Lord Duckhunter

Spot on. Regardless of history, size of club at present or honours won a state of the art modern 40,000 seated stadium with all the coporate mod cons , in the premiership and in that part of London is viable. It may end up being a noddy club, with more people "watching " rather than traditional supporters supporting, but with decent marketing and facilities they'll sell 40k no worries. London is the key, its why the NFL will end up with a franchise there. Premiership football in a decent stadium, in a decent london area and they'll coin it in.

In the op you mention having a day off on our patron saints day specifically. Now you're posting that it doesn't matter, make your mind up Baz.

National day, not for me. It'll be a ****ing nightmare. Having to listen to that dirge of a national anthem with a load of plums displaying that stupid union flag, and I bet those welfare scrounging Germans we all look up to , will be getting in on the act. The BBC will be dumbing down by interviewing some transgender British Muslim and banging on about how tolerant we are as a nation and how "nobody does pomp and ceremony" like the good old Brits. Load of pony, it would be embarrassing. For such a brash and jingoistic country, surprisingly America has the best national "celebration" a simple thanksgiving , where families, friends and neighbours come together. I would be for something like that, not based on religion or race, but everybody in England (and the taffs and jocks if we have to) give thanks for living in a free and pretty wealthy country in an age of peace and harmony (compared to other ages). Perhaps 11/11, wander down to memorials and parades, quick couple of pints in the local then back home for roast dinner and watch the "memorial day " live sky match.

Bazza, you are letting your preconceived opinions of mp's get in the way of reason. Just because there maybe lazy mp's or mp's taking the Michael does not mean there cant be a way of paying them fairly and without emotions. There are only really 2 options, parliament sets the pay, or an independent body does. That is the bottom line. Had the independent body called for a 20K pay cut I've no doubt that you would have been happy with that, but it doesn't alter the fact that somebody other than mp's or the public or your goodself set that salary. Whether mp's are any good or not is irrelevant, unless you have performance related pay (and god knows how you'd appraise that). If enough people agree with your assessment of their mp, or are unhappy with him/her, they'll lose their seat. In exactly the same way Bob Crow is elected by his membership its not for a Tory or media to dictate what he should earn or where he should live. If his voters think he's taking the Mick, they'll get rid.

That only works if the MP's pay was set at the right level in the first place. It lagged behind other public sector comparable pay for many years. This was because it was political suicide for them to be voting through pay increases. The way they found round it was to keep pay down, but expenses up. This nod and a wink policy went on for years until the daily telegraph exposed it. The cry was then for a transparent independent body to regulate pay. All of a sudden because people don't like what this independent body recommended, they want it both ways. If IPSA recommended a pay freeze people would think it wonderful. All this BBC questioning of "will you take it" is doing nobody any good. You can not run a political system and constituency based elections based on whether people will take the pay, or how much they donate to charity. You'll end up with the rich being able to promise down their salary , and also discourage people like doctors, head teachers and businessmen from standing. What better way is there for MP's salaries to be decided than an independent body setting it after a long period of research? An x factor type phone in? Voting for it themselves? Having rich party leaders decide?

Agree with this word for word. Just shows how utterly hopeless are political leaders are at present. Politics by focus group, nobody willing to have any independent thoughts and lead people. They set up an independent body to set their pay and then run scared of the public when it's set any higher than the public accept. Pathetic lack of back bone and playing to the gallery. IPSA spent hours looking at this, compared MP's pay with civil servant pay grades, foreign MP's, council leaders ect and private companies pay scales. They concluded that MP's were seriously underpaid and their pay hadn't kept up during the boom years (when they actually voted on their own pay). The funny thing is the public support an independent body setting their pay, yet don't seem grown up enough to accept what their recommendation is. I have no idea what we should be paying MP's, I would have thought it's best to leave that to independent experts.

Very interesting, listened last night. Expected it to be the normal stories, Keegan and the light, Bally thinking its this is your life, ECT ECT, but it was a bit better than that. Lot of respect for Grimsby ( loved the story of the centre forward smoking his pipe) , other bits I hadn't heard, telling the chairman to get rid of Stevie Williams , directors telling him to sort xxxx out ( i presume he meant terry paine) and being on the board at Sunderland. Couple of errors , it was Gordon hill not Steve Coppell , who said "who" when told it was us in the final. But all in all a decent show about a decent bloke and a bloody great saints manager.

FFS, booting it long, then trying to win it back in their third went out with graham Taylor and Howard Wilkinson. As already stated centre halves split , and cm come short for ball, if those options are closed down we can knock it to the full back and if a decent ball we should be able to get a 2 on 1 and overload that side of the pitch as the opposition have committed men forward closing us down. . Worst that can happen is the ball is given away near the half way line outwide or a throw in. With our high energy pressing game our front players and attacking midfielders will be absolutely whacked by half time if we keep pumping fighting ball's up for them to chase down and then try and win the ball back. Most of their "rest" is taken when our back 4 and keeper keep the ball.If we start hoofing it long sides can defend with 2 banks of 4 and we just haven't got the physicality in our attacking players to effect the game.

What would the history of the club look like now if at the dawn of the premier league we had a businessman like Nicola take over the club instead of a 2 bit retirement home owner.

Would quite like to abuse Redknapp again, but he won't be bothered if we beat them. So no fun there. Boscombe would be quite good to shut a couple of plums who live near me up, but we could lose, so maybe not. Nice trip to London would be good, maybe Millwall . Away game would be nice , at least the people moaning about allocations will be able to build up some points on their customer numbers.

http://www.theweek.co.uk/football/world-cup-2014/56411/potgate-french-cook-dastardly-world-cup-draw-plot

The difference between Adams and his henchmen and Mandela is very very simple. Adams lived in a democracy, FFS his mob even had MP's elected. Adams could have taken the Alex Salmond route and used a democratic mandate to try and change things. What choice did the ANC have? The difference that needs pointing out is the difference between The UK & SA at that time .

My mate texted me to say Victor has chip in his bone, out for 6 weeks. If true we're ****ed sat.

He is either rubbish, or the unluckiest keeper I've ever seen. Apart from one save against Newcastle, I cant actually recall him saving anything that I couldn't save (and I'm a fat 50 year old). Maybe he's really good in training, but clearly on matchdays he's not very good. The club need to have a good hard long look in the mirror. Did playing him last year affect his development, should he have been loaned out last year once he became our number 3? In the words of the great Geoffrey Boycott, I would rather have Boruc's mum with a stick of rhubarb in her hand, than him in nets against City.

A game that proved beyond doubt what a load of horseshiete statistics are. Forget possession , they looked dangerous every single time they broke and our defence looked naive and very panicky. Had it got back to 3-3 , I'd have backed them to go up and score again. A big big moment was Adam at 0-0 , seemed to delay his shot a fraction too long and defender managed to block. We really need to go up in these sort of games as it makes the opposition come out a bit. I thought Paul Lambert got his tactics spot on and MP does seem a bit stuck in his ways tactically sometimes. Jose did it Sunday to him and remember Steve Clarke doing similar last season. That said, I thought every player worked hard, it certainly wasn't a defeat where you could point the finger at anyones effort. Defensively we were poor, there's no getting away from that. Even Lovren struggled tonight ,but I dont quite know what people expected from gazza and Maya. One is our 3rd choice and one is a average lower premier league player who hasn't played for months. I thought Cork was ok, but him and Davies are a bit too similar for my liking, all square passes and playing in front of the opposition. Osvaldo made some good runs, but was not picked out, Adam showed some good touches, but was equally frustrating today. Don't understand the critical posts about Rickie, I thought he did ok, I dont really know what people expect. We've had a good start and have a decent pattern to our play and off field we seem to have a coherent plan going forward. Contrast us with west ham and Norwich, and you can see we're travelling in the right direction . It's always going to be 2 steps forward one step back , particularly when you've got 3 or 4 cast iron regulars injured or carrying knocks. Villa won at Arsenal in a similar manner, so we need to dust ourselves down and get behind the side Sat. We could get beat again, maybe even hammered, as city can take apart most teams in Europe on their day, but the team need our support not a load of moaning.

Hope Powell?

What a load of bollards. We were the better side in the first half Sunday, and matched arsenal only going down to a freak mistake and a soft peno right at the end. Yes, we were blown away by Chelsea second half, but that can happen to the best of teams. For somebody to post that by losing AWAY to Arsenal and Chelsea shows how "far off" we are is clearly nonsense. The fact you back up this view adds weight to my opinion that it's nonsense. Let's see how many points the Manchester clubs get from those fixtures.

What! losing at the runaway leaders and Chelsea who have not lost at home under Jose in about 60 odd games. We must be miles away if we lost those 2 away games. How far off must City be , seeing as they lost at Cardiff & Sunderland?

Here in Poole some of the poorest do get a decent opportunity for social mobility through education. There are 2 schools that take the brightest , no matter where they live or what social background they come from. The next best performing school has a catchment area which excludes the poorest families as they are unable to afford the house prices. Strange that the schools that judge people on ability alone are shunned by politicians who allow faith schools and schools set up by any Tom **** and harry.

So you define "works" as a comparison with the USA? Rather a strange definition, but one used by lefties every single time the NHS is discussed. Its as if they believe that there is only 2 choices, the american model (which for 40ish% of the population delivers fantastic care) or the NHS. Accepting the premise that nobody wants an american system of healthcare, redefine "works"

define "works".

I'm sick of people like brand , coogan and grant lecturing the country on what they should and should not read. They are perfectly willing to take Murdoch's shilling to further their careers , whilst moralising to the rest of us. I just wish they'd **** off .

This line that is somehow undemocratic to the jocks to have a Tory government in westminster is clearly nonsense and shows a degree of ignorance. The lib/dem on QT pointed out that Orkney had never ever returned an SNP member, yet they get an SNP government. I believe that 4 or 5 times England has voted for a Tory government and go it a labour one, including the Blair one after Iraq. That ginger fishwife singer who wouldn't shut up on QT should have had that pointed out to her ( bearing in mind one of her reasons for yes vote was the war) The level of debate was depressing. Krankie saying France and Germany are independent yet share a currency, has she not heard of the ecb. EU rules also state that any new member must adopt the euro. The krankies used to accept this, until it blew up in their face. I watched the programme on catch up and its hardened my opinion that I hope they **** off and leave us alone. I know that's not a true representation of the whole country, but what a bunch of moaning twots. That singer, man I'm against domestic violence but if I was married to her would find it a real struggle not to give her a Glasgow kiss.

The BBC have ruined a good programme, robin day will be turning in his grave. No mark guests, political plants in the audiance and dimble is out of his depth. Needs a complete and utter overhaul.

I know, but by and large these areas accept that sometimes they get the government they didn't vote for. The whinging jocks turn the same senerio into some sort of proof that our elections work against them and their "governed from Westminster". Aren't we all? Can you imagine the outcry if English mps could vote on Scottish matters that didn't apply to the English, there would be uproar, yet we have to put up with Scottish mps voting on our health service and our education despite it being devolved and therefore not affecting their constituants.