benjii

Do Amazon deliver by yacht?

He's been spotted dining with Mr. Dalian Wanda recently.

Hi Jeff!

They refused to grant him a confession for a waffle stand by West Quay. Needless to say, he may have the last laugh. As I said though, if Bezos gets the right response regarding Dibden, that will be only game in town.

The only bad feeling as far as I'm concerned was between Les and Ronald and Les has gone. Realistically, there aren't many targets for those people. None of the "Big 6" are for sale, as far as I know, and are probably too expensive anyway. Newcastle obviously not any more, unless that deal craters. Leicester probably not. Wolves probably not. Villa probably not. Watford? Probably not. Would West Ham owners sell up for the right money? Maybe. What about Sheff U? Could be complicated for their owner if the Saud's complete Newcastle so he could be looking to exit but are they a better long-term bet? As for the rest, is anyone a better target than us, particularly if our owner actively wants to sell? Anyway, it's all academic if Bezos goes ahead.

They sound horrific. Vulture capitalists looking to get distressed assets on the cheap as a “macro investment”. In other words, buy cheap, invest the minimum necessary and flip it on when the market picks up.

Nice. I knew what you meant. Just tried to do a joke.

Backs up my sources.

"June"?

Don't shoot the messenger..... As we all know, Gao bought the football club so that he could invest lots of money into Southampton's infrastructure. Well, it's MUCH bigger than we thought. The real plan all along has been to develop the long-heralded Dibden Bay docks. The Chinese want to extend belt and road to the UK south coast to give them a strategic presence on either side of the EU. Whilst Gao could feasibly have been used to front the redevelopment of the gas works / Itchen foreshore, he's not a credible front for Dibden Bay, which will need mega billions. Now, it just so happens that various US interests are also keen to establish a sizeable logistics base on the outskirts of the EU. The US government can't be seen to openly collaborate with the Chinese on this but the boss of a certain US business with a need for logistics capability has the liquidity to underwrite a sufficiently scaled development, for his own needs, but with strategic excess for the B&R / Uncle Sam. None of this can go ahead without acquiring SFC to grease the wheels.....

Great post. And whilst certain Asian populations seem to have a callous disregard for suffering in general, both human and animal, I'd wager that if any of us spent a day in an industrial abbatoir in the West we'd be pretty appalled at how we treat animals too.

60 tonnes of PPE donated to the NHS by the UAE arrived on a plane from China yesterday. Great success!

The idea of playing all matches on a single campus seems nuts. There are, what, 90-something matches left? So at 3 matches every day that's every team playing every three days or so for a month. If there are some rest days then extend the period. If 3 matches a day at the same venue can't be done then extend the period. As soon as anyone involved has tested positive, which is inevitable, you would have thought, then that's everything grinding to a halt for 14 days? And you can't have everyone playing at the same time on the last day of the season so scheduling could have a big impact. It will be a drawn-out, boring, pointless affair and quite unfair to teams with good home form. And that's without even mentioning contract issues and potential loss of players. If we can't do football properly then wait until we can. Give Liverpool a nice certificate or something for "good effort" then start again another time.

His profile is a cracking read. Turns out I used to walk past his old house regularly. Anyway, this has been a bit slack today, apologies. Score update to follow tomorrow plus a new question format.

Darn tootin', it's CB Fry!

.edit.

Further clue: once held a World Record.

One benjii point for the black man's cock reference.

If you’re thinking van Gobbel...... ‘fraid not.

‘fraid not.

Shows how fortunate we were that Koeman guided our incoming transfers in our summer of rebuilding and that other clubs didn't outbid us. Swap Tadic, Pelle and Mane for whoever Les and Ross would have gone for and we'd have been screwed.

It's good but it's not right.

"His tackling and risk-taking may have been issues on occasion, although his sprinting ability – 100 yards in 10.2 secs – so often enabled him to recover."

Yep!

"He’d decided he wasn’t comfortable in the No.9 shirt, so Jimmy Melia wore it against his old club and created havoc in their man-marking system."