stevegrant

Which part of "THE TWO LOANS ARE COMPLETELY SEPARATE" did you not understand?

Full draw: Chelsea v Bolton Wanderers Arsenal v SOUTHAMPTON West Bromwich Albion v Hull City Crystal Palace v Newcastle United Leyton Orient v Sheffield United Cardiff City v Bournemouth Sunderland v Stoke City Derby County v Reading Liverpool v Middlesbrough Milton Keynes Dons v Bradford City Manchester City v Sheffield Wednesday Burton Albion v Brighton & Hove Albion Swansea City v Everton Shrewsbury Town v Norwich City Fulham v Doncaster Rovers Tottenham Hotspur v Nottingham Forest

Cheap tickets (up to 9,000 of them as well), and they'll probably put their reserves out. Not a bad draw, I don't think.

Orient have won at Villa

This. Full draw numbers, it's completely unseeded from this stage onwards: 1. AFC Bournemouth 2. Arsenal 3. Bolton Wanderers 4. Brighton & Hove Albion 5. Cardiff City 6. Chelsea 7. Crystal Palace 8. Derby County 9. Doncaster Rovers 10. Everton 11. Fulham 12. Hull City 13. Liverpool 14. Manchester City 15. Middlesbrough 16. Milton Keynes Dons 17. Newcastle United 18. Norwich City 19. Nottingham Forest 20. Reading 21. Sheffield United 22. Sheffield Wednesday 23. Shrewsbury Town 24. SOUTHAMPTON 25. Swansea City 26. Tottenham Hotspur 27. West Bromwich Albion 28. Leyton Orient 29. Sunderland 30. Bradford City 31. Burton Albion 32. Stoke City Ties to be played the week commencing 22nd September.

**** me. Of all the bilge that you exhume on here - and trust me, there's a ****ing lot of it - this is right up there with the most ridiculous. Firstly, he's on loan with no obligation to buy, but the option to do so for a fixed fee (€7m) if we want to - the two loans are completely separate. Secondly, he played in what was regarded as a successful World Cup for Algeria, he's not some unknown youth teamer who we're taking a punt on. Seriously

Looking at it from a financial perspective, it also makes bugger all sense because of Palace's severely restrictive salary policy. Apparently they've not got a single player on more than £20k a week, as far as I can tell, that's more or less the salary Cork was earning when he signed for us in the Championship. Add in the inevitable promotion-based pay rise, he'd be taking a pretty big cut if he went there. Money's not everything, obviously, but I don't see him taking the risk of signing for a club who will almost certainly be in a relegation battle.

The club claimed there hadn't been a single offer for him when the earlier report of "a £3m fee has been agreed" broke - considering they've not had a manager since then, and their appointment today was something of a surprise, I would be absolutely amazed if anything had been done on those lines. Especially, as mentioned by others, as he played last night.

Correct on both counts.

We seem to have become determined to pick someone who can both bowl fast and with variations. The problem is that Dernbach's variations only come off one game in ten, the rest they're picked off by half-decent batsmen. It's not even as if the runs he concedes off the bat get recouped by him in the field, he's an average fielder at best. England's thinking on limited-overs cricket over the past decade has been absolutely nuts, it's as if we're trying to play a completely different game to the rest of the world

I'd argue that Mignolet might have done better for the first goal and his positioning was awful for the third, giving Aguero the whole goal to aim at.

The clue's in the name, GOAL LINE technology.

Fortunately Surrey matched us for points in the other group, and we even managed to beat them on net run rate. Realistically, having lost that game at Essex when we basically had the game in the bag, there was no chance of qualifying from that position so it's been a case of going through the motions, giving a few fringe players a game, etc. No real surprise we got tonked by the group winners last night with the side we put out.

Which is fine, and in fact if Safe Standing sections were allowed in the Premier League and Championship, it would provide a clear definition between areas where it's OK to stand and where it's not. It's about giving people a choice, while simultaneously (hopefully) improving the atmosphere in stadia and perhaps even increasing capacity, and even first-timers to a particular stadium will know what they're going to get when buying a ticket - I know it was only a friendly, but I was amazed at the number of people who took their young kids along to the Bayer Leverkusen game and bought their tickets near the back of the Northam, thereby ensuring that their kids wouldn't be able to see a thing.

A couple of things: Firstly, I'm not sure the Conservatives have ever been that bothered about upsetting the scousers Secondly, while fans posting on forums are now having sensible discussions about it, there are a hell of a lot of people - many in quite high profile positions within the Hillsborough justice campaign groups - who still believe terraces were the root cause of the disaster and that it would be a massive step backwards to reintroduce them, despite all the evidence to the contrary and that new style terracing would be completely different to the old terracing.

We'd only be able to loan him to the Football League - not sure he'd go for that.

But Spurs are in Europe, so are almost certain to be playing 50+ games this season, with a dozen games or more in cup competitions. That gives Vorm an opportunity to play. From a "professional" point of view of wanting to be first choice, him moving to Spurs is ridiculous when he'd have probably been Swansea's number one ahead of Fabianski and Tremmell, but I suspect he'll probably get to play in the cups for Spurs, and he may think that the massive pay rise he'd have got justifies it. We could end up playing only 2 cup games all season - having spent £10m on a keeper and declaring that he's first choice, that doesn't leave an awful lot of room for a backup who wants to actually play games. In that sense, I have absolutely no problem with Boruc saying that he'd like to move elsewhere if possible so he can play regularly (I'd say you wouldn't ever want players who are "happy" to be sat on the bench every week, there should always be the ambition to play and the belief that they're good enough to do so), but obviously if that move doesn't materialise then he'll have to just suck it up for a few months, I guess.

Those games: Gazzaniga: Chelsea (away) L 1-3 (1-1 when Gazzaniga came on) Aston Villa (home) L 2-3 Man City (home) D 1-1 Newcastle (away) D 1-1 Tottenham (home) L 2-3 Cardiff (away) W 3-0 Man City (away) L 1-4 Cardiff (home) L 0-1 Davis: Everton (away) L 1-2 Chelsea (home) L 0-3 Not looking to suggest either of them are good enough, but many of those results could easily have happened with a first-choice keeper available. Chelsea, Man City, Everton - 1 draw from 5 games against those three teams, which is about what we might have expected against them anyway. The only games where our reserve keeper actually cost us points were Villa and Spurs.

That LMA statement is extraordinary. Someone was tasked with writing a statement, took all day to do so, presumably had it checked over by senior LMA officials, and they released THAT. Using the word "banter" as an excuse for discriminatory conduct is pathetic enough when it's a heat-of-the-moment response, but when it's in a considered and otherwise-bland official statement, that's staggering PR ****wittery.

England players are - in theory - very well paid when on England duty, I think their fees are somewhere in the region of £50k or so, but there is an agreement with the PFA that all of those fees are donated to charity.

Also this. If you're going to provide a magazine online, just give me a PDF of the print layout, I'm capable of scrolling through pages myself

It has the feel of an official club publication, and apparently it's done with the approval of the club, hence it's got a big interview with David Gold in it. Fanzines of the past have always had the ability and freedom to criticise and take the **** out of people at their own club - with a club-approved publication, that freedom diminishes pretty rapidly as the editors don't want to risk losing the perks. At which point, what's the point of it all, why not just read the matchday programme?

I would also add the sense of entitlement from those who have played at a professional game that they should be able to walk into a top management job with absolutely zero experience and, in many cases, qualifications. Another problem with coaching is that in order to get on the UEFA A and B courses in this country, you pretty much have to already be employed at a club where you are then able to do the requisite practical hours that are required by the course, but for most clubs they want to employ people who already have these qualifications. But of course they'll make an exception if an ex-pro applies because they're a big name and may be able to attract players higher than the club's stature to play for them.

****ing typical that within an hour of the club confirming this, Sky Sports go and **** over the fans again by getting it moved to the Friday night.

Not sure why we need Tahir for the last couple of games, Briggs seems to have bowled well this year and Dawson will get picked on his batting alone, so it's not as if we need more spinners.