stevegrant

I assume this was a meeting held at the hotel on Saturday morning, so he'd have been in the same building, but each player has their own room so if he's been lazy/tardy in the morning then easy to see how he could miss a meeting there. The point has been made by someone else, but Mané's performances have been fine this season, I don't think his application on the pitch has been questioned once. As a result, I'm not sure dropping him is necessarily the right punishment as it also punishes the team as a whole, given how much we rely on him. Fine him whatever amount of money you choose, but I think Ron's cutting his nose off to spite his face by dropping him. Wanyama, on the other hand, has had a **** attitude all season, only bothering to play at 100% when it's against Arsenal or Chelsea (basically what Celtic fans told us he'd be like). We're not going to make any money from him now, he's got 18 months left on his contract, he's nowhere near as good as he thinks he is and has been stinking up the place in terms of his attitude and seemingly dragging everyone down with him. Given the amount of money we were willing to spend to get rid of Osvaldo, we should be prepared to lose the £8m or so we might sell Vic for, stick him in the U21s for the remainder of his contract. Send a message to players that, while we may allow players to leave if they "deserve" the opportunity to play Champions League football and the price is right, we're not going to bow to players who throw their toys out and disrupt everything.

transfermarkt.co.uk is a good resource for that sort of thing. 12/13: 20 league starts, 6 sub appearances (total 1673 minutes) - 3 goals, 3 assists 13/14: 3 league starts, 15 sub appearances (total 507 minutes) - 1 goal, 3 assists 14/15: 0 league starts, 1 sub appearance (total 24 minutes) - 0 goals, 0 assists 15/16: 0 league starts, 1 sub appearance (total 10 minutes) - 0 goals, 1 assist Total: 23 starts, 23 sub (total 2214 minutes) - 4 goals, 7 assists. 201.27 minutes per goal contribution. Edit: adding cup games: 12/13: No appearances 13/14: 4 starts, 0 sub (total 316 minutes) - 2 goals, 1 assist 14/15: 0 starts, 1 sub (total 1 minute) - 0 goals, 0 assists 15/16: 1 start, 1 sub (total 92 minutes) - 0 goals, 0 assists Total: 28 starts, 25 sub (total 2623 minutes) - 6 goals, 8 assists. 187.36 minutes per goal contribution.

Well you're categorically wrong on the wage bill part for a start. And again, you seem to be under the misconception that transfer fees are the only cost involved in signing a player.

Not necessarily. Long is a decent player, but isn't better than our first-choice striker. Unless we're going to play regularly with two out-and-out strikers - which I sincerely doubt, considering our success has been built upon winning games in midfield - he's not going to be ahead of Pellè in the team when he's available.

In your world we'd only have a squad of 11 players then. Bravo. And you advocate just using Jay Rodriguez. Who will be out injured (again) for a period of time and will need to get back to fitness before being a) available, and b) of any tangible use. Wonderful.

I genuinely find it incredible that people are lumping Long in with Dani ****ing Osvaldo in the "waste of money" stakes. They are not even remotely in the same ballpark.

Most of them have bigger incomes than we do.

And why would we? Our problem is supposedly a lack of depth and people are advocating selling one of the few players who provides a potential game-changing option.

Yes, because transfer fees are the only cost associated with signing a player. Our wage bill has increased from £47m to £72m in the last three seasons, which has just about been covered by a combination of incoming fees and an increase in the TV deal. Next season, when the new TV deal kicks in, with an increase of around 70%, is when we will have a LOT more freedom with wages - the obvious issue is that everyone else will have the same freedom.

Away draw preferable, against the following: 1. Pompey 2. Eastleigh 3. Bradford, Newport, Grimsby/Shrewsbury, Bury, Whitehawk (think they'll beat Dagenham in the replay), Oxford - in no particular order of preference.

It literally doesn't matter, you're being deliberately obtuse for the sake of it. MLG would be proud

I call the fouls VectisSaint is referring to as "taking one for the team" fouls - you know you're not catching him, but he's in a non-dangerous position so just wipe him out, take the inevitable booking and get back goal-side. The meaning of the term "professional foul" has evolved over the years, pretty much ever since those words were removed from the Laws of the Game around 15 years ago - it's pretty common for "taking one for the team" fouls to be described as "professional" fouls now - it is a foul that has roots in "game management", giving away free kicks in non-threatening positions to waste time and to allow your team to retreat to a proper defensive setup.

He'd have done well to give Costa a penalty, considering he was suspended for our game there.

Ouch

Andre Marriner

Presumably because our centre forward was still being held back 25 yards from goal so couldn't get on the end of it.

To be fair, I think the Premier League hype machine would have been stretching the realms of reality by calling our game against Stoke one of "the big games"

He knew exactly what sort of response he'd get, which is why he posted it in the first place.

I suspect it's more a case of the users of the scanners being simpletons rather than the scanners themselves being faulty - literally the only problems I've ever seen getting into the Northam is people who have print-at-home tickets who haven't folded their bit of paper so the barcode fits in the slot. Nobody else seems to have any problem at all.

I assume it's intentionally vague under a fairly catch-all banner of (in their opinion) "being a ****". There are a couple of things the club needs to do themselves, in addition to fans helping them out - firstly, they need to stop allowing away fans in the corporate boxes at the Northam end of the Itchen stand, as this is only likely to exacerbate any tension in that part of the ground; secondly, as mentioned above, while people shouldn't be bringing banned items into the ground, the club employs staff to prevent people doing so, and they're clearly failing.

Surely the fact a smoke bomb was able to be thrown onto the pitch at the Bournemouth game suggests the club's search and security procedures need improving as well as sending a written lecture to fans, most of whom won't have been involved.

A minute's silence is an appropriate means of remembrance. They played the French national anthem at Wembley on Tuesday because, I don't know if you remember, WE WERE PLAYING FRANCE. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't have played it - and suggested people sing along - had we been playing Germany this week instead. This smacks of the PL thinking "****, the FA have done something pretty spectacular there, we need to do something different to the usual so we're not perceived to be less compassionate". We're not playing France, we've never even played OUR OWN national anthem at league games before. Why not go the whole hog and move all of this weekend's PL games to Paris?

There's definitely only one of those available, as a mate of mine's son (who was a ballboy at that Newcastle v Saints game) got one from Davis that night after he hit him with a stray shot in the warm-up

Just checked back, so was mine. It's usually £1 a ticket online, though. Perhaps they forgot to add it, that's happened a few times before.