stevegrant

When the pair of you have grown up, perhaps we might be able to drag the thread back to its original purpose? On which note, I see Elliott Bennett, Brighton's best player, has put in a transfer request. Heavily linked with a move to Norwich.

Adjourned until 11th February.

No surprise that Keys has resigned, the phrase "jump before you're pushed" springs to mind. As I said earlier (somewhere on page 3 of this thread, I think), I do suspect there's a link between Gray's lawsuit against the News of the World and this whole sorry episode. Keys and Gray have been doing this for years (read the Matt Scott article in the Guardian where he's spoken to three current and former female Sky employees), and it's only now that it's found its way to the newspapers... coincidence? I doubt it, but arguably Gray was playing with fire by carrying on in that manner. Surely he's not so completely in a bubble that he wasn't aware that there were loads of people within his own company who would love to take him down a peg or two? While Keys' comments were ill-advised at best as well, I think he's been dragged into it because he's intrinsically linked to Gray rather than solely for his own misdemeanors. Without the vested interest in getting at Gray, Keys would probably have remained untouched. I've not heard Keys' comments on TalkSport, but I saw all the quotes on Twitter as they were happening, and the general consensus seemed to be that it was an absolute car-crash, a complete PR disaster. He said sorry so many times that it completely lost its meaning and seemed to imply that he was only saying sorry to save face rather than because he actually meant it. And then there was the classic "I'm not proud of what happened at the weekend, but with success comes envy". I mean, seriously, what the ****?!

Wow, that's quite the bitter response from the Zimbabwe selection panel

Where abouts in the rules does it say this? I can't seem to find it...

Sheffield Wednesday equalise against Yeovil, 1-1

I'm quite surprised so many people both in broadcasting and in the game have been so quick to throw their weight into the argument as football does tend to be quite a secretive business when things like this happen. How many times have people been sacked as a broadcaster and they've just been ushered out the back door without a word said by anyone? Yet Sky News and Sky Sports News have produced in-depth reports, public statements from the head of Sky Sports, etc. It's almost as if they're glad they found an excuse to bin him. One thing some people may learn from this is that you take on Rupert Murdoch at your peril. Gray is suing the News of the World - another of Murdoch's media outlets - as part of the phone-tapping scandal, and it's odd and rather convenient how the initial leak was made (with Sky implying they won't be conducting an inquiry to discover the source) and then when everything kicked off, additional clips were then leaked to add extra weight.

That may be so, but I assume most of the time it would have been with tongue firmly in cheek, and as far as I'm aware none of us are the face of Premier League football coverage for the nation's most profitable broadcaster.

There was one clip I saw this morning where he, Keys and Charlotte Jackson were fitting their microphones, and Gray turns to Jackson and says "can you tuck my shirt in for me, Charlotte?" Edit: that one above!

Take a P45, son

Spot on. It could be a giraffe running the line for all I care, as long as whoever gets the job is competent enough to get the majority of the decisions correct.

While Colly's batting is appalling at the moment, he's still our best fielder and on the subcontinent his bowling will be very useful.

Wow. So much fail wrapped up in one post. Referees do not command respect by being "alpha males". Look at Uriah Rennie, initially he got rave reviews as he was built like a brick ****house and wouldn't take any **** from the players, but the facade got seen through pretty quickly when it turned out he was actually getting most decisions wrong. Howard Webb is going the same way, if he was well-respected, would Ryan Babel have posted that Photoshopped picture with him in a Man United shirt? Referees get respect from players by getting the big decisions right. Nothing more, nothing less. Take someone like David Elleray, he was an annoying ****, but he was generally right more often than not, and as a result was respected. Roger Milford on the other hand...

Unfortunately, because of the ridiculous scrutiny and abuse officials get at all levels of the game, there simply aren't enough men who want to do the job, hence why the FA has gone on a massive recruitment drive to get women involved in the mens game. I think there's now nearly 1000 female referees officiating in mens football.

Not a massive fan of Tyler, but he does despise Gray so gets a thumbs-up from me for that

The tone in their voices showed that they were both entirely serious, IMO.

Gray definitely doesn't, he continues to bang on about "daylight" between the defender and the attacker, when that was removed from the rules at least two years ago I'd be delighted to see the back of the pair of them, half-decent presenters who actually know what they're talking about and don't ask dumb questions just to get a layman's response are ten-a-penny - most of the SSN presenters would do a better job than Keys. Granted, it's harder to find decent pundits, but Sky do have a few on their books among the utter dross. Le Tiss, Alan McInally, Dion Dublin... all decent enough, but they only ever get the chance when one of their former teams are being shown, while the rest of the time we have to listen to Jamie Redknapp literally not knowing his arsehole from his elbow.

Prior is a better keeper than Davies at the moment. However, Prior shouldn't be opening the batting, stick Bell in with Strauss. If I remember rightly, the rule on injured players is you can replace them within your squad before the start of your first game in the competition, so they've still got a few weeks yet. Bresnan's bowling is probably quite well suited to the low skiddy pitches on the subcontinent. My first-choice XI would be: Strauss Bell Trott Pietersen Morgan Collingwood Prior Bresnan Broad Swann Anderson That said, I can quite easily see a scenario where either Bresnan or Broad is left out to accommodate Shahzad and/or Yardy.

My player summary, for what it's worth: Davis (3): confidence appears shot to bits, communication is appalling. Jointly at fault for the first goal. Richardson (1, for turning up): how the **** he got in the League One team of the season last season is a mystery to me. Get Butterfield back in there, he may not get forward too much, but at least he won't put 80% of his passes straight to the feet of the opposition. Harding (3): offered very little support by Dickson, but like Richardson seemed to be brilliant at finding a white shirt all afternoon. Fonte (4): like Davis, at fault for the first goal, didn't seem comfortable at all during the game. No idea what's going on there. Jaidi (6): won plenty in the air against Showunmi, but when he did get the ball at his feet, just lumped it long every time. Chamberlain (4): comfortably his worst game for us, barely got a kick and was drifting all over the pitch in the first half, which then left Richardson exposed against Jennings. Dickson (4): on the rare occasions he got on the ball, he looked alright, but failed to track back which then left Harding in trouble. Chaplow (0, didn't turn up): utterly anonymous. We effectively played with 10 men for the entire 90 minutes as he contributed nothing at all. Schneiderlin (5): at least tried to get the ball down and play it on the deck, but gave it away more often than not. Guly (5): not really the game for little flicks, and he and Lambert were often playing 50-60 yards apart, so when one of them won something in the air, it fell straight to the feet of a Tranmere defender. Lambert (6): worked hard but had no service. Always crowded out by at least two defenders, and wasn't close enough to Guly when he had the ball to link up. Re the penalty appeal, Barnard had a free shot at goal, 12 yards out, with no defenders close enough to block it after a great turn - why would he go down unless he was tripped?

First time all season

I suspect the number isn't very random at all, but is based on an algorithm which combines the date and time of the request, the card number and the account number. That data can easily be stored on the chip on the card, so it probably only needs to store two or three years' worth of codes for that card.

OK, I've had nothing from the OP which suggests to me that this is nothing more than a selfish money-making scheme. The reason the club don't do big signing sessions anymore is because the stuff invariably ended up on ebay - I'm not prepared to let the forum be used for personal profit.

You have 5 minutes to justify why this should remain... your time starts now.

The whole "Bent isn't worth £20-odd million" argument baffles me. Since he played his first Premier League game in 2005, only Wayne Rooney and Didier Drogba have scored more league goals than Bent (DD and WR both with 82 compared to DB's 81) - considering he's always played for lesser teams who clearly don't create as many chances for their strikers, that's pretty damn impressive. At the end of the day, a player is only ever worth what the buying and selling club agree he is worth. In the short-term, we could probably easily say that there is no price for Chamberlain as he's not for sale. While he's happy for that situation to remain, great, but there will obviously come a time when he feels he needs to move on. Hopefully that won't be for a while yet though.

Wasn't that game in August??