stevegrant

Apparently they've made a complete balls-up of the new product registration/activation procedure they've tried to implement for this year's release. It seems that, in order to run the game, you need to have already activated it. If you don't have an internet connection, you can do it over the phone. Good to see that SI are moving with the times and doing away with all that old-fashioned DRM and copy-protection nonsense... They've had problems with: a) some of the characters in the product key printed on the back of the user guide being illegible/ambiguous; b) activation phone line simply cutting users off after they've entered their product key c) the download service stating that users don't have an internet connection, despite said users posting on internet forums at the same time Oops.

I agree there. While I'm neither pro or anti Lowe, per se, you only have to look at the contrast of opinion on him on here to see that his very presence has divided people. It's what happens at a hell of a lot of clubs every single summer, things get built up and then after most of the season tickets have been bought a star player gets sold or some sort of major change is brought in. Alan Shearer was sold to Blackburn on 24th July 1992 - the league season started three weeks later. Also, I don't understand how you (or anyone) didn't forsee a major overhaul of the playing staff in the summer. In the second half of last season, everyone was going on and on saying that we should be playing the kids because "at least they'll be energetic and look like they care, and they won't cost us anywhere near as much money". We shipped out lots of high earners, promoted a lot of the younger players who were hungry for first-team action, which was exactly what loads of people were asking for and exactly what was necessary in pure financial terms.

Or they just make them up. Which is precisely why, in my opinion, they feel the need to keep on the club's side. The Echo probably needs SFC more than SFC needs the Echo.

I think you'll find Leon Crouch was the chairman at the time of Burley's departure. I have vague recollection of the Echo (might have been Simon Carter specifically rather than the paper as a whole) being banned by SFC for a short period of time when they suggested that Burley was on the verge of being sacked around this time last year, so it's got nothing to do with who is in charge really. FloridaMarlin's excellent post above sums up the situation very well for me. Basically, it's not "the Echo are being censored by SFC", it happens with every single newspaper/football club relationship across the country.

As per the subject... have they actually fixed any of the ever-so-slightly fundamental bugs that were in the demo?

That said, he's putting on a reasonable score himself... would have been nice if he'd allowed KP to stay there with him!

It's ridiculous. He plays with such maturity for Essex and the Lions team, yet whenever he gets a(nother) chance with the full England team, he does something stupid like that.

85 players have played a league game for SFC since relegation: Baird Bale Baseya Belmadi Bennett Best Bialkowski Blackstock Brennan Chaplow Cork Cranie Dailly Davies Davis Delap Dyer Euell Folly Fuller Gillett Gobern Guthrie Hajto Hammill Higginbotham Holmes Idiakez Ifil James John Jones Kenton Miller Kosowski Lallana Lancashire Licka Lucketti Lundekvam Makin Madsen McCann McGoldrick Mills, J Mills, M Niemi Oakley O'Halloran Ormerod Ostlund Pahars Paterson Pearce, A Pearce, I Pekhart Pele Pericard Perry Poke Potter Powell Prutton Quashie Rasiak Robertson Safri Saganowski Schneiderlin Skacel Smith, P Smith, R Surman Svensson Thomas Thomson Viafara Vignal Walcott White Wise Wotton Wright, J Wright, R Wright-Phillips

1024x768 is still by far the most popular. I've just tried the OS at that resolution and it does fit the full width of the screen. Looks like they've fixed the blank box problem (now PaddyPower advert). The alignment at the bottom is a tricky one because IE and the other browsers handle the display of tables so differently. In Firefox, for example, the league table snapshot looks as though it should fit another two rows in to make it line up, whereas in IE it'll only fit one more. There's an add-on called AdBlock Plus.

Depends on the screen resolution, I guess. I think it is wider than the last version, although it doesn't quite fit the entire width of the screen on my PC. It does look a lot better in IE, mainly (as someone else has already pointed out) due to the lack of an advert blocker.

We don't get any say in the scheduling of away games, sadly. Otherwise, I'd have thought we'd have vetoed the Palace game being moved. That said, there's not going to be any advantage to either side as we both play on Saturday at 3pm so both teams have the same recovery period, and it will then give both teams an extra day's recovery for the following week's games against Burnley and Doncaster respectively.

The weekend's games are now there. Sorry about tonight's FA Cup game, didn't realise there was a replay being played so soon!

I think I still have the signed VfB Stuttgart shirt I bought at that auction about 9 years ago

Computer components are so inconsistent that it's hard to pin a timeframe on their life span. That said, unless you've been absolutely hammering the hell out of it for the last year, it should last longer than that...

Didn't realise it was tonight. What time does it start and are there tickets available on the night?

It won't even be up to Lowe. Barclays will be aware of offers made and will apply pressure accordingly.

They do have creativity in the form of a) Rory Delap's throw-ins and b) Liam Lawrence who, in my opinion, is a physically stronger version of Surman who also happens to score more goals. Stoke's style of play is very much geared towards strength, size and set-pieces, and so far it's not doing them too much harm in the Premier League. If/when someone figures out a decent way to defend those throw-ins (there must be a way, surely?), then they might have to look at other avenues, but while that tactic is working - and it's worked against some good teams (e.g. Arsenal, Villa, Everton, Pompey, etc) - they won't change it. It's tried and tested at Championship level and it's tried and currently working pretty well at Premier League level.

He's not really a Stoke sort of player, and there's no way they'll modify their style of play just to suit one signing. I can't see any mileage in that rumour, to be honest.

I think Lee would have got in the squad anyway. It was Darren Anderton who took what should have been Le Tissier's place, despite having played the grand total of 15 times that season thanks to various injuries (surprise, surprise).

I would have thought you'll be able to get the £9 difference per ticket back from the ticket office.

The revenue the likes of United and Arsenal bring in directly through the turnstile is actually about the same (if not higher) than the broadcasting revenue. Liverpool and Chelsea are probably a bit behind on that front, simply due to the number of people they can fit into their grounds.

Is that figure just the one in Peter Kenyon's deluded head? I could conceivably accept that there may be that many Liverpool or ManYoo fans worldwide, but Chelsea?! They've only been a big club for 5 minutes.

No we won't. The massively significant difference between us and clubs like Liverpool and Manchester United are that they can call on millions of fans across the world to put money into the club's coffers in exchange for whatever crap merchandise product is available at the time. For every 3000 ManYoo fans who decide they don't want anything more to do with the Glazer idea and go away and support FC United of Manchester, there will easily be another 3000 waiting to buy their season tickets, even if the prices have just gone up 25% on the previous season.

Everything looked to be going ok until the 89th minute of his first game against Middlesbrough... 2-0 up, looking comfortable. Two minutes later, 2-2 draw. The following week was simply awful, a 5-1 defeat at Tottenham. Interestingly, we didn't actually lose a home league game under Redknapp until April (against Chelsea). Unfortunately while we beat Liverpool and Spurs in that time, we also failed to beat Middlesbrough, Charlton, Fulham, Everton and Arsenal, all of whom (Arsenal excepted) were very much winnable games. As the Churchill dog would say... oh yes!

It's only one game that they're running this offer for, so the overall cost per game is still massively discounted with a season ticket.