stevegrant

Mike, I don't think anyone would be making anything of it at all if it didn't have such an obvious impact on what was actually going on on the pitch. You've got a young player who's only been a pro for 18 months stepping up to take a match-winning penalty in a sudden-death situation and then some little **** decides he's going to act the idiot for a laugh. I'll tell you one thing, I wasn't laughing. Antonio looked confident when he walked up, but he clearly wanted to get it over and done with. That delay was critical, IMO. Fortunately, we got away with it thanks to Bart's excellent third save.

I thought we were appalling in the second half, to be honest. Probably on a par with Swindon away for ineptitude and lack of ideas. Lambert and Lallana were both man-marked out of the game. Antonio gave us a bit more impetus when he came on, but Norwich's tactic of "kick anything that moves" in the last 15 minutes didn't help us much.

We had a free-kick right by our own corner flag. If he'd just got on with the game, he'd have been back defending on his 18-yard line and then back right in the thick of it when the ball went further. When you've got a one-goal lead in the last minute of injury time and the opposition launch a free-kick into the area, you get everyone back, especially if they're as good as Holt is in the air.

What a mental end to the game. Got to be honest, we were woeful from the 20th minute onwards, but it made a change for the ball to bounce kindly for us in the penalty area for the equaliser just like it had done for both of Norwich's goals. Also, credit for the equaliser must also go to Grant Holt. While he was rolling around holding his face (when Antonio's arm had hit his ribs), we got on with the game and the ball just happened to fall right where he would have been defending...

Just found it on the Apple Store site - obviously didn't go through by selecting any options etc though. When I got mine, I bought it in the store in West Quay.

RMT took an absolute pounding for their strike earlier this year, including from many of their own members. Thousands of RMT members crossed the picket line, and of course the railways and tube could still call upon the members of the other rail union (can't remember its name), so a fairly reasonable service was running throughout the strike.

That wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. A quite frightening prospect for a now-penniless League Two club getting gates of just over 7000 trying to find the money to pay the transfer fees they assumed the "rich" former owners had paid. They also paid significant money to Colchester for Johnnie Jackson - I presume I'm not going out on much of a limb to suggest that they've not paid any of that fee yet either. The Football League really are an utter disgrace for not performing stricter checks on these shysters who have now been allowed to ride off into the sunset without any recourse whatsoever.

It won't be far off, IMO. They paid more than £1m for Kasper Schmeichel - with the money they were throwing around in August, he'll have expected a pretty big wedge to drop to that level of football. This is a good blog on the Notts County fiasco.

http://store.apple.com/uk/browse/campaigns/education_pricing?mco=MTM3NDY2Njg

Looks like BA have got lawyers on the case. Presumably one of them is "Mr Loophole" as they believe there are "irregularities" in the strike ballot which they claim led to staff who had already left or were in the process of leaving BA. Oops.

Back on topic, please. It's been dealt with.

As Tommo says, refurbs are direct from Apple. If you know a student, get them to buy the Macbook for you - £100 discount. When I got mine, they were also running an offer where you could get an iPod Nano (then priced £120) for £15 when you bought it in the same transaction. See if they're doing anything similar now...

The Football League brought in a "Fit and Proper Persons" test before the Premier League did. They are both equally as pointless, as the Notts County and Pompey situations prove.

Quote from Ian Murray's column in the Echo: "However, if a meeting with Saints' new boss was required, then a meeting we would seek. But phone calls to his office as requested went unanswered."

What an absolute disgrace of a situation Notts County find themselves in. Hans Backe's just resigned after 7 weeks in charge, and apparently the players have been told that there's only enough money to pay them for December and January.

I've seen no comments from Unite that make the timing of the strike justified. They would get a hell of a lot more sympathy had they waited until the new year. They are using the time of the year as emotional blackmail, and quite frankly it's not on. Over a million passengers could be affected, which could mean over a million people not being able to visit their families and friends over the Christmas period. Ultimately, if BA end up having to refund the fares of those who are affected (as they have done in the past), it wouldn't surprise me if BA feel they have to wield the axe over a hell of a lot more staff than they were originally planning to. In the current climate, people should be f**king glad they've got any form of employment, let alone one in which they are, IMO, treated pretty well, particularly compared to the staff at their competitors.

Will do something along those lines for goals - assists are a little bit more subjective, so probably won't bother with those (and there's very little historical data for them as well, and I plan to create and maintain a large database going back a number of years)

The smileys should be updated/changed along with the big upgrade in the new year

Well you're clearly not bothering, so what's the point, really?

It's a dangerous precedent regardless of the reason. Read the multitude of reasons listed elsewhere on this thread, particularly concerning the worth placed on the freedom of the press in this country. You don't know the reason either, and yet you've already acted as judge, jury and executioner on Cortese's behalf... you can't have it both ways.

I couldn't disagree more, to be honest. Each talking point should be taken on its own merits. Just because Cortese's past actions have received widespread praise, that doesn't mean the bloke's infallible and won't make mistakes. In the same vein, just because the Echo isn't to everyone's tastes, that doesn't mean that they aren't to be taken seriously. Banning the press sets a very dangerous precedence - even more so that it's all seemingly over a positive story, a story that seems to have been completely lost among this ********. Murray was wrong to use Lowe as a stick, I don't think you'll find many arguments to the contrary, and I suspect he's probably not helped the Echo's cause there.

And yet for the best part of 5 days, you've been clear in your mind that Cortese is clearly right to ban the Echo, despite not actually hearing from SFC as to why they've come to that decision - not hypocritical at all, oh no...

There's a fundamental difference between the way the news agencies (such as PA, Reuters, etc) work and the way newspapers work - particularly regional ones. The Echo would never use the "wires" for Saints stories as the agencies tend to only write 5 or 6 paragraphs on any particular story, and almost always without images - the papers generally don't want more copy than that, otherwise they have to spend time re-editing it to fit the limited space they've set aside for that story - and the Echo would normally write much more in-depth articles as they have more pages to fill on the subject. The plans are part of a public document - as a result, I'm not entirely sure they're actually subject to copyright in terms of reproducing parts of them as part of news reporting. If someone was taking those artists impressions and using them as the basis of their own document on something else and passing it off as their own work, THEN there would be an issue, but that's not the situation the club and the Echo find themselves in.

It *should* be fine - after all, it comfortably meets the minimum spec, and the minimum spec should be what is required for key features to run. The 3D match engine is a pretty key feature, I'd say.

Yes, I'm running it in 3D mode - that was one of the more interesting features that made me buy it, to be honest, as I didn't get last year's one out of principle after the shambles they caused.