stevegrant

Well yeah, certainly not complaining given the amount of **** they got away with all afternoon. That incident that particularly annoyed me was when Gillespie blatantly dived over on the right touchline. The ref gave us the throw-in rather than the free-kick he was looking for, so he must have seen the dive, but didn't book him, and instead decided to book Trotman for having a go at him.

Thought it was a dive at the time and that video's not altered my opinion, to be honest!

On behalf of the admin and moderator team, I'd like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas. I don't think anyone could suggest that 2009 has been a boring year for SFC, albeit a pretty turbulent one, and I think I'll probably have universal agreement when I say that I hope 2010 will bring a much more positive outlook. We certainly seem to be heading in the right direction as far as that's concerned! Still, the conversation and debate on here hasn't been dull whether it's through the tough times or the slightly better recent times, so thankyou to everyone who has contributed this year. Without your participation, this forum simply wouldn't exist. I'd like to take this opportunity to mention that the forum will be undergoing some major upgrades in the not-too-distant future. I am hoping it'll all be done by the new year, but a lot of it depends on various problems with the newest version of the forum software being ironed out. The upgrade will involve a period of downtime for the forum, but I will try to schedule it for a time that is least inconvenient to the majority. Cheers Steve, Baj, Mik, Rob, Lee, Ray, Ali, Andy and Toby

Until the club goes into administration, the PL are powerless to impose any sanctions along those lines. They've done as much as they can in terms of the missed payments to other clubs with the transfer embargo, although I'd guess that another late payment of wages might force them into action. The FAPP test (love that acronym ) isn't designed to ascertain whether the person has money, it's designed to prevent fraudsters and the like from becoming owners or directors. The Israeli fella they've brought in to do the finances isn't officially on the board, although one of the articles linked above suggests that the Premier League are seeking to "clarify his position". Also worth remembering for libel reasons that the allegations of tax evasion are just that at the moment, allegations

It's the first on my list, tbf

Delighted that he's doing so well, to be honest. Partially from a selfish point of view as I'd been wanting him to be the next Saints manager every time the job became available after Strachan left Unfortunately, most football club chairmen in this country wouldn't look at the fantastic work he'd done in jobs abroad (both club and national teams), but based his entire aptitude on his admittedly dodgy spell at Blackburn. You don't get a job at Inter Milan without being pretty useful.

If the wicket at Durban is likely to turn, Rashid will be in. If not, it'll be Wright, IMO.

Yep, Part has arrived, but they've shifted his game back to the end

All of the players have finally arrived, so it's Game On!

Can someone do me a favour and find copies of the particular smileys you're after? Not promising to put them all on the list, but will probably do most of them.

Shaping up to be a very good game now. Why is it that our tail-enders have had to bail us out in the last two series? Bell and Trott's dismissals were ridiculous - they've both played with Harris at Warwickshire, they know he doesn't turn the ball!!

Given the reaction from within British Airways itself, I wouldn't have thought they'll get as big a vote next time around - it would be fair to say that all BA cabin crew have been given a somewhat "frosty" reception from their colleagues in the last couple of days.

Not a cat in hell's chance, there'd be hell to pay from the other 19 clubs. As I said a few days ago on another thread, the Premier League are probably hoping Pompey get relegated before they go into administration, for two main reasons. Firstly, they can wash their hands of it and say "not our problem"; secondly, to the ill-informed majority, it seems as though the Premier League is untarnished by it. The last team in England to withdraw mid-season was Aldershot in 1992 - largely thanks to this man. Bloke comes in promising money but it soon transpires he doesn't have a pot to p!ss in... where have we heard that one recently? It's certainly unlikely (although Stockport are in particularly dire straits right now), but I certainly wouldn't rule it out.

On the face of things, you would expect that Watford will ultimately be OK. They have two particularly prominent and wealthy fans, but both of them are involved to varying degrees with the club anyway (Lord Ashcroft is the largest shareholder and Elton John is the honorary president), and they're still f**ked! Pompey, I genuinely have no idea how that's going to pan out. Without some sort of RBS-esque bail-out, it's hard to see how they could get out of the situation they're in, or why anybody would put money into the club knowing that it'll disappear into one of many of the financial black holes.

Some time in the not-too-distant future, a relatively big club will go to the wall and there won't be someone to rescue them. Make no mistake, we got very very very lucky.

This

Good news.

Not really. It's got some clever stuff, but to be honest the only reason I bought it was for the massively extended battery life in comparison to Windows-based laptops, so I can get to London and back every day without having to charge it up between journeys. I use Windows at work (although I do connect to a Unix-based server quite extensively) and I've still got my Windows PC at home although it's somewhat dated now. The amount of software available for OS X is very limited, particularly when it comes to freeware (rather ironic when it's built upon a Unix/Linux architecture), and paid-for software appears to be that much more expensive on OS X compared to Windows. Ultimately, if you're comfortable with Windows and don't really need any of the stuff OS X offers which Windows doesn't, stick with Windows.

4 of the 15 stadia don't even exist at the moment, and another (the Olympic Stadium) isn't going to be suitable when it gets mostly demolished after the 2012 Games. What a shambles.

Just done it, I'm half a square above and half a square to the left of Arizona.

The Clipper's covered by Oyster PAYG from January as well

No, because they will have agreed terms on when they are paid. They may do what we did with the Theo Walcott and Gareth Bale transfers and negotiate a reduced but final settlement so they get more money immediately but less overall, but given that they'll be trying to negotiate with a club with a similar number of pots to p!ss in, I can't see how they'll get any agreement there.

Watford won't be due that much immediately because of the way transfer fees are generally paid these days. Most players are bought on hire purchase these days, so they'd only be due a relatively small percentage of the overall fees.

Previously, there's always been a limit of 10 options on a poll. I've only just noticed that there's an admin option to change this :oops:

Very much so. They issued a LSE statement a month or so ago saying that their chairman (who resigned prior to their AGM last night) loaned the club another £1m, and that they needed to find another £5.5m in order to get through the season. When Russo resigned last night (along with his brother), they also recalled their loans, which total £4.88m. Therefore, they need to find more than £10m this season. It's quite baffling considering their biggest shareholder is Lord Ashcroft, who I think is the 36th richest man in the UK