benjii

Agreed, and those problems could all be sorted quite easily by stricter refereeing. No rules would really need to be changed, just interpreted more stringently and yellow cards issued. I would rather see someone booked for time wasting or delaying a free-kick than for being a split-second late for a tackle. It's purely a culture of tolerance from officials that allows this. The same as having players scream in your face and just walking it off. Book them! Jordan Henderson, Kevin Nolan, Wayne Rooney... budgies like those should be booked at least twice every match.

Not sure what your point is? He should have been booked but wasn't - which, I thought, was exactly what most people are saying: that referees do not do enough to stop time wasting.

Strange evaluation of Djuricic who looks to have settled straight in, despite moving to a new country and having not played much this season, and has played well. He is brave on the ball, clearly more skilful than Davis or JWP and looks much more likely to play an incisive pass. He's basically Gaston but without the tendency to give the ball away cheaply. He gives us something that Lallana used to, which is the ability to transition a harmless looking midfield situation into an attack through moving dynamicallly with the ball. He and Mane are our only players who do that.

I like Djuricic.

Are they much more expensive than a typical "local" firm?

Me too, it really was an absolute sitter. Like Lambert's at Sunderland last season or Pelle's on Saturday. We were good enough to stay up that year but bad management and some mental fragility did for us. As others have noted, there were loads of games we should have won comfortably but contrived to mess up. As someone else also said, I've met Prutton and he is a nice chap.

This rule is never enforced. I do think there is something to be said for a crowd count though over those sort of things. It would certainly put more pressure on the ref to take some meaningful action rather than a token yellow card in the final stages of the game and the occasional point at the watch.

Forster Clyne. Fonte. Tobes. Bertrand JWP---------Morgan Djuricic Long. Mane Pelle KD, Yoshi, Vic, Davis, Tadic, Elia, Reed

He created two penalty shouts against Liverpool, one of which was absolutely blatant so I think that's a bit harsh. Shame we don't have another option though.

Man U v Arsenal on penultimate weekend. We win, Man U lose, Saints and Arsenal confirm Champs League qualification. Fact.

Well, it seems that the rancid fecal outpourings of soshal meja have, for once, given passage to an embedded sweetcorn of philosophical interest. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_spectrum The fact is, you can quite easily agree with someone that it is "blue and brown" but you might perceive it in exactly the same way as someone who says it is "purple and grey". For a tangential exploration of the problems with ostensive definition, see, W.V. Quine. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminacy_of_translation

Such a shame really. I looked forward to the Brazil world cup immensely but this is going to be ****e. Probably even worse than South Africa.

Bizarre. Typical of the nonsense one expects though.

MODS!! Ban this person.

I don't blame Forster at all for yesterday. I am quite underwhelmed by him though. Most of the teams in the league have a better goalie.

So all the stuff he said about Liverpool was made up and they just happened to be the next best option? He just needs to accept that he's ruined his reputation here and everyone thinks he's a ****. These interviews don't help him.

---------------Forster--------------- ---------Font--Toby--Yoshi Clyne ------------------------Bertrand -------------Vic----Morgan------------ ---------------Djuricic------------------- --------------Pelle-----Mane---------- KD, Gardos, Reed, Davis, Tadic, Long, Elia It's interesting, actually, with Toby back if we do go 352, people are now battling for a place on the bench. No JWP or Targett in that squad and, if Jay Rod was fit, probably no Long or Elia.

Well, that's fine, but we're not really talking about the natural evolution of language through inventive or subversive use. We're not talking about an avante garde flourish. We're talking about a small cabal of ill-educated, ill-equipped and inadequate amateurs spreading ignorance. Monkey-see, monkey-do thick-headedness of the highest order. If you listen to some cricket commentary or rugby commentary you don't generally have to put up with such brain-numbing, uncultivated, predictable nonsense. It comes to something when broadcasters find a way to "dumb-down" football.

Why do pundits, and now plenty of punters, use this word to mean, "clear" or "definite"? That's not what it means. Thick budgies. Might as well say, " it's an absolute spazz-wham of a penalty. Completely hole-crust, Jeff!"

I think I read something once that said he was on the run in the jungle in Suriname for some sort of car finance scam. I have no evidence or credible suggestion that such an allegation is true. I seem to remember him once hitting a free-kick into the two-wide top row of the Milton Road end! He also nearly killed Jon Beresford (when he played for Newcastle, I think) by running into him.

On the plus side, I realised today that I have just repaid my student loan.

No. Of course not. How defeatist. Two thirds of the season has passed and we are fourth, with home matches reamaining against two of the four teams we are vying with for top four. If we win both of those there is a good chance that we will finish above them both. That leaves one of Man U and Arsenal to beat (who incidentally, still have to play each other). Whilst fifth would represent an excellent season, it simply isn't sport to "settle" for something less than we currently have. If we were fifth and one point of fourth we wouldn't ask if we would "settle for fifth" we would ask, "can we get fourth?". So why the hell would you settle for less?

Doris - a lady. Shatner's bassoon - the affectionate name given to a run in with a bouncer in New York, New York (a club in town) in the 90s. Blort - angry. - "Why isn't [x] in the team?" - "He was in town last night. Got Shatner's Bassoon for groping some Doris and fell down the steps at New York's. - " Flippin 'eck. Chris Nichol's going to Blort all over him.

We clearly have a good enough team to give the CL a decent shot. Are we worse than Ludgorets, Metalist, Prague, Olympiakos etc? No, if we got to the Champions League it would be great. It would be intriguing and fun and would represent one of the biggest league achievements since the Premier League began. Would we probably do worse in the league next year? Yes, and I doubt we would re-qualify for the CL. But there's abosolutely no sense in saying, "let's hang around in eighth for a bit and hope we miracullously become as welathy as Liverpool or Spurs", becuase it just isn't going to happen. We wouldn't have to add too many players to our squad to still be confident of a pretty decent league season. The notion we would be in a relegation battle is just lilly-livered fearmongering.