stevegrant

From what I remember of it, it was absolutely impossible to not **** money down the drain Pompey-style.

I would be amazed if Benjani turned down an offer from Blackburn. He's been training with Stockport, FFS, and was prepared to sign a short-term deal with them just so he was keeping himself in the shop window. They don't have a pot to **** in either (but, unlike Pompey, don't try to pretend otherwise), so he wouldn't have been offered much. I expect he's probably "only" on about £5k a week basic with large performance-related bonuses. The sort of signing they should have been making a year ago...

Oh, and also, I wouldn't necessarily take what a club spokesman says as gospel, whether that's our own one or another club's. They'll generally try to keep everything hush-hush right up until the very last moment, so I wouldn't expect to hear anything other than denials coming from Turf Moor.

I'd heard that the club had booked a slot for a medical at the General today, but I don't know whether that's because a deal has already been done for someone or just on the off-chance that something gets agreed in time.

Akinbiyi in that game

The key word there is "could". The one and only criticism I could possibly muster from yesterday, where we were a joy to watch for the most part, is that the game should have been dead and buried long before they had that late rally.

Looked pretty horrible, no complaints or excuse for it really. That said, the situation could have been avoided had the referee clamped down on some pretty hefty and late tackles (from players on both sides) in the minute or two leading up to the red card. The ref let everything go which seemed to indicate that anything was fair game at that stage. Had it been nipped in the bud earlier, I'm pretty sure Chaplow wouldn't have felt the need to leave his mark on McEveley there.

One addition, Jeffrey Imudia is playing for Dave Hockaday's Forest Green Rovers side tonight in the BSP. I think they've recently gone full-time so he'll still count as a pro.

If you've got a network railcard, you can get a discounted fare as far as Manningtree for £19.85, and the rest of the journey is £5.40.

Being at one end of the country doesn't help, I'd say, especially in terms of travel costs. In order to get anywhere north of the M4, you realistically have to go via London (the CrossCountry trains from Bournemouth to Manchester seemed to always be horrendously expensive even on advance bookings), which is a ballache as you then have to add at least another 2 hours to your journey.

Should be an interesting game. Barnsley apparently had a decent pre-season, have made some astute signings, and got a decent result at Forest on the opening day, but then had a disastrous home defeat to Morecambe on Tuesday night. Keith Hill has a 100% record against us, so hopefully we can rectify that. I wouldn't be too disappointed with a draw, but we've looked good so far this season (it makes a pleasant change for us to start the season well) so a win's certainly not out of the question.

He had a horrific injury during his time in Scotland, so it's possible that the injury has reduced his mobility. At the highest level, that's a key requirement.

And what's stopping the new guys doing the same? It's perfectly logical to do, doesn't really take a great deal of effort and will improve their efficiency immeasurably.

The contract will be costing The Betting Room a fortune (comfortably into five figures), so they'll need to recoup that money through getting enough punters betting with them. Also, where they're such a small company, they'll probably have to recruit temporary staff for matchdays due to the number of booths they have to operate, whereas Ladbrokes used to just use their shop staff as they've got more resources available to them.

Could you detail exactly what you've tried to do so I can try to replicate it?

6,541 is the attendance, including 348 Torquay fans

Directly linked to the other trial, I guess.

One of the most profound Twitter posts I've read today: "Only in the UK could someone wearing £100 trainers use a £300 smartphone to organise a riot while pleading poverty".

There's a rumour doing the rounds that Redknapp has been sentenced to 13 weeks in prison - his regular column in Saturday's Sun was missing, but I don't think anyone's actually been able to prove or disprove that one yet.

Difficult to comment without knowing what actually went on in Tottenham, to be honest. The result if the IPCC inquiry will be interesting, though. Just a thought, Section 27 of the Violent Crime Reduction Act is often used against groups of football fans who police believe may be intending to cause trouble - basically it gives them the power to remove them from an area, district or entire town/city for a period of time. Why the hell haven't they used this here?

This is the bit I don't get, if they've got "strong intelligence", surely they can put a stop to it before it kicks off?

The Met have now said the use of rubber/plastic bullets is "an option".

Twitter's a difficult one due to re-tweets, the use of sarcasm/parody for comedic purposes, etc. It seemed as though the disorder has mostly been organised via BBM - gone are the days when a Blackberry was the sole preserve of a business executive wanting to be able to pick up their emails at all times; now the main attraction is the messenger feature, it's instant, you not only get a notification that the user has received the message, you also get one when they've READ the message (unlike delivery reports with text messages, which only do the former), and it's generally included within the data allowances on your mobile contract. Whenever I'm on a tram in Croydon, it's always Blackberry phones that the kids are playing with. BBM is a much more private means of communication, messages are only sent to people who you have a connection with, which you set up with a PIN that is unique to each handset. If these people have set up a wide network of communications with groups across London to organise widespread violent disorder, it really shouldn't be too hard to pin charges on them. The messages aren't for public broadcast, that's why they're sent on a private network rather than via Twitter or Facebook, and that's why they were able to overpower the police in so many different parts of the city.

Isn't this part of the problem, that young people automatically assume they're going to be handed "opportunities" on a plate without actually having to put in any effort? The pikey **** the Sky reporter confronted in Clapham last night summed it up perfectly when she claimed that she was "getting our taxes back" - I would wager serious money that she's never paid a penny in tax in her life. generalisation>