stevegrant

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.

There are a limited number of show court tickets available on the day at least for the first week of the tournament. However, you need to be in the queue pretty damn early. A few years back, I managed to get one of the last tickets on Court 1, and I queued from about 5.30am. That one worked out perfectly as the previous days had suffered due to rain so began an hour earlier, and it was hot and sunny all day so play didn't finish until about 9.30pm. If I remember rightly, there is a small bit of space on Court 2 for normal ground pass holders, but the chances of actually getting in there are pretty slim. Probably only space for about 50 people, and I think it's standing room only.

I think Mardle's a decent choice as a wildcard pick because he'll always draw a crowd and get the atmosphere going. I suspect that's their main thinking on that one. Totally agree re Klaasen/Thornton though...

I think Mardle's a decent choice as a wildcard pick because he'll always draw a crowd and get the atmosphere going. I suspect that's their main thinking on that one. Totally agree re Klaasen/Thornton though...

I think the Premier League rules stipulate that a club has to be able to play games in temperatures as low as -3. They don't state how a club has to achieve this (i.e. it doesn't say "all clubs must have undersoil heating", unlike the SPL), so I'd be surprised if Pompey were hit with anything more than a trivial fine. If anything, they should just be made to reimburse any fan (either home or away) who was left out of pocket having already booked train tickets etc, rather than have the FA/Premier League profit from it.

Or perhaps he's referring to their FIRST 8 games of the season under Ramos where they had 2 points from 8 games - perhaps it's almost a veiled defence of him as the performances since Redknapp has arrived (apart from the inevitable honeymoon period) have generally still been rubbish. Of course, he's clearly still trying to cover his own arse for what will be an amusing second half of the season for most neutrals. Interesting that the only other time where he publicly slagged off his players was when he was in charge of us, and we all know how that one ended...

£15m well spent by 'Arry judging by yesterday's non-appearance by Defoe It felt really strange cheering a goal scored by Wigan!

Torino, if memory serves me correctly, where he lasted about 4 months before being sacked.

1997/98 Saints 1-0 Man United 1999/2000 Man United 3-3 Saints (I'd class that as on a par with beating them at home) 2000/01 Saints 2-1 Man United 2003/04 Saints 1-0 Man United 2000/01 Saints 3-2 Arsenal 2002/03 Saints 3-2 Arsenal 1997/98 Liverpool 2-3 Saints 1999/2000 Saints 2-1 Liverpool 2001/02 Saints 2-0 Liverpool 2003/04 Liverpool 1-2 Saints 2003/04 Saints 2-0 Liverpool 2004/05 Saints 2-0 Liverpool 1997/98 Saints 1-0 Chelsea 2000/01 Saints 3-2 Chelsea 2001/02 Chelsea 2-4 Saints How's that?

And John Terry's fantastic save...