stevegrant

Not really, what you're suggesting is that, despite being debt-free (to external finance providers, at least, ML will rightly want a return on his initial investment over time), if ML gets fed up and sells the club, we're up **** creek again. The simple fact is that, unless we go on a Pompey-esque spending bender between now and that point, we wouldn't be.

If ML did take that route and sells up, he's got to find a buyer. Alternatively, he could give it away. Either way, I don't see how that situation would require a "Saints Aid II" that you're suggesting

Yep, if they're too much in the middle-ground all the time then I would assume nobody would buy the paper as it would be a bit boring. I don't think they've been particularly starved of good stories in the last year, the fallout from the takeover and Wembley events alone probably filled a month's worth of copy between them. They've also had plenty of ammunition to print a hell of a lot more negative stories than they have done - obviously there was the Pardew situation at the end of the season which ran for a while, but aside from the Echo ban, that's the only negative story they've run with as far as I can remember.

That's not quite true when you look at more local media stories, particularly sport-related ones. Certainly in the nationals, scandal sells many more copies, but at a local level, success sells more. I would imagine the editions featuring the Liebherr takeover and the Wembley win were the Echo's biggest-selling editions in the last year or so, by some distance.

Without wishing to fight Stu's corner (or anyone else's for that matter), I'm pretty sure he said at the time (and has repeated enough times since) that he had 15 peoples' season tickets and therefore got two each, as every season ticket holder was entitled to...

Well they should concentrate on releasing a product that is as bug-free as is practical on the day of launch, like every other software house, first and foremost. While I appreciate the relatively time-sensitive nature of this particular game, any other product's release would be held back until it was actually ready. The next one's called Football Manager 2011, so what's the big deal with actually releasing it in 2011 if it enables the developers enough time to iron out all the problems? And then, even if it's essentially last year's game with updated data, but near-enough bug-free, they'll still shift enough copies just on the strength of the brand name alone. They don't tend to implement a "big" new feature every year anyway, the 3D match engine probably took at least 3 or 4 years of development in a separate project before it was even put forward as a new feature for FM09, so they don't need to concentrate on a "headline" new feature, just get the game working out of the box.

They've always done so before with no issue... why not now?

Ignoring the bug that made FM10 unplayable then, I take it? Knowing how software is developed, I'm pretty sure that the vast majority of code for FM is re-used (or tweaked at the most) year after year. They are not rewriting an entire game from scratch every year. As a result, the actual development time should be fairly minimal - or at least it would be if the legacy code actually worked in the first place, hence they probably spend a large amount of time each year fixing the bugs that went into the last release, and then don't have time to write the new stuff, test those bits individually and then test everything together. As for SI employing a large number of internal and external testers, that doesn't mean a great deal unless those testers know what they're looking for. How many people do you reckon apply to beta test FM solely on the basis that they'll get to play it before anyone else does? The answer = ****ing loads. That's why they have to employ so many, because it's impossible to tell which ones know how to test a game properly.

Of course most games have bugs, but most games also have a full QC testing cycle rather than relying on its customer base to provide bug reports after the product has already been released. Memory leak using the 3D match engine on OS X. 3 games in, the game crashes. And don't say "don't use the 3D match engine then", as that's one of the main features of the game

Early in September, I think Radio Solent said a while back...

Not that I'm aware of, I haven't been on there for ages though. I was having a decent discussion with a couple of people on there a while back and then a few of the resident mongs waded in and I got bored of it all.

Not true They could remain in administration for the whole of this season if necessary without any penalties from the Football League.

Except for lots of bugs.

:vuvu:

Sheffield Wednesday issued with a winding up order by HMRC...

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.