stevegrant

No replacement, I gave two players the opportunity to have full 90 minutes instead as there didn't appear to be any takers.

Partially. I'd probably attribute more to the lack of fitness at the start of the season due to the uncertainty and Pardew's relatively late appointment. The points deduction was a psychological barrier as well as a numerical one, but we were in winning positions in a number of those early-season games only to throw points away late on, so I think the fitness and stamina was a bigger contributor. Points dropped against Millwall, Brentford and Stockport due to lack of fitness... those 6 points would have seen us move ahead of Huddersfield tomorrow night if we were to beat Oldham.

The BBC highlights showed what I assume was the exact same clip, blatant elbow by their player (who did get booked), but no real complaints about Morgan getting red for kicking out really. Pretty stupid thing to do right under the linesman's nose.

Several kinds of pots and kettles being thrown around with that comment...

The Montjuic really was a terrible ground, no atmosphere, the stands are miles away from the pitch, no wonder Espanyol still didn't even fill it when they played Barcelona.

Can also go from Waterloo East, which will probably be easier for those of us coming from Southampton.

I'm impressed, Nick, that you've managed to make the single most idiotic point in this entire thread. Well done.

The thing that baffles me the most is that all debt is supposed to be frozen during administration and any additional costs are to be met as and when they fall due, so all PAYE and NI costs since they went into administration have been paid on time, hence the debt to HMRC hasn't increased. Yet the overall debt has leapt from £60m to more than £100m in the last 6 weeks...

Yeah, pretty much. Tempted to drink in London and make my way to Gillingham at the last possible moment.

It's Gillingham, what do you expect?!

You're probably right, although the principle still applies, IMO

All of which says more about the state of our society than anything else, really... There needs to be an incentive for those on JSA to take jobs like that rather than remain on handouts from the state, rather than just sweeping the acts of a load of criminals (which is essentially what they are) under the carpet. As MC said above, it sets a rather dangerous precedent - as long as they're doing a job that nobody else seems to want, we'll let them do what they like.

On what grounds? Surely an illegal immigrant is still in this country illegally, regardless of whether they've been here 10 minutes or 10 years?

All bar two (I think) of the teams in the Welsh Premier League are part-time. Also, the ability level is on par with Blue Square South, at best.

They're associate members of the FA now, and the situation with the Welsh teams is a hell of a lot different to that in Scotland in that Wales doesn't have its own professional league, whereas Scotland does.

I don't see any reason why we need to include Scottish teams in English competitions, really.

I wouldn't, simply because the FA Cup is a big enough competition already without adding another 42 teams into the mix. If anything, I would expect the early rounds of the competition proper to become regionalised to cut down on travelling costs for smaller clubs.

I'd say that Arsenal have a multitude of problems. One is certainly that van Persie is their only genuinely world-class striker and is often injured. Another is that they appear to have really **** medical staff who are incapable of diagnosing injuries properly. If they'd realised RVP needed an operation as soon as he returned from international duty, he'd have been fit to play in the two games against Barcelona. Perhaps not enough for them to have beaten them, but he'd have then been match fit for last night - his impact when he came on showed what he's capable of, even when half-fit. They also have a goalkeeper who can't command his penalty area, have had to rely on Mikael Silvestre far too often this season in defence and the style of football that they play invites more tackles from the opposition which therefore induces more injuries.

This is getting tedious. Mostly because of the ****ing ridiculous number of email reports *someone* is sending, clogging up my inbox.

Strange, I don't remember you complaining when Gaydamak bought the club with blood money and bankrolled a rise up the table and to winning silverware. At the end of the day, Pompey fans only now give a **** that their club's owned and run by a bunch of crooks because they've been relegated and the money's run out. It's too late now. If they were that bothered about the "fairness" of it all, they'd have listened to all those (not just Saints fans) who pointed out the obvious problems in 2006 and tried to stop it happening in the first place. After all, Milan Mandaric would never have sold the club to someone the fans didn't want, would he...?

Yeah, sorry about that. Absolutely no idea what happened, other than knowing that the host's main website was also down so I'm presuming it was a datacentre-wide problem.

According to YouGov, they've got a fifth of the electorate at the moment, only 11 percentage points behind Labour.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8619630.stm

They've been given another 7 days to pay, the club say the cheque is in the post