SaintBobby

I don't think ever Manchester United or West Ham United will be relegated. The chances of either being relegated therefore equal 0%

Like it. Would be better still if we could find a slot for Frazer Richardson to play the "front sweeper" role though...:-)

No, it's not. Failing, for example, to pull off an utterly incredible last ditch clearance off the line - the sort of clearance that could only be achieved by the very best of defenders in the world - does not constitute a "defensive error". Nor does failing to save a well taken penalty - just because the very best goalkeeper in the world might just have saved it.

I think Beattie, Ormerod and Oakley are also now "unattached"

Read every comment on this thread and I'm still non the wiser. Given it seems impossible to discern what the OP was asking or what he thinks, I guess the signs were never auspicious.

Sounds plausible. Lots of players being edged "out" and it's pretty likely we will get at least one "in".

I wonder if getting one or two superstar signings opens the floodgate to getting others. eg. If we got Leandro and/or Bangua might it be easier to get other top players to follow. Or does it just bankrupt us?

I don't doubt you for a second, but can you explain the use of the first person plural possessive?Or are Juventus known as "our youth" in Brazil?If so, that's a great pub trivia question ;-)

It's bloody awful. Truly bloody awful.

I simply refuse to believe that this is a "leak" of the shirt. It's an unconvincing photoshop effort. Am holding out hope for a return to stripes....

I visited the place a few years ago. (Well, we got as close to it as we could....driving up to a sign warning you to go no further or lethal force will be used). It's clearly a top secret military base. The alien stuff is good for tourism though.

I wonder. You're right of course that top, top players will be attracted to the CL clubs. I mean, geees, Spurs now look like too small a club for Bale. But we did lose all three of those players while we were out of the Premier League. Perhaps we could have kept them a little longer at least if we had been in the top flight, as we are now.

It's true that some of our academy products have been too good. Mind you if the retention scheme doesn't work because we are selling such players for £10m-£20m, I guess I could live with that,

Is it really so fanciful that we can create and retain one Premiership quality player from the academy each year? Not easy, but not far off what we have been turning out (although harder to retain them in the Championship, surely?)

Seems to me like the plan is actually on track, but will take some time to come to fruition. If we produce just one academy graduate a year capable of breaking into the first team, it's not unreasonable to expect half of the squad to be graduates of the academy in 5 or 6 years time. Of course, we may face retention problems with some of the real gems, but I imagine the Cortese plan is to make a better fist of keeping the Walcotts, Bales and Chamberlains, which is obviously more feasible in the PL. Additionally, some youngsters might "break into the first team" without really becoming an integral part of it. Lallana has managed it. So has Shaw. JW-P? Looks promising, but am only about 50-50 as to whether he will become a regular starting player in future. Ben Reeves has fallen short, as has Sam Hoskins. Calum Chambers? Who knows? Jury is also out on Jack Stephens. Nevertheless, I can well imagine that in 5 years time, an average of 9 of our 18 man squad will be academy products. It at least seems something worth aspiring to.

This is dull. We've made an offer and/or are very interested, Celtic are willing to sell, but we haven't agreed personal terms yet (and might not). Fair summary?

We need to sign him. £10m.

My bad. Shouldn't rely on Wikipedia! Sorry!

We were drawn away to Rotherham in the FA Cup, it was 4 years before we were drawn away again. To Leicester.

You're getting warm-ish with your last sentence.

If someone doesn't get this soon, I may have to reveal the answer as I leave in 5 minutes! Clue #6: Think about where the games were played.....

Nope. Clue #5: It's something to do with "good luck" in the FA Cup - although these matches were both "bad luck"

Clue #4: It's related to the fact that neither match was a league game.

Nope (well, if that is true by some bizree coincidence, it wasn't the thing I was thinking of!)

Your context is right. In fact, both games were Cup games (obvious really - we wouldn't have been playing Rotehrham in the league in 2002!)