Crazy Diamond

BBC reporting he would have left no matter what the result. Sounds like the whole Club is going to be restructured.

Chairman has gone too. Incredible.

According to SSN. Well that was fun. I reckon Sean O'Driscoll might be the man for them.

This just in from a Mr. Paul Smith, Chief football reporter for the Sunday Mirror and P*mpey fan: Smudge1962 Paul Smith Can it get anymore depressing down at Fratton Park? Nice interview recently from CIS who didn't realise how bad things were at Portsmouth Smudge1962 Paul Smith Have you heard of due diligence prior to buying a club? What CIS really meant to say was things got a whole lot worse when they brought #PFC Smudge1962 Paul Smith And to see Southampton lead the Championship. #painful Smudge1962 Paul Smith @jeff83baldwin And didn't CIS say they weren't going to throw money at Portsmouth? of course not, they don't have any.

Indeed, he has apparently lost all interest and didn't put a shift in, if you're to believe Watford fans. He was non-existent today. He actually turned down the chance to sign for Liverpool at a younger age but decided to go pro with Watford. Sounds like after his U21 call up, he wants to move on to better things.

The view from Watford: "We didn't just lose, we sunk without a trace, were completely devoid of any tactical house, ideas, urgency or attacking threat, just like we have been all season, let's be honest, nearly all the goals we've scored this season have been freak occurrences or defensive **** ups rather than merit of our own build up play. We were absolutely ****ing awful today, not one positive to come out with, Gilmartin is absolute toilet and nearly gifted them another three/four goals, the defence was awful, midfield was anonymous, wingers may as well stay at home and nothing upfront. It should have been a cricket score today, and we never really looked like scoring." "They weren't lucky, they were better than us and we were absolutely useless." "If we had scored the one or two really good chances we had in the first twenty mins, it would have been a different story." "Once we conceded, it was game over. Away, at the league leaders, who get 20,000+ every week and aren't even in the same league as us financially or otherwise and are in form and won however many at home in a row we obviously weren't going to pull anything back." "That was rubbish today, don't know about either penalty, although the saints fans all went up for handball for the first. If we'd scored one of the two very good chances we had before the goal it could have been different. Their fans were starting to get on their backs already by that point. Our heads went down slightly more after each goal and by the end we could easily have conceded 8. Southampton found it very very easy. Game summed up when they started ole ole and then so did we, but there was never any danger of us doing three ole's in a row."

New chant idea, to the tune of that song. "We are the Saints, we are the Saiiints, we are Southampton, can P*mpey keep up?"

Sorry, you're quite right. This was as he was about to go out for his warm-down. Even so, its all being monitored.

Absolutely - there is no doubting the guy's class at this level at all. To question his ability is downright disrespectful. You're right, he will have off games, but only due to being closed down by a centre half who on his day does all the right things. Today was one of those days. Their marking wasn't too bad, which sounds stupid when they've conceded four - Fonté had two men on him each time when it came to corners for example. They had next to nothing up front though, wasn't impressed by Sordell at all.

In all fairness, he was marked out of the game in my opinion. Their centre half, Mirfin I think it was, stuck to him like glue. Took both penalties extremely well though so can't fault him. Also Kelvin made a great save, I think that'll be in the highlights tonight.

Crazy Diamond likes this.

You're very kind. Quite agree about the fitness thing - I noticed that Morgan was wearing his GPS tracking vest too. Looks like they're all being monitored very carefully still. I saw Rickie later on, he was fine, looked as if the collision of heads early on hasn't done any long term damage!

Agreed. Both doing exceptionally well. On a non-Saints associated management theme, I was told last night should Brizzle City lose to Blackpool, Keith Millen would be sacked. Good job they put up a brave fight and only lost 5 - 0 to Blackpool today.

First 20 minutes, Watford probably should have taken the lead. Contentious penalty but if it wasn't going to be given for handball, Lambert had two guys climbing all over him, could easily have been a foul on him. Penalty scored, we took over. Lambert however was almost marked out of the game for me, very quiet other than his penalties obviously. Second half, we batter them. They were absolutely dead and buried with 15 minutes left, we ran rings around them. It's nice to know we never put less than 100% effort in, the players were still hungry to get more. It could have been five or six quite easily. Sometimes I think we're guilty of trying to be too technical, and there were definitely sloppy moments when things didn't happen. The first 20 minutes we made Watford look good, it was very sloppy. Delighted for Lee Holmes though - I thought as he came on, if he can get a goal it'll boost his confidence, and sure enough he scored a cracker, though I'm not sure the goalkeeper was blameless. All in all, a well earned three points.

Today I found out why there are no emails being read out anymore. The show isn't live anymore. As part of a cost-cutting exercise, the Football League Show is now pre-recorded. I spoke to a BBC guy today and negotiations are going on still about free-to-air highlights, Sky are believed to be getting it to put on their website and for broadcast. The highlights would be free for a broadcaster to get but payment comes into it later when the show's producer (at the moment it's IGM) gets involved. It's all a bit messy.

Ha. Nice conspiracy theories. Only I know what really happened. ITK...

I can tell you why. There was a problem with one of the cables. It was rectified during half time. Happy to help.

That's definitely a familiar name. Yeah you're probably right.

If Luker is the man I'm thinking of, he wasn't all that popular with his co-workers. Can only get better really!

Yeah I agree, I think it'll get better when HD comes in. It's all very basic at the moment, for example a cameraman will be taking four tapes, each half an hour long, to a game and whilst a throw in is taken or there is a pause in play they will change the tapes over. In that time a goal could be missed if a change over takes a little bit too long. Then there's the fact that not many football grounds will have an AV facility for a cameraman to go and record from tape to a hard drive, so the only option is to drive the tapes back to the studio for editing. If it's one thing I don't like about The Football League Show then it's how there's just such a contrast to Premier League highlights programmes. It's nowhere near as glamorous. It sometimes feels like it's catering to simpler people, as if lower league football is a bit watered down. Given how open the Championship has been recently and the size of the teams in it, it's not a good idea to act that way!

Very interesting bit about being wary of bringing the 'wrong' kind of players in. Wonder how much we can read into that.

I can do my best to answer the production time thing, it's not entirely straightforward. Down in the south for example, let's say Saints and Bournemouth were playing at home on the same day. The cameramen arrive at the grounds at midday, film the shots outside the stadium etc, then the game itself from 3pm until 4:50pm or so, then the post-match interviews. So we're at about 5:30pm by the time its all done and dusted at the ground. I was working on the Birmingham game and it took us until about 7 or 7:30pm to get back to the studios owing to the traffic. The tapes are then reviewed and the highlights chosen. That is put together as one piece, which depends on the proficiency of the editor and how many highlights there were, this creates the highlight reel. Let's say we're up to about 8:30pm now, and that hour for the Saints clips could well take longer because in the middle of all this, the staff at the BBC studios are putting together stories and working on the next bulletin. As far as I'm aware there is only one editor. The Bournemouth highlights have to be done as well, so with the same time as the Saints game to review and edit, it's 9:30pm, assuming the journey from Bournemouth to Southampton is uneventful. Remember these are the full highlights reels. They then have to be sent over to Chiswick (I think, at least that's where the show is filmed live) where the Football League show crew have until the start of the programme to go through the full highlights and edit down to fit into their programme... Along with all the other fixtures that day in the Championship, League One and League Two. In short, there's not a lot of time to do it, and it's an effort to get the show done. Being the Football League and not the Premier League, the money isn't there to hire staff and get it done faster. There are probably a hell of a lot more people per game and better technology for the Prem. As for being after Match of the Day, I much prefer that to 9am the next day.

I know the cameraman who alternates between Bompey and us, he covered a game once at Fratton and he says it was a nightmare. Apparently it's in a really inconvenient place and you end up treading on other people's toes the entire time. That coupled with stadium staff that are easily annoyed make it particularly difficult. St. Mary's is of course the best by far...! As for blurry socks, that's probably only something you'll have at a featured game which has more than one camera. At a regular highlights match there is one single camera that records all the action, and that same camera at St. Mary's also provides the feed that goes to the stadium screens. You'll get a cameraman from both Sky and the BBC at one game.

Discussions are apparently ongoing regarding free-to-air Football League highlights with the current deal ending at the end of this season (the discussions started in April and it's all gone rather quiet since). Personally I feel the Football League Show has been a success, especially when compared to the dire quality that ITV managed. I remember we played Plymouth back in 2006 (I think) and Djamel Belmadi scored a great goal with about 10 - 15 seconds of great passing play. On ITV however we only saw the finish. Another time we played Millwall at the Den in 05/06 and the action inexplicably cut to the sight of a plane taking off from City airport. For me those two incidents demonstrate just how bad it was on ITV. That said I do realise The Football League Show is not everyone's cup of tea, with some comparing the studios over in Chiswick to the set of Crimewatch. Either way, highlights of the Football League will be on Sky if a deal is not reached between the BBC and the Football League. Live Football League games on the BBC will not happen anymore, as they simply cannot afford it. It may come as a shock to some of you that the BBC actually had first dibs on their ten live games - I for one am thankful they quite rightly chose the derby game in December! I do hope it's renewed though as I don't believe Sky is value for money - that's just a personal opinion of course. The other interesting thing is that the BBC will be changing all cameras to HD at the end of the season, so if the deal for free-to-air highlights was to be agreed, we would have the option of watching Saints highlights on the BBC in HD. Of course, if we're in the Premier League, it's a different story, and no one here will particularly care...!

Every game I've been to has been a win. I think I'm due to cover this one so here's hoping I keep the 100% record.