stevegrant

So he was rewarded for making the correct decision in a high-profile incident? No problem there for me. Clearly there were some referees who were out of their depth even in the group stage, and as a result weren't retained for the knockout stages. From there, you would assume the officials from the two games on Sunday won't get another game after their blatant errors, but after that I'm not sure there have been much between the rest of them. The only reason the "good" job Howard Webb has done has been noticed is because the English commentator has made a point of emphasising what a "good" job he and his assistants have been doing. Praising them to the hilt for getting a marginal offside decision correct, whoopee-doo, strangely the foreign officials rarely get the same sort of glowing praise when they make a similar call. Webb dealt with the flashpoint in the Italy v Slovakia game very well, but I wouldn't call it "ridiculous" if he doesn't get the final.

Mine spectacularly flopped. Recovered it all with individual game bets in the second round, though.

Paul Groves and David Coles are rumoured to be joining West Ham's coaching staff after they failed to turn up for pre-season training today

I would also have thought that their newly-appointed Chief Executive should be conducting the transfer deals now...

Sorry guys, can't have that sort of thing on here, potentially very libellous.

I'll be amazed if there isn't a significant sell-on clause in Boateng's deal at least.

Not entirely sure why it's positioned where it is really, but you can change it for each post if you "go advanced" when you reply (like I've done for this post as an example) and select a different post icon. I could probably get rid of it, to be honest, it doesn't serve much of a purpose IMO.

Yes, and you have a number of choices. You have chosen to remain here and indeed to pay for the extra benefits that entails. No, I handpicked 20 or 30 people to have a play around with it in a development environment in the two weeks before it went live. Sorry I didn't pick you, sadly I just don't value your opinion. You may have guessed by now. As a note for others who didn't get picked, sorry also. Chances are I do value your opinion, but I only wanted a relatively small number of people to do the testing. No. Do all customers of all businesses get to have a say in how they're run? If so, what's the point in having people run it? Let's run Tesco by asking every customer to tell them how to conduct their business - you'd get 5 million different opinions. I've been either a moderator or an admin of this forum and its predecessors for nearly 7 years, I like to think that experience has taught me a lot about how a forum works well. My main job (i.e. what I probably should be doing right now rather than responding to you) also helps here, as it involves designing, developing and maintaining websites. Again, the experience and knowledge gained as taught me a lot about what makes a website work for the business it is intended for. As a result, I trust my own judgement, and that of Baj, who is in the same industry, to make the right calls on how the site works. How can you say it was a "common view" when 20-25 people said they didn't like it (although some also added the caveat of "I'm sure it'll grow on me") out of about 3500 active users? There are plenty of other sites, they just don't have as many users on them. Why do you think that might be?

I've been talking about the major upgrade for at least 8 months on various parts of this forum, and everyone was also informed a week or so before the actual upgrade took place about the date and time it was taking place. You had the option when the site was launched nearly two years ago to exercise your right not to pay the £5 annual subscription, and have had another opportunity since then when it was up for renewal. You chose not to do so on both occasions. Therefore, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that you're fairly satisfied with what's on offer. Nobody's holding a gun to your head. Yes, we do, but we're a little bit different to Southampton FC, would you not agree? If people don't like the way this place is run, they'll go to another forum which is more aligned to their views on how it should be run... not quite the same situation with a football club, is it?

Well it would seem sensible not to believe everything he says without question, wouldn't it? Actually, don't answer that.

History tells us to take things said by people in charge of Southampton FC, both past and present, with a heavy pinch of salt.

I genuinely don't believe we've been funded from Markus Liebherr's pocket at all.

I'd heard (admittedly third-hand information) that this was the case, but that's not - as far as I can see - the original point of the thread. It appears that the matchday car parks have increased in price by more than 50%. I'm sure some will claim that it actually costs the club £70 to print a pass, put it in an envelope and post it out, though, such is the nature of some on here.

Presumably McDonalds didn't have a 200-space car park with nobody using it during the week though...

I've been led to believe that Thomas will be going to either Norwich or Barnsley.

Suspect that's mostly because there's not a great deal to talk about at the moment, I guess we'll have to wait to see how the season pans out to assess the success or otherwise of the blog section. FWIW, I put together my first effort yesterday

There isn't, but that's probably not a bad idea...

Why would people be calling for Shearer? He proved in his short spell in charge of Newcastle that he can't hack it as a manager. It's very much the "English Disease" that we believe that only an Englishman can do a good job as England team manager. As has been demonstrated on this thread already, there are only two English managers in the top 10 of the Premier League, and with those two individuals' connections to brown envelopes, they won't be getting the job any time soon. Until more English coaches get the top UEFA licences and use them to coach young players, rather than senior pros (there are less than 150 people in this country with the UEFA "A" licence, and none of them coach at youth levels, compared with 640 out of 750 "A" licence holders in Spain coaching children), English managers are likely to be left behind at the highest level.

And that's a large part of the problem, the weight of expectation and pressure is mental. You've got papers who claim to be "getting behind the boys" on one hand and then on the other they're setting up some sort of sting operation to expose the then-captain four months before the world cup starts. That's going to help... Then there's the various parties who are only interested in looking after number one, they'll all grow Teflon shoulders and get away without much criticism if they can help one of the papers get a scoop on Capello. I'm fairly patient, so I've not lost faith yet, but he's got some work to do before the Bulgaria game in September, that's for sure. I've expanded a bit (ok, quite a lot ) on my thoughts about the root cause(s) in the blog section: http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/entry.php?17-The-Post-Mortem-that-never-ends

It can do... in the "Thread tools" menu at the top of the thread, select "Subscribe to thread" and then choose whichever notification type you want to receive.

You can subscribe to individual threads, but I don't think you can do so for individual posts.

:vuvu:

Ultimately a complete waste of time because even in the unlikely event of your forecast being correct, I'm not going to revert the changes I've made. This forum isn't run by a democracy.

Not even the guarantee of a seat, it would seem...

Haven't the foggiest, in all honesty. It baffled me, although looking back at the qualifiers, we flattered to deceive a bit, IMO. Only 4 clean sheets in 10 games, conceding goals to absolute ****e like Kazakhstan (particularly the manner of it, Cole basically handing it to their striker on a plate) should probably have had alarm bells ringing a little bit sooner. I think he got caught between fitting players into the best system and picking the best players and adapting the system to suit them. In the end, we ended up with a mixture of neither and both in equal measures. I've got no problem with him doing that, solely on the basis that he's the one player you would back to produce something out of nothing over anyone else in the squad. The Heskey thing is bizarre, but I think it has a lot to do with the fact that he played in so many of the qualifiers that we won, ignoring the likelihood that we would still have won those games if either Crouch or even Darren Bent had played instead of him. International tournaments hold a set of challenges Capello won't have experienced as a club manager - being in the same location with the players all day, every day for the best part of a month for a start. I guess that familiarity is something Capello's famously never done, he's always maintained a distance from his players to emphasise his authority. Perhaps the closeness has clouded his judgement somewhat?