Turkish

Its more to do with the premier league and clubs desperation to stay in it. In the 80s Liverpool won it 4 years in a row but other winners included Oxford, Norwich, QPR and Luton. I remember quarter finals and semis at the Dell in the 80s with it being packed to the rafters and a great atmosphere. It was always the big clubs 3rd priority so the smaller first division clubs always had a chance of a decent run in it, not dissimilar to now expect that no one takes it seriously, the top clubs as they want the champions league and everyone else just wants to stay in the premier league so all top flight clubs field weekend sides until the latter rounds. Some people sneer at the league cup and would take 17th in the premier league over winning it, yet the fact of the matter is it is a major trophy and Oxford and Luton have won a major trophy more recently than we have. It's the premier league that has ruined the league cup and also the FA cup.

It's a good job we aren't still in it or we would probably have a load of injuries and be without a win in 5 matches.

This simply isn't true. The summer after we got to the cup final and finished 8th, which was the summer preceding our 4th placed at Christmas, our spending was lower than our incoming from outgoing transfers, the same thing happened the following season. In fact the only year we significantly, by saints standards, pushed the boat out was in the summer of 2002/03 where we had a net spend of £8m. In the years between moving to St Mary's and relegation we had a net spend of around £7.5m. So the truth is that it was 'probably less but not as much as you think' is horsesh*t. £7.5m between over three seasons is a f*ck lot less than £70m In two season. Cortese has spent significantly more in a shorter period. Almost 10 times more, I will tell you now income hasn't gone up 10 times since then.

On of the things i've never seen Nicola credited with and he should be, is the ability to recruit a PR company able to get self promotional PR articles unedited onto the BBC and national media so regularly.

Is he still young hungry and guarenteed to improve or is he now a greedy tosser who put money before his career?

the only people that work 37.5 or 40 hours a week these days are clock watchers and civil servants. Most of my team work very, very hard travelling all over the country, early mornings and late finishes often replying to emails at 6 in the morning or 11pm at night. Most of the year we are away from home at least one night a week. December when everyone else is on wind down we are out entertaining our customers a couple of nights a week all over the country, people might say "ahh but you're just out on the p*ss" but the you're not as are still working, have to remain professional and represent the company (as well as ensuring the devious buggers dont take the p*ss on the expenses and order dozens of rounds of shots) it's not bad work but it's not like you're out with your mates. Cue hilarious paper sales man gags.

Good point. We need an English goalkeeper. What is Scott Carson up to these days? He was always highly rated. Paul Robinson could do a job for us too.

Yep, can vouch for this, lovely place. If you like your ancient history Ephesus and pamukkale are worth the long coach trip. Lots of people moan about Turkey but I've liked it when I've been there, never been to marmararis though, have heard mixed views on that.

Fat chance of that. I'm still waiting for my pint from Plymouth away.

I remember back in the Old Saintsforever days when he joined us from Stockport and talked about losing the 'struggling southampton' tag lots of people acclaimed him a great manager who was a hero and if we had stuck with him could have gone on and become our bill Shankley. The place went into meltdown for about 25 minutes when he was sacked with everyone outraged and planning protests against Lowe at the next home game. Then we realised he was a terrible manager and a clueless scouse bumpkin who we were best off shot of and would find his level in the championship, now we had Hoddle and he was going to take us to the next level.

Don Howe, Big Ron, Howard Kendall. These lads were there when the premier league began and why sky decided to pump all this money in. Without them Soccerball would still be football.

Top, top managers and blokes. They respect the tradition of football in this country.

It seems QPR fans have a Loftus Road sized mentality. What they need is a Rodney Marshgod character on their mongboard to tell them why 40,000 is no where near enough.

Could see them getting someone like Hoddle in for the rest of the season and then Jurgen Klinsmann to take over after the world cup. But i expect it to be Capello.

Wasn't Nigel Adkins meant to be the new Alex Ferguson? He is hot favourite surely.

Moyes had a much more difficult job taking over the league champions and from arugably the best manager of all time. The Spurs job is more of an opportunity as they have a very good squad on paper yet have failed to break into the top clubs in this country and only won one major trophy in 20 years.

Nothing to prove but also nothing to lose. Do well and it's because they are a great manager, do badly and it's because it was AVB's squad and he didn't have a clue what he was doing. Is their reputation going to be tarnished by keeping Spurs as a top 5-8 club and lets face it, they wont finish lower than that. Not really.

Good to see 6 of the top 8 good old fashioned english managers like David Pleat and Gerry Francis who know how to play football properly. You didnt seem them signing glove wearing pansies from Roma. They never messed around with these fancy formations. Look at the bottom 3, everytime they employ one of these clueless poncey foreigners it goes wrong. Keep it English, keep it 4-4-2, get it in the mixer. It works.

Big underachieving club with an expensive, underachieving squad that despite this is still 7th and only 2 wins off the champions league places. Great opportunity to take the club back there. And as you say the Bale money has gone but their net spend was only £5m, so there will still be money available to strengthen. A tricky job or a tremendous opportunity? Depends on your perspective.

Capello was at their game sunday. It'll be him.

He's the fifth highest run scorer in history for England! I know what you mean though, he's a bit of a bully in that he's fine when England are on top but when you need him to put in a big performance to drag you back into a game he rarely does it. Cook has been awful this series and we've been battered by a team that is far from great, duck in this innings too. We seem to be making a bit of a fight of it at last though, even though we are still 300 behind and the inevitable collapse is just round the corner.

na na na na Pochentio na na na na na na na na na na He hates pompey na na na He's better than Richie Barker CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP

As are Gerry Francis and David Pleat. My choices if I was a spurs fan.

Quite. Which is all credit to Levy for not going mad and spending money they don't have. Not really quite sure why people are having a go at him for sanctioning the spending. They didn't go mad and he back his manager. I don't really see what more people want from a chairman.

CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP CLAP