, but why not? When you get older, you get smarter, and his spatial awareness will be much better. Besides, the pressing game is supposed to be all about doing as a unit, not as one poor sap running across the line chasing shadows as cultured Premier League defenders ping the ball about among themselves.

It was 124F at Stovepipe Wells first time I went to Death Valley. Strangely enough, it was not that uncomfortable. As the air is so dry there is little humidity.

Is this what's happening?

So at what point will they decide the 'donation from Tesco/Robinson' is burning a hole in the pocket of the escrow account and sneak it out by a bit of creating accounting to spend on paying over-the-odds wages for a couple of players to boost their promotion chances?

So the deal is not with the club but with Robinson. Can you remind us again who Robinson is, and how he got hold of the land?

At least five that I know of on both sport and news desks.

I'm not so sure. Bompey need a good cup run to offset their considerable spending to get out of League One. Plus, there's no love lost between Howe and p****y. He'd love to dump them out and take revenge for the stick he took when he was a player there. Sorry, delete that. They don't boo their own players.

That can't be Harry. He's never relegated a team before QPR.

I hate to sound like a smartarse but I've been banging on about this for some time. http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?36953-UEFA-and-Premier-league-arguing-again&p=1321074#post1321074 http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?2093-When-the-bubble-bursts&p=405854#post405854 http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?14478-How-long-before-we-reclaim-our-rightful-position-above-the-Skates&p=360098#post360098 http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?12010-Whose-the-next-in-line-for-financial-ruin&p=256764#post256764 As I said in one of the posts, people in BBC Sports corridors of power (when they were on the fifth floor of Television Centre) had an inkling of what Murdoch was planning some years ago. He wants to go head-to-head with Fifa, who won't let satellite/cable companies buy the World Cup finals rights as Fifa want terrestrial tv to continue to take the game to as wide an audience as possible. This will be a re-run of Kerry Packer's cricket circus. Fifa will try to do and outlaw the players/clubs who join Murdoch, but he will just do what Packer did, and tell them; "Tough, I've got the best players, people will watch my tournament." This will be the death-knell for the World Cup.

He certainly does, having had the foresight when it started years ago to negotiate a repeat fee of £1,000 every time an episode with him in it is screened anywhere on TV.

Don Taylor, physio, at the back on the right.

Redknapp giving it gob on what he thinks of the England set-up. http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/22884638 As usual, WAC. This from a man who has probably done more to block or halt the progress of English players than anybody else by signing foreign players. And how can a manager who played Peter Crouch up front complain about England managers playing hoof-ball? Twunt.