norwaysaint

Eighth is brilliant and finishing regularly within a couple of places of that isn't something any of us should "fear", it's all in how you look at it. We aren't about to move into the spending bracket of the top clubs and would end up functioning at a big loss if we did. It'll cost enough just to maintain this. Anybody dissatisfied with where we are now is setting their sights unrealistically.

You'd hope so, pretty sure it won't be a big signing though, which is fine given the lack of value we've got when stepping up our spending. We've had more value from Davis than Ramirez, from Cork than Wanyama and from Rodriguez than Osvaldo. So I won't be that disappointed with a striker coming in at a budget.

Still don't think we'll lose any key players this summer, haven't seen any reason yet to think we will. Of course you can never be sure and most players move on eventually, but I reckon Shaw, Lallana and Schneiderlin will still be with us next season and they would be the most "in-demand". I don't think we'll be spending much though (new second keeper is probably about it), so keeping players will be our main priority. We'd obviously like a new striker and centre back, but I don't think we'll spend an amount that would guarantee a better first choice than what we have.

Seems so long ago I can barely remember, but the fact will always be that the teaching education you get at college will give you at most 10% of what you need to learn, the rest all comes once you step into a classroom, during practice, but even more during your first actual year as a teacher. I've done most age levels from 4 up to 40 and they are very different. Primary is by far the hardest, most exhausting in the classroom, but also by far the most fun and there is little marking, but you spend all breaks and a couple of hours after school preparing stuff. Secondary I haven't done enough of to give a good comment. Sixth form actually usually has "planning lessons", and you might teach similar things to different classes so there's repetition, but it can be interesting and there's discussion at a higher level, loads of marking though and obviously lots of time used up just preparing for exams, which all teachers hate. As a teacher the important things are to be flexible and able to think on your feet. Things rarely go quite as expected, but you have to be able to think quickly and create a lesson around what actually happens. If the students don't get it, it's your fault and you have to think of other approaches that will work. I've been teaching for 20 years now and still enjoy every day of it, it's probably not for everybody, but if it suits you you will never have a dull day at work again. Don't listen to too many horror stories or opinions from people who haven't worked in schools either, I can't remember the last bad day I had at work and I've worked in some pretty rough areas. I also still remember my first ever teaching practice, it was a disaster because I went in and tried to act like I thought a teacher should, the next I went in and decided just to teach with my own personality and I've never looked back. My wife earns the equivalent of six figures, more than double what I earn when bonuses are included, but she's only ever been jealous of how much I enjoy my work...and my holidays.

I've just started watching Walking Dead after avoiding it because of general zombie/infected fatigue. I was amazed to see the star is none other than Egg out of This Life. Do they Americans not produce any actors these days capapbleof leading a decentTV series? We've had The Wire with Idris Elba and Dominic West in the main roles, Damien Lewis and David Harewood leading in Homeland, Hugh Laurie in House, Ian McShane in Deadwood, isn't David Morrissey in this series too? Seems okay, but is also very similar to sooooo many other post-disaster, back to chaos, avoiding/killing zombies American things these days. I suppose it's the soap opera side of it that draws people in, because we've all seen the rest before. As for GoT, thought they handled that episode very well, lots of sequences of events set smoothly in motion. Not actually sure what they'll use as the climax for this series. Also, they're doing a decent job, but TV cannot really give you the full nastiness and horror of the whole "Reek" situation, especially as the book never even told you it was Theon, but just had chapters narrated by Reek and it slowly dawned on you that this was what cheerful, cocky (not so much now) Theon had become. His inner dialogue from those chapters was way more affecting than just seeing his nervous scared face. It actually made me feel a bit sick reading it.

Not superb, I'd rate him at about the same level as JWP, both good enough, but not necessarily as good as our first choices. Some dislike Ramirez because he was expensive and like JWP, who wasn't. If the money's not an issue, then great, if it is, he'd be one to move on, because he's expensive for a sub. I don't think Shaw , Lallana or any other first team regulars will go. I've still seen absolutely no reason to think they will. I don't really get where the likes of Barry and Alpine are getting it from, but luckily, they are posters who have generally been wrong in the past, while the "happy clappers" they despise have a better track record. Neither has the grace to admit it though.

Don't think anyone really has. Don't you start to feel a bit silly sneering at "happy-clappers" when, if we're honest, they've generally got it right and our situation has improved year on year, with a trophy, then successive promotions and then a move into the top half? They've been right and you've been wrong in your predictions, yet you still sneer as if they've been deluded and you've been proven right. You were proven deluded and still are on a regular basis. You always get it wrong. Show the "happy clappers" the respect they deserve by admitting they've been right more than you have. I doubt you have the integrity for it.

Seldom right and wrong again Barry! remember that the link you posted to back this up last time actually had MP saying that it was unrealistic to expect CL football any time in the near future? The only reason he even mentioned it was because the journalist asked him directly. Certain posters, well, on the famous thread that gets mentioned time and again, there was a grand total of...TWO posters who thought we should be able to crack the top 6 with about thirty saying we shouldn't. So yes, certain posters as long as you're the type to obsess over the view of a tiny minority. get back to over-hyping Norwich Barry, it's your level.

Show some respect! #prayforjay

Stating the obvious a bit. I think you're only disagreeing with a pretty small minority. You're imagining there are threads full of people suggesting otherwise, but most threads are dominated by posts that shout down over optimistic expectations.

Viking, you misunderstood the other story you are referring to where you thought an article was telling you what you could and couldn't eat. Those were your words and they were wrong and showed a misunderstanding. I only posted twice on that thread and backed up everything I said with fact, then left when you took it personally. I called the title moronic, which was widely agreed with and even you realised you had been got it wrong. When you incorrectly believed you had been told what you could and couldn't eat, I pointed out that you were being paranoid, as the restrictions you thought were being made on you were entirely in your imagination. That is indeed paranoia, whether you like it or not, imagining controls being placed on you that aren't actually there. Here you have overtly claimed that the issue is that he has child porn on his computer and that the police have to return it to him even though that's an offence. This is indeed a misunderstanding of the story. He is not having child porn returned to him, he is having intimate but non-pornographic family photos returned. I'm not sure how you can deny that your post shows misunderstanding. In fact it seems from your replies that you've continued to misunderstand, as you seem to think your quotes are in any way relevant to what I posted. I have no idea why you've addressed that post to me or put it in bold, it doesn't clash with anything I posted. There is no part of my post that forensically examines what you say or corrects your English, I'm not sure what those misguided comments are addressing. I'm pointing out that your entire opening premise is wrong and has misunderstood the issue, I simply read the sentence, it's wrong. You said they were returning child porn to him, they aren't. You misunderstood. Whether convicted paedophiles should have any access to images of children at all is another matter entirely and one which I addressed rather than your misguided comments. Nothing you have posted afterwards indicates that any of what I have said was even slightly wrong. We all agree it's traumatic for the family that he owns family photos.

While the whole thing is very unsavoury, you've once again misunderstood the news story. They would be allowed to delete child porn, in fact they would probably be able to confiscate the entire laptop and not return it. There is no child porn involved here though. The problem is that they are just regular family photos and thus not covered by any law. It isn't an offence. What would be ideal would be if convicted paedophiles were banned from owning any images of children. I don't know if anyone saw the last Louis Theroux program, but he spoke to sex offenders in the states and there was a woman on the register for having sex with a fourteen year old boy. She was not allowed anything related to children in her house, including pictures of her own children, whom she was not allowed to see. She had actually been given permission to have one single family picture. That would be a better situation.

Alpine, take heart in the fact that you've thought things were going down the pan for a few years now, yet in the end we've been improving our league position every year for quite a while. You've thought our transfer policy has been poor for a long time, but our squad is now better than it has been in years. You've thought our managers have had no idea, but our standard of play has risen over the years and we are more exciting to watch now than we have been for a long time. We're a long way from perfect, but things have steadily improved and are currently pretty close to being about as good as we can ever really expect to be. So although there are plenty of things that aren't right, there's really very little for us to worry or complain about. You know that we have no real right to ever be able to compete with the very biggest clubs, so lower your hopes and expectations to fit in more with what you've become used to. Perhaps thinking things are bad when we are 8th or 9th and playing well is a sign of unrealistic ideas about where we should be. This is good for saints and our squad isn't more expensive than the clubs occupying the places above us.

No way I would be able to accept saints being managed by an Argentinian famous for playing dirty in a match against England.

Yeah, I remember how you thought our season had turned around last year...

Honest trailer for Game of Thrones, contains spoilers for series 1-3 and I don't just mean the black bars: If you haven't seen them before, the honest trailer series is pretty good. There are links to other ones on that page.

I have no problem with the idea of us liking them, but them not liking us so much, that's always the way when there is one team locally that's been dominant. You see it in the UK teams as well, many (not all) England fans are more happy for the other UK teams or Ireland to do well, they enjoy seeing us fail. I'd find it more unnatural the other way around. Why would we have anything against a team in our shadow? How could a team in our shadow not be keen to get one over on us once in a while and bring us down a peg or too. It only makes sense. Like most people from the Southampton area, Bournemouth is a place that has positive connections for me; long summer holidays and days on the beach and then later on, tacky nights out with mates. Bournemouth was always one of my choices on Championship Manager too, a fun team to try to bring up the leagues. I hope they come up and I don't care if they have fans who don't like us, I'm not that precious.

For a bit of pointless fun, how would you rank our current squad of players in terms of how important they are to the team. Kind of inspired by the realization of how much we'll miss JRod and also some comments about Shaw not being that big a loss because he's only a left back. so taking our current list of squad players, who's most important, at number one and down?

Both excellent strikers, well, the best obviously, and good examples, but one thing they have in common is that neither were the type of striker that relied on having a burst of pace quite like Jay has, or am I remembering them wrongly? I hope this doesn't affect his pace and acceleration too much, he's not really the big bustling striker type.

I liked the statue.

Certainly true? Based on what? Norway and Britain have a similar rate, while the suicide rate in Sweden and Denmark is lower than in Britain. That's just a made up fact, it doesn't become more true just because you use the word certainly. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate as far as neo-nazism goes, I've lived here 15 years and have never met or seen a neo-nazi. I lived a year in Sweden too and if it exists, it isn't an open and significant problem. The crime rate here is very low, I never lock my car in the evenings and I often leave downstairs windows open when nobody is home. I haven't heard of any crime around here at all, although I don't live in the inner city.

Well, I worked in primary teaching for years, over here and in the UK and I've had two kids go through the Scandinavian nursery system. Academic stuff does start a lot later here, which takes a bit of getting used to for a British parent. What has impressed me is what takes it's place. In nursery my kids spent a huge amount of time out in the forest and in the mountains, very often building shelters and learning quite a few good skills. It wasn't unusual to go in to get my kids and find groups of four year olds being shown how to use big camping knives, in fact my eldest has had her own sheathed camping knife for a couple of years and she's only eight now. Learning outdoor skills is considered a natural part of nursery here. At nursery and school, the children are always outside for a large part of the day, there is no such thing as wet play time like we had in the UK, with kids staying in because it's raining. In Norway the saying is that the is no bad weather, only bad clothing. I like the attitude towards practical education here a lot. On kids TV the other day, they were talking about where food comes from. The presenter went to a slaughterhouse and was presented with a live pig. She killed it on screen, then butchered it and eventually turned it into chops, all on screen on kids' TV. My kids were fascinated and I think that's a good thing to show, so that kids understand things like that. On average I would say that Norwegians are no worse academically than British students by the time they finish school, despite the late academic start. I've taught every age group from 4 up to 40, so I'd like to think I'm qualified to comment. Additionally, in my opinion, in an ideal world the state would make it possible for kids to be at home with a parent until the age of three, before starting nursery. I think as a society we've made a big misstep making it so that parents have to go back to work while their children still need close care and role models more than anything. Sadly that's an unrealistic idea nowadays.

I have to agree that that is easily the best game I've seen on the ipad. Most ipad games are a bit rubbish and just for passing a couple of brainless minutes, but with xcom you actually get the entire game exactly the same as the PS3, quite shocking. I never even played it again on the PS3 again after I got it on the ipad. I've found it surprising how little you ever need to spend to have a pretty big game selection now. I got Last of Us free with the PS3 and have now finished that and loved it. I also finished Uncharted 3 from Playstation plus, thought it was basically Tomb Raider updated. Speaking of which I also got Tomb Raider, but haven't got into it yet. Now I see they've put PES 2014 out on PSplus. Add to that I was in the library with my kids and ended up loaning the Arkham games. Loads more on PSplus too, my outlay on games is still only about a tenner. Pretty good value, better than ever in fact.

I blame Peter Schmeichel if anyone leaves. If only he hadn't said what he said...

A self-promoting champagne "socialist" from Liverpool, disliked by the masses, I think I may have been wrong about you being Dune, I think there is only one person you can possibly be.