Barry the Badger

I love it. A Saints manager coming out on top in mind games, he's clearly got right under Poyet's skin. Who needs Mourinho...

Haha. Adkins really got under his skin didn't he!

He was excellent at Orient.

I understand the worries but I do wonder if Nigels's trying to get Brighton overly fired up. The fact is they were going to be up for this regardless of what Adkins said so maybe he's just trying to tip them over the edge. There is a point at which being fired up stops being productive and starts being a hinderance. The only thing I can think is that Adkins is trying to get the Brighton players to that point.

Where did this guard of honour crap come from anyway? As far as I know it's something that's happened just a few times in the Premiership. I notice Crawley are getting all het up about Luton not giving them a guard of honour last week too, in the fecking Blue Square. What a load of arse.

I think we're being a bit over ambitious. As a gesture a smaller flag would be fine.

I would go and tell Killer not to take part in the warm up at Fratton Park.

Except that is after the end of next season. Which meant next season will be our last. Which makes it even more important.

Lallana is exactly the type of player we should be looking to produce. Brilliant for us but not quite good enough for the top prem teams to be interested. Perfect. Perhaps we should introduce some sort of policy in the academy. We coach them until they are almost top prem players and then just stop.

Let's be honest. We all know that when we get a great player through, he will be gone in a year. If Jake Sinclair turns out to live up to expectations, we will see him for a year at most. Same for any others. This will be the case at least until we make it to the prem and probably even after that.

Based on our recent history with academy graduates he certainly is one for the future. The future of Coventry, Derby, QPR, Reading or any other of the teams we hope to be competing with.

Just ordered an upgrade to one of these today. Fingers crossed.

England Under 18's.

Not sure who you're looking at but the Guly I've been watching is f*cking quick. Perhaps not the acceleration of Chamberlain but at full tilt he can go some.

Ah yes well spotted George. You got me there. Good and proper.

I think the entire way the show is scripted makes them all look bad. The bit where they go through the goal highlights and Murty and Rosenior read scripted descriptions is pretty cringy. Still a worthwile show though for the odd insight you get.

My Dad turned mine into a chair for me. I think he still uses it, although to be honest it's not the most comfortable.

Why?

Yes I think we should do something at 18mins 85seconds like holepuncture says.

Last I heard he was still training/recovering from his injury with us. Probably a good pro to have around the place if that's still the case.

Obviously you want players who make the right decisions most of the time. Lallana being a good example, he seems to know when to keep it simple and when to try something more risky. We then have players who rarely try the risky things, but just keep it simple. This can be frustrating but is valuable to a team, as long as it's not the whole team. We then have players who rarely keep it simple and always try the risky things (Guly). This can also be frustrating but is valuable to a team, as long as it's not the whole team. We have a good balance of these three types of players in my opinion.

Try again pedant man :-) I don't think you will find me at any point saying that I think a loan back is likely or possible in this case. I simply answered your question about what is the point in those sorts of deals. For what it's worth, I think he may well want to stay and that being the case I don't think we would look to sell him. But, if he wants to go this summer, he will go this summer.

Which indicates he was clearly in no rush to leave mid season, didn't kick up a fuss. If he wants to go this summer we will let him, in my opinion. If you think we can force him to stay and watch his value increase you are being totally unrealistic.

He gets the higher wages from Arsenal a year earlier. We get him still playing for us for a year.

It was Pardew that said that was his aim. It was a bit of a stupid thing to say as it really wasn't that realistic and raised everybody's expectations of who we would sign.