Barry the Badger

and so we come back to the problem... where do you draw the line?

He would have had to say something pretty bloody bad in order to deserve a ban IMO. That said, he seems like the type of guy who would be shouting from the rooftops if this has happened, so I will take it with a pinch of salt for now.

However wealthy we are, we still have a budget, and it's not a bottomless pit. This mythical £100k you have plucked out of the air is part of that budget so AP and NC still have to try to get the best value for the club on player purchases. Hypothetically, say we have 2 million and we are trying to use it to buy 3 players, an extra £100'000 on one player might mean we miss out on another, whereas we can wait for a better deal and try to get all three at our valuation. You can be sure that certain people would be moaning if we paid over the odds for a player who went on to be a dud.

That was the old days, these days it's a patch ON release day. I just buy it a week after it's released rather than start a game on release day and then have to start all over again a few days later.

I'm sorry legod. I just don't buy your reasoning that because we have a bit of money now, we should be prepared to overpay. Teams may need money now as you say, but you can be sure that come the end of august many will be panicking and may well be prepared to accept less. This is the reason so much business is done on deadline day, and just because we have a few quid now does not make us immune to that.

So what are the implications of that?

Has anybody seen odds for a Saints L1 champions, Pompey relegated double?

I reckon it's the flouride.

The idea that League 1 is more "physically demanding" than the Premiership is just silly.

I don't remember there being much about it to be honest, but I was only 8 so I might be wrong. Certainly Murray Walkers commentary at the time was taking it in the context of a racing incident rather than a deliberate crash.

They are still fooked. Probably slightly more than they were the last time you looked. Oh, and their pre-season tour was an utter shambles.

Which I suspect is a lot of peoples view, happy to turn a blind eye to a neccesary evil so long as it isn't shoved in their faces.

I'm afraid that policy would narrow down our options somewhat.

The season Pearson kept us up we basically changed our entire game plan around him. He played as a kind of left midfield target man and we would just pump the ball to him and look to win stuff off of him. Not sure it was particularly succesful but we stayed up so must've been ok.

Do agree with that, it should be the team boss dishing out orders like that in normal circumstances. But remember, team orders are banned, this was not supposed to be a blatant team order. In this instance they were trying to be sly, and it would have been too obvious Domenicali coming on the radio and giving what was supposed to be routine information. In the interests of being subtle about it Smedley was the right choice, except he had other ideas.

Just out of interest, what would peoples opinions on yesterday be if there wasn't a 'No team orders' rule? Hypothetical I know, but I'm just intrigued as clearly I feel differently to the majority here.

Let's be clear here. Smedley's dissatisfaction was clearly nothing to do with going "against the rules", and everything to do with his mate Felipe losing the victory. If he felt that strongly about not breaking the rules he wouldn't have covered up for the team after the race when he'd calmed down a bit. But to answer your question... I would either do it and do it properly, in such a way that would not get the team that pays my wages into masses of trouble. Or if I really felt that strongly about it I would say "I'm sorry I don't think I can do that convincingly". Or if I felt really really really strongly about it I would go to the stewards and report it.

I dunno, apparently Wotton used to run the 100m in just over 10s flat!

This is brilliant. Just brilliant.

If I was a senior person within the Ferrari team I would be very unhappy with Smedley and certainly asking him to re-evaluate where his loyalties lie and remember who pays his wages.

Meanwhile in the real world.... if clubs are only prepared to sell (the players we want) for silly money, on account of our comparative wealth, it is advisable to hang on and see if their prices drop as time ticks on towards the deadline. To just panic and meet ridiculous valuations would be terrible business practice. But again, we are just speculating and really have no idea why the players we want are not available to us at present.

Here is a list off the top of my head of multiple F1 world champions in the modern (subjective phrase I know) era. Tell me how many of them were nice guys when it came to the racing. None of them is the answer. Occasionally an apparently nice guy slips through and wins one eg Jenson, Damon... But the guys who win over and over are all self centred, egotistical, and completely single minded. Fernando Alonso Michael Schumacher Alain Prost Nelson Piquet Ayrton Senna Mika Hakkinen

I don't think it's anything to do with being passionate or how much you spend on going to races. I love this sport, but I really don't see the problem. I don't think we will ever agree on this though. I can honestly say that if next season Red Bull signed up somebody to be a clear number 2 driver to Vettel, and and the very first race they asked him to move over for Vettel, I would not have a problem with it. It's their team and it's up to them.

So what you are saying are that team orders are ok in theory, but only in certain situations. So where exactly do you draw the line?

I really couldn't disagree more. I really don't see why a team shouldn't be able to use their two cars however they see fit to secure the best result for their team. Obviously in this instance it is against the rules, but the no team orders rule is stupid. A question for you, if in the last race of the season Hamilton is running 1st, with Jenson Button running 2nd. Hamilton is out of the championship, but Jenson will win it ONLY if he wins the race. What would you say if Hamilton let Button through? Would that be unnaceptable?