stevegrant

4-1, if I remember rightly, Scott and I were clean through 3 or 4 times between us only to be cynically hacked down by one of their centre-backs safe in the knowledge that as it's only a friendly, they won't get sent off. They were also a bunch of whinging tossers.

We won't be playing QPR. What's the point in playing a so-called "friendly" when all the opposition do is cheat?

As much as it pains me to say it, I agree entirely with this, so I'd rather Pompey win today.

On who?

That would be against FA/Football League rules, as you would effectively be allowing third-party control over the player's appearances. It's a bit different when the player is on loan and therefore cannot play against their parent club, because by him playing in that game, there's a clear conflict of interests. On this occasion, there would be no such conflict as he's owned by Fiorentina, not Norwich.

On what basis? While he's clearly not the best striker in the Championship, he's still our top scorer by some distance, which isn't a complete disgrace given that he's either been playing as a lone frontman with bugger all support or as a wide midfielder giving no support to a different lone frontman for the vast majority of the season. 9 goals in 30 starts isn't a hideous record by any stretch of the imagination in a team that's only scored 29 goals in all competitions this season. He says with his 4021st post on Saintsweb without a hint of irony...

Could be a wireless network card receiver?

Oh, and here's a rather amusing article which sums up the hypocrisy of the likes of Emma Thompson and Alastair McGowan pleading "green" issues... http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1507&Itemid=59

The problem with the Thames Estuary site, as far as I can tell, is that a) you'd only be able to take off and land at the east end of the runway as the west end would then get in the way of flight paths from the other London airports, and b) the environmental issues in terms of endangered species etc are far greater in that location than they are on the proposed site of T6/R3 at Heathrow.

Friday 24th to Sunday 26th July.

Sean O'Driscoll.

****ing arses. I was banking on us at least being able to beat them at Carrow Road next week before they ditched him! :mad:

I think I read somewhere that the FA already takes a 5% cut of all transfer fees anyway, but of course bugger all of that filters down past Brian Barwick's jug of goose fat.

That £66m is as of the accounts from June 2007. I would strongly suspect that figure has increased since then. If they stay up, they might have a slim chance of avoiding financial oblivion - as you say, they've then got another year's worth of Premier League money. However, they're still going to possess a hell of a lot of players on astronomical wages, and even if they trimmed their squad so it was running at the bare minimum, they'd still be making an annual loss, IMO. Of course, they'd then have a squad without a hope in hell of keeping them up as well...

It'll never happen. Turkeys voting for Christmas springs to mind. Don't forget, the group formerly known as the G14 threatened creating a breakaway European tournament if UEFA scrapped the SECOND group stage from the Champions League. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on which way you look at it) it never came to that and it was resolved amicably, but there's not a cat in hell's chance that any of the top clubs in the big European leagues would agree to a reduction in a) the number of qualifying teams from each country, or b) the number of guaranteed games in the competition. Now that IS a good idea... This sort-of happens already, particularly to the Championship, with the bizarre "solidarity" payment that gets distributed each season. When we finished 6th, we got £1.3m (or something like that) as part of this. Clearly there's bugger all that gets distributed below the Championship though. Even the Sky broadcasting deal is massively skewed (70% Championship, 18% League One, 12% League Two).

Not only circumventing it, but possibly being able to mount legal challenges against it. The clubs would (arguably rightly) argue that it's up to them how they run their business and by imposing a cap on the amount they are allowed to spend on player wages is a restriction of trade. The idea of salary capping is a fine one in principle (albeit about 20 years too late), but I don't see how it would work in practice. The aim of it is, presumably, to return the game to a bit more of a level playing field in terms of the competitions, but the big clubs are already so far ahead of the rest that it seems almost impossible to reel that in. Would such a cap be based on percentage of turnover? If so, the likes of Arsenal, ManYoo, Chelsea, Liverpool and even Spurs, Newcastle and Villa are so far ahead of the rest that all that does is prevent the chasers from speculating every now and then (like Pompey have done, to reasonable short-term success but while potentially doing irreversible damage in the long-term), so the gap between the haves and the have nots would only increase exponentially. Alternatively, a cap might be put in place for a fixed value. If that happens, what do the big clubs do with the countless millions they would invariably have left over? Spend it on transfer fees? All that would achieve is to move the problem to a different area of football finance. Also, while the capped value would be comfortable for the big clubs, for the small clubs it would still be putting their finances at risk, but because they're allowed to spend up to that amount, they will do their best to make sure they do spend it, in order to feel as though they're not being left behind. Ultimately, it's the smaller clubs that are going to have the biggest problems, but I fear that this would only make things worse. While a lot of the financial problems can be traced back to the creation of the Premier League in 1992 (or the beginning of football as Sky would have you believe), arguably it goes back a lot further, back to the days when the big clubs basically forced the Football League into accepting a rule change whereby gate receipts were kept by the home club rather than the previous arrangement where they were shared. Greed in football is not a new occurrence, it's simply highlighted more these days because there's a couple of extra 0's on the end of every number.

There's a technology website, Experts Exchange (http://www.experts-exchange.com) - until a couple of years ago, the hyphen wasn't in that URL...

Yep, an unenviable task for whoever has that job, in all honesty, and one where that person is going to be taking criticism from various angles regardless of what decisions are made. Agreed. It would also be useful to establish which players' contracts expire in the summer. Players under the age of 24 will remain on a rolling contract as long as the club has offered them a new deal on at least the same terms until another club decides to sign them, but then we would be due a compensation payment from that club. Players who have been here longer will be worth more as far as the tribunal is concerned as they have cost more to bring them through the ranks, regardless of their "market" value. Fortunately, Gasmi is only on loan, so if it's decided he's not what we're after, there's no commitment on our part to sign him, even though we do have the option to buy at the end of the season.

Thus creating much-needed jobs... although of course, I suspect most of the unemployed will see a job such as this as "below" them, so they'd rather sit on their £50 a week or however much JSA pays these days. I saw on the news recently that engineers had tested a flight using a 737 powered partially (50%, I think) by biofuel, including a mid-air engine power-down, and it worked perfectly.

Firstly, I never said recycling was hard to do. I said I don't have time to be messing around sorting things into different bags/boxes. I get up at 6, leave home at 6.40, get home at 7.30pm, dinner for about 8ish. Usually there's washing or some sort of tedious cleaning to do, so once that's done, I'd quite like a bit of time to do something I want to do. I'm also lazy. Ergo, everything goes in one bag and in one bin. Sorry. OK, so the slightly different phrase of "climate change" is more accurate. That doesn't change the fact that aircraft contribute far less to this than motor vehicles and trains, and yet you're suggesting that the government pour money into developing a high-speed rail network (I presume it's not going to be a mag-lev one, given that we don't seem to be able to get anything good like that to work in this country) that would cause years of disruption to an already-stretched system, with the net result being a) more CO2 emissions and b) even higher fares for passengers as "it's got to be financed somehow".

Recycling is down to individual choice, IMO. Personally, I don't do it, predominantly on the basis that I a) don't have much time as it is due to a long commute, and b) am pretty lazy. Energy saving lightbulbs and that sort of thing actually save the consumer money, so I don't see why people would just say "well I'm not going to bother with those now they've built a new runway at Heathrow". The whole "global warming" thing is a load of guff, for my money. The earth has evolved over millions of years through different periods of climate change, and right now is no different. In fact, the phrase "global warming", based on the last 3 months (I've played only one Sunday League game in that time due to the weather), is complete crap as it's been noticeably colder, rather than warmer. The climate is affected more by natural evolutionary changes than "greenhouse" gases, and the cumulative output from car and train engines is, from what I can remember reading, far greater than from aircraft. The number of flights available at any given time will be dictated by market forces. If the demand is there, they'll lay on more flights, which in turn will create more jobs and money will be recycled within our economy. Heathrow's two runways are completely full, all day, every day. That is a major disaster waiting to happen. Lightening the load on the corridors of airspace used by the two existing runways is a good thing. There is no guarantee that more and more flights would be squeezed onto the third runway - airlines cannot afford to buy more planes or to only partially fill the flights they provide.

I think "survive" is probably a bit strong, but as far as I'm aware, it's the main European hub for the world's major airlines. If Heathrow stagnates (it's pretty much at full capacity with the two runways it has now, so they can't really expand it without another runway), the argument seems to be that one of the other large airports in Europe (many of which have expanded in recent years) would take over as the European hub, which would then have numerous potential knock-on effects for our economy.

Why would that be the right decision?

I suspect that may have had more to do with the lack of credible opposition, to be fair. It was Al Gore, wasn't it, who ran against him in the last election?

No great loss, really, and if that's true, surely he's just going from one subs bench to another as I can't see how he'd get past Richard Wright. He's got absolutely no chance of a game here while Davis continues to be in such good form.