stevegrant

I think I'll pass, thanks!

The people of Portsmouth are world renowned for being reasonable human beings

Except following substantial and detailed scientific tests, it was proven that Murali's action was not illegal, but hey, don't let facts get in the way. I would still consider Warne a better bowler overall, primarily because a lot of Murali's wickets have come against Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, but that doesn't detract from the fact that he's been a fantastic bowler during his career.

Dimi's only played one game all year so isn't a massive loss in the sense that we've done reasonably without him anyway. Pothas is a loss mainly because of his contribution with the bat, I'm led to believe Matthew Bates is a better keeper. Cements Cork's captaincy for the rest of the year, anyway, which is a good thing IMO.

The "main" team are now also looking for an extra player or two, age and position no real issue, although defenders would be preferable, I guess.

Belhadj gone for £3m-ish, I think.

You've got two http:// portions in the URL there...

Yeah, the pitch was painted like that for the last game there against Brighton. Pretty sure the things in the Archers Road stand are stewards sat there, presumably having a pre-match briefing.

On the relatively rare occasions we actually got the ball, we looked alright, although played far too much long ball in the first half against Sochaux. Second half was a massive improvement.

Thun looked very impressive against us, although I suspect a lot of that will be due to the superior fitness levels. It was our first pre-season friendly and their last. They played Young Boys Berne, runners-up last season, on Saturday in their opening league game and led until the 94th minute. Not entirely sure how, but they managed to cram nearly 10,000 into the ground for that game! Sochaux kept possession well in the first half against us, but never really looked like scoring. Their first goal came out of the blue as nothing was really happening at that stage and the second was completely against the run of play. Yep, been tidying up this thread I'm not too fussed by the results in Switzerland, really. They have to be taken in the right context, insomuch as they were our first games this summer against teams who have been playing friendlies for a few weeks, and who are both in the top divisions of their respective leagues, whereas we are in the third division (albeit perhaps with a second division first-choice lineup). Defensively we looked shaky against Thun, but much more solid against Sochaux. Against both sides, we didn't really create that many chances, but that's the nature of playing opposition who are clearly better than we are. I exchanged a few words with Pardew as they came off the pitch at Thun and he was relieved it had ended as we'd been given the runaround for long spells of the game, but he did reply with "fair point" when I suggested it's no big deal when we're playing the two strongest opponents at the start of pre-season and their league season starts in 4 days time.

Some "interesting" reporting by the BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/p/portsmouth/8839169.stm Headline: Court agrees to bring forward HMRC Portsmouth appeal Number of references which suggest the court has agreed to bring forward the appeal: none Relevant quote from Lampitt: "I'm yet to hear the about the date for that hearing, but we should know within the next 24 hours." Open and closed case then

The weather was fine yesterday (albeit much more humid than other days), but they timed it right on Wednesday as there was a massive thunderstorm that evening. We went to Jungfraujoch, which is about 2000m higher than Schynige Platte (where I believe they went), and it was cloudy when we got to the Sphinx viewing platform, which is the highest point you can get to in Europe without physically climbing it. Could see plenty from about 150m lower though:

**** me, I thought the whole Rob Lloyd thing had been buried as a Pinnacle-esque scenario?!

First set of photos can be found here, I'll upload the rest from last night's game later (they all need resizing).

Yep

No, we are in an even cheaper option, a backpackers' hostel You shall be surprised, then, Mr Mintram (mostly on the basis that vodka is far too expensive)

Only had an ice cream from there, to be fair. Just had a meal here, salmon steak with saffron risotto

Trust me, £5 a pint is not massively expensive here! We're paying something like 8 or 9 CHF a pint, which is about £6. Everything's expensive here though, even an extra value meal is about £7

We went past a few petrol stations on the way into Thun this morning and their petrol seems to be about 10p a litre cheaper than in the UK. No idea how much it is in France these days though.

Someone I know has a space in their car for the trip, doing 2 nights in the Ibis in Fribourg for £100 all in.

5pm UK time, 6pm locally

There's occasional thunderstorms forecast for later today here, and if they're anything like the one we had last night, there's genuine danger the game might get called off Probably about 5 inches of rain fell in an hour 35 degrees all day until the big dark cloud came over at about 6pm.

Got a few decisions wrong, but generally coped well in very testing circumstances, IMO. I hate the collective ****athon over the Spanish team though, the perfect definition of bad winners. Yes, they were the best side, but they really didn't need to resort to playacting, rolling around all over the place, surrounding the ref, waving imaginary cards, etc.

Nope, I'm on an early sleazyjet flight out of Gatwick, arriving at 10.45

Trescothick 50 off 13 balls Danny Briggs giving us a chance though