St Marco

I do have to agree that you can't knock Pardew today as he got it all right. If you look at people's teams before the game you notice they picked both Morgan and Mills to start. He did the same thing. We were cruising until we let in a sloppy goal. He cannot be at fault for that. If he is they surely he must take credit for the goal we scored too?.... When they did score they had a 20min spell where they dominated. He made changes, an attacking change which paid off. When we did that we were the better team again. So seriously i don't understand how anyone could knock his decisions today as from where i was there was nothing else he could do. As i mentioned earlier we were getting done with the pace at the back via counter attacks. How would gambling and going for all three points change anything? We could lose then what would people say? He made a dumb mistake which cost us a point, que drama. As stated above how is it those who go to the games, those who pay hard cash to watch it are actually happy with what is happening but yet those who don't are not happy? My only advice would be to get down to the games, come with us lot and watch them. Your see first hand what is happening and that might make you cheer up a bit to see how positive it is and how it could be. Surely that makes a change from the last two seasons were all you could see was **** performance after **** performance?

- Lambert signed after the 1st game of the season (didn't he play like the day after he signed?) Before that day we had basically Patterson as looked like Saga and Rasiak were off. Even now our strike force needs probably an extra additions. - Kelvin was here but can only keep out what comes at him, he can't win us the game only lose it. - Strong back 4. Murty - Signed 5 days after our 1st game on 13th August (a month tomorrow), Harding - Signed 21st July. Jaidi Signed last week, Trotman signed 20th august (after 4 games). Only 1 of those 4 players was signed before the season started and that was by just over a week. If those players had not come in how would those results have been? Maybe like the 2 losses perhaps? So to expect the club to get promoted prior to those people arriving as i said only a nutter would expect that. Now they have signed we now have confidence and can raise our expectations. But not to a point of expecting to beat a team away who is top and won 6 out of 6.... - Prem manager, he has not been one of those for awhile. His last job he is blamed for spending money on not so good players and eventually causing relegation to league one. Not a high flying top of the table CCC manager that some paint him as. I like Pardew and think he has done well here but he is here based on what he has done in the past, we are hoping he will emulate that. Because he is here does not = promotion simply because he once did something a few clubs ago. CCC Players - The same players who got the club relegated from that league. Does that not say they were not good enough for that level if they could not perform in it? Other then Davis the rest did poor last season. Our squad last year was ****. It was made ****ter by players leaving DMG,Euell,Surman,BWP etc etc. It was not until a few weeks before our 1st game could we even think about adding to it. Financial Backing - Again same with above it was not until late on that we were in that position. If you roll back to when the pinnacle bid failed would you have expected promotion then with how the club was? When ML took over he paid supposedly £25m to clear the debts of the club. The playing side has been carefully put together without spending millions and millions. But that was started on 10th august, already having started the season. We have spent just £1.7m. That is not a lot of money in terms of transfer fees. If clubs could get promoted from this league by paying almost £2m everyone would do it wouldn't they... Great stadium/Fans - We have always had great fans and have had a nice stadium for sometime. So how is it that for the majority of years since we have had the stadium we have struggled? Only really having one good season since being there. We had more success with a supposed **** stadium. The fans are great most of the time but it is not their fault with who is playing on the pitch. They cannot make Jermaine Wright play like Ronaldo. Having a great stadium and great fans does not mean you should be promoted. Look at Leeds. So as i am trying to proove this club is now in the right direction and only now can our expectations start to grow. Before we were bought if things stayed as they were we would of all expected to battle relegation. To avoid it would of been the minimum we expect. We are only a month from that expectation. A lot has happened in that time and a lot more will continue to happen. What happen's in the first month will not determine where we end up in 2-3 years time. And this is the point people miss. We are building so that in that 2nd season we are a strong team without any of the shackles we have had over the last couple of months or even years. If people expect those things to happen now just 7 games into a season with 8 players having arrived in just over a month then as i said they are nuts.

Thought he did very well today and have been impressed by his recent displays. However i also agree time for someone else to take the corners as they just seem awkward. I would let Morgan take them and if not him then maybe Hammond,Harding. It would not hurt to try something different.

In all fairness i think people need to get a bit of a reality check This season was fooked the momment we went into admin, got -10 and had no manager,staff or even owner for the majority of our pre-season. Anyone expecting us to go up with those things happening is a nutter. We HAVE turned a corner. We have played Millwall,Colchester,Huddersfield and now Charlton. 4 teams who the critics/bookies have as being contenders for promotion. Of those 4 games we lost only one. A club that has come out of the fire like we have and not losing to 3 fancied teams in just the first month is a good sign. The team has come together well and obviously a few loans will come in. But not even our first 11 competed with the top team who had won 6 out of 6. There was nothing between the two sides. So what is there to be unhappy about? If we were losing week after week and getting turned over then i would understand but right now we are playing ok and will get better as the season progresses. I would much rather win games because we deserved to win them then fluke a couple of wins a month. The team being built is to win more games on merit rather then luck and anyone watching the games can see we are near to that. The problem is some people are so negative that they enjoy being that way. They love to **** on peoples fire. Some people come away from the games happy when we win and sometimes even when we lose if we play well. Where as others are only happy when we lose, they enjoy the fact it gives them the chance to once again be negative.

I think it was by far the best result thus far. What stood out for me is the re-grouping mentality after their goal. We were for a period all over the place but gradually we pulled ourselves together to take a deserved point. The past 2 seasons after that happened we would normally go on to lose. It is also nice to see subs actually making a difference. We were the better team again when Mellis and Jaidi came on. Mellis was unlucky not to get a penalty.

Great result by the lads and in all honesty think a draw was the right result. First half we played awesome and played some of the best football i have seen for sometime. We are at our best when the other team are trying to play too. We maybe should have taken some of our other chances, which seems to be our story at the mo. The formation change and team selection was spot on in my book. When i saw both Morgan and Mills in there i thought we would be too lightweight in midfield but having 5 in there made a big difference. We passed the ball around and looked the far better team. Going 1 up was the least we deserved as we were great. Davis had feck all to do. Second half started the same and we looked good but we had a total feck up at the back which resulted in them scrambling it in. After that we all thought here we go again. Typical Saints. And they did just that. You could see the nerves creep in and players started to go missing etc.. If this was last year or the year before we would of lost it. We had a bit of luck especially with the shot that hit the bar. Charlton dominated majority of the second half and i think a lot of us were just waiting for that 2nd goal. But Pardew made the changes with i think was Mellis and Jaidi and with that we started to play again. The final 10 minutes we were all over them and finished the game the stronger team. Was good to see Papa and Jaidi play and i thought Jaidi did pretty well. He is a big bloke who did not **** about, he cleared well and cut out passes well. Came up for some of our corners etc.. Both the new guys have obviously not played a game in 3-4 months so will take time for them to get to full match fitness. But from what i saw i think they could go on to be good signings. All in all before the game i thought we would lose, a game that came to early for us in our building process. We aproached the game in a very professional manner and for me that is what stood out the most. Charlton at times wasted some good counter attacks and a crap manager would of gambled and tried to go for the win. But the reality was we were trying to push forward but due to lack of pace at back we were getting caught. It was a case of trying to either stun the game and take a point which would of been a good result, or gamble and potentially lose. I think we made the right choice. In my book this is our hardest game on the fixture list and have now gone through a sequence of games against teams fancied for promotion. We now go into 6 games which are a lot easier and i expect we will now win majority of those. So a good result and a solid professional performance. It was worrying to see the confidence wobble after their goal but they recovered well. Lallana did pretty well i thought but maybe it is time to let Morgan take the corners. Next week is a must win game and i think we will. Listening to radio on way home you can't help but laugh listening to some of the people saying it was a bad result etc.....

if you go to their website http://www.cafc.co.uk/ Look at the picture they have before you go to the website proper The two managers with flames behind them..... They are trying to make it looklike a boxing match or something. Sure Jaidi will be happy about that! edit here it is

Agree 100% with CB Fry and is probably the best way to put it. George - At that time of selection he had actually played 3 games, scoring 4 goals. So Burley said it was because of not playing for Rangers but he was. He had only just recovered from injury a few weeks prior. If he had used that excuse nobody would of said anything. It was the way he said it that ****ed people off. He said "He need's to establish himself in the Rangers team 1st". You ask any Rangers fans what they think of him and your have your answer As for not doing well with Scotland he had played 15 games and scored 7 goals...Almost a 50% ratio. For Rangers he has played 115 games and scored 81 goals. Those stats speak for themself. Burley fecked up over that one bigtime. When the guy was talking about him never being consistent i think he meant as in he will always be average regardless. If you gave him a team and lots of money which is say expected to finish in the top 3 he would finish 4th.

I do really like the game but there are a few things i dislike When you score or when you get booked sometimes it goes into a animation where the crowd is blurred. They should of left it like it was. I realise they probably did that so they could increase graphics or something but it just feels a little 2003 or something. Another thing is the subs view when it does the stadium look etc.. can't they just get the 4th official holding up a board or something? Love the quick free kicks and the stadium effects, especially when you pass it about and the crowd cheer or applaud certain play's. Or when time is nearly up they whistle etc.

What i don't get is let's assume it is camera trickery and that it was a split screen etc.. That photo in this thread shows in 1 shot one of the balls is higher then in another shot. Which means it has been moved somehow (unless balls have learnt to float in air). So if he did fake it then basically he has just done 2 hours of lying. Even explaining to show how he did it is a lie. So how is that entertainment exactly? Anyone can do that. Feck even OJ did that on tv but we don't call him an illusionist...

There is an interesting piece on him on sky with people saying if they are for or against him staying on. One of the guys noted something that all of us surely have to agree on. Burley never get's a team playing consistently. At the very highest levels of any competitive sport you have to perform consistent or you won't win anything. Now there are obviously lot's of factors that can influence that such as maybe people getting sold, players getting injured etc.. But there is also the other side which he mentions. Where ever Burley has gone he seems to fall out with a lot of players/staff. The whole Boyd thing as he mentions if you look at it is a total farce. You got your countries current top scorer who is also the leagues top scorer and in red hot form and he is dropped for someone who has never played for the country before and is not performing that well league wise. Now if it happen's once you can say well yeah let's try something else. But if it happen's multiple times especially when the team play's crap and loses would you think "yeah it is a great decision putting me on the bench or not even on the bench at all" or "hang on a second why am i being over looked?". Anyone saying they don't want to play at any level is disgraceful but as the guy mentions there are various cases like this all over his career. If your not playing one of your best players who is in form and putting guys in who have never played your obviously doing it for a reason. If you do that you have to expect to be judged on those things. And ultimatly in my view at least that is why i dislike him and don't rate him. He makes decisions that majority of the time would take Einstein to work the logic out from. What Burley needs is a club where he can have as much cash as he needs and surround himself with people who are just like him, people who will not clash. If he can do that then he could do well. The problem is not many clubs are like that these days.

I did indeed say CM10 would be good competition this year for FM10, but i also said it was a load of **** And as you say the only reason it will be compeating is because of how cheap it is. If they were both say £20 to begin with it would be a landslide win for FM10. But companies don't care about reviews or even gamers opinions. They care about £££ and sales figures. IF CM10 sell's more copies then FM10 does then Eidos will print that everywhere it can. Even though it is a crap game and FM the far superior game it won't matter because the stats will show that CM10 sold more copies. Thus pushing FM into 2nd place. If you are a company that is taking huge hits then naturally you only have so long until you either get to a zero bank balance or until you get into masive debt. This is when companies try to get rid of toxic assets. Ones which simply don't make that much money or have the potential to make much money. Sega have started to go in a different way with their publishing now by doing deals with third parties such as Lucas Arts or Obsidian etc. Which again lowers costs. If you look across all electronics companies especially games companies you see that in the last 12 months they hace cut back a lot. Both Microsoft and Sony have closed studios and sacked a lot of people. Sega has only really done that once over the past year with the closing of UK Racing. Which was then picked up by Codemasters. So as i said is just a rumour but as i said before if you run at a loss you can only do that for so long before you get in the ****. Sega themselves know this all to well from their console days. Who would of thought back when the Megadrive was out that Sonic and Mario would star in the same game?!

Please do a rebuttle Matt as im interested to know how you believe that with facts please. Here are the Sega numbers http://gamerinvestments.com/video-game-stocks/index.php/2009/07/31/sega-sammy-holdings-financial-results-quarter-ended-063009/ proving what i just said. And if you look at http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/sega-acquires-sports-interactive your see that it says 1.5m copies. FM 09 has yet to have it's numbers released which will come as i said in Q4 such is how business works. However just to make it a bit clear for you Championship Manager 4 is the biggest selling Football management game of all time. It at that time actually was the fastest selling PC game of all time having a massive 124k copies sold in just 7 days. 6 years on and obviously that record was broken by Half Life 2 and World of Warcraft. So for FM09 to have sold a million such as you claim would mean it would of beaten that record which it hasen't or would of sold on average 20k a week for 52 weeks. If it had done that it would of been inside the top 10 games for the whole year across all formats. To put that into further context it would of sold more copies then Mario Kart on the wii in the same time. Obviously thus proving it is ********. But on further inspection at the media prep for 2010 i notice it says 1m meaning across all formats. So thats windows,mac and the portables. It will be interesting to see how those numbers turn out in the official release to shareholders. I'm assuming they have naturally added a few hundred k due to digital purchases. So let's be having your re-buttle Matt with facts please as to why it is rubbish. If they shut down UK Racing Studio which made Sega Rally which was a huge hit then why would they not shut SI. Even if 09 did indeed sell 1m copies (which was 17.99 at Game/Play/Amazon the main game places not 29.99) that is still small fish. Also this is the tracking for game sales http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/videogames/ref=pd_ts_pg_4?ie=UTF8&pg=4 Notice FM09 does not even make it onto the top 100. But yet CM is there....

didn't think they were doing patches? Guess whoever started that rumour was talking some ********. Interesting rumour today around the business world regarding Sega. They posted their results which show a loss of $230m and game sales down 60.5%. Rumour has it they will be shutting down one of their western studios "IF" their 2 big hitters for the holidays fail (Sonic and Mario at the Olympics and Bayonetta). Does not take a genius to work out that they have 3 western studios. Creative Assembly who create the gigantic seller Total War series. Seeing as they are working on Total War Napolean and Stormrise you can bet your ass it won't be them. The other is Secret Level which is now just Sega Studios and well has already had most of the staff fired. However they are supposedly working alongside Gearbox on Colonia Marines and have signed a new deal with Fox to create an as yet un-announced additional Aliens game. This will probably be the new game based on the upcoming new Alien prequel by Ridley Scott. So again likely won't be them. Which leaves Sports Interactive. A company which spends a shead load of money on using the licenses. Was bought for £30m in 2006. And figures show that for the 06/07 and 08 games total sales were 1.5m. Obviously 09 results will come in Q4 figures. Add to that they have invested a huge fortune on getting FM Live up and running and in almost a year seems to have vanished from the media glaze. The market as always going to be limited. And this could be the nail in the coffin. The Football Management Genre is very niche market. Aimed at Europeans were football is popular but sales are dominantly from United Kingdom. This could prove to be a bad sign for the company because it does not have mass market appeal instead only being desired by hardcore football fans who are gamers. To put this into some kind of context Fifa 09 was/is considerd the biggest selling football game of all time, one that was heavily marketed across the globe. Had high profile events to launch it and paid a lot of £££ in prize money at various tournaments. EA supposedly spent £200m retaining the rights for the next 4 years. After all that it sold 2m copies. Now on paper that looks low, especially when you compare it to say Halo 3 which sold 10m copies. But in terms of a sport game that is massive sales and 10 will obviously go on to match that. Which puts the sales of the FM series into the spotlight. So if the rumour is true that following the loss of 60.5% from the games division Sega are shutting shop on 1 of their western studios it would obviously be SI. They lose money on the franchise and when you lose $230m in just 3 months you know your in the ****. Naturally all companies have had to cut costs and lots of games companies have gone under or been moved into other companies over the past year. So if it is true then i would not be surprised one bit to see FM10 being the last FM as we know it. Again that is IF it is true. What we know for fact is Sega are losing a lot of money and have pinned their years hopes on a casual game and a potential hardcore game. So maybe the whole CM being cheap thing is more down to sales. If CM beat FM in sales this year then that would look bad. Even though the game could be far worse if it has more sales it will be considerd number one. So with FM being number two that could push Sega into acting to protect their investment. That would be ironic retribution by Eidos.

The Sun (yes i know) Think he had two cameras showing half the screen each http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/showbiz/tv/2631919/Secret-of-Derrens-Lottery-plottery.html

think i prefer having it on slow speed and semi manual, normal seems a fraction to fast in the demo i think

Totally agree One of our main problems is the atmosphere that has taken hold of the club due to the dark years. It will take sometime before we can finally shake that losing mentality we have had for sometime. Once we get a win the players will take confidence from it and they will begin to grow as a unit. It must be frustrating to see you play 3 games in a row and deserve at least 2 wins from those but still get booed by a few home fans. If you look at it on paper we have one of the strongest first teams in this league. We are capable of winning 50% of our remaining games for sure. The Charlton game marks our hardest game for sometime. We have a nice run of 6 games now sort of like Charlton have had against teams expected to battle relegation. If we can say win 5 of those 6 games we really could go on a good run of results.

As i said in the last thread i would not put Morgan or Mills in simply because Morgan has overall been gash and since he has been taken out we look a better more compact side. A team that has let only 2 goals in. He is a good player, potential to be a great player but he is one of those players who will either be involved for about 20-30mins of a game or not be involved at all. James has done better then Morgan thus far and does his job well. Charlton are a team that will battle for midfield and we need likewise players in there. If all fit then ---------------------Davis----------------- Thomas------Jaidi--------Del Boy------Harding Lallana -------Hammond---James------Holmes --------------Papa Smurf----Lambert---------- Then if things are still solid and tight we have room to manouver. We can chase the game by then bringing on Mellis/Saga/Mills. Or if we need to go a little defensive we can then bring on Wotten/Perry. Or if we need a period where we want to get the ball up the front as quick as possible we can bring on Morgan with his passing. This is a game where we have to remain solid and work hard from start to finish if we are to come away with anything. In other games against lesser sides then maybe start with him.

Was looking at the previous games and we have not won in the last 7 games away there (could be more but could only look back over 7 seasons) so that is another stat that could fall potentially.

Funny story about some guy who pirated the game on pc "Piracy is a serious problem when it comes to PC games, so it's no surprise that certain copy protection measures were implemented for the upcoming port of Batman: Arkham Asylum. And it seems that those measures have already snared one unwitting victim. According to MaxConsole, user Cheshirec_the_cat wrote on the Eidos Forums, "I've got a problem when it's time to use Batman's glide in the game. When I hold "," like it's said to jump from one platform to another, Batman tries to open his wings again and again instead of gliding. So he fels down in a poisoning gas. If somebody could tel me, what should I do there. After another user reminded Chesirec that Arkham Asylum isn't even available on the PC yet, administrator Keir took the time to explain the problem. "The problem you have encountered is a hook in the copy protection, to catch out people who try and download cracked versions of the game for free," he wrote. "It's not a bug in the game's code, it's a bug in your moral code." If you want to pick up a legitimate copy of Arkham Asylum on the PC, it'll be out on September 15 http://www.1up.com/do/newsStory?cId=3175985 Dumb ass

If you actually bother to read the posts your see i wasent the one who posted that..... Go back and have a read and see if you can spot where those numbers came from but it is right, 2 results were missing, so here they are I have put the number next to them to indicate how many there are in sequence i.e say norwich would be our 2nd loss etc august Palace = loss 1 Norwich = loss 2 Stoke = win 1 September qpr = win 2 watford = loss 3 colchester = draw 1 barnsley = loss 4 sheff utd = win 3 October preston = loss 5 wba = win 4 cardiff = win 5 bristol city = loss 6 burnley = win 6 november charlton = loss 7 wolves = draw 2 sheff weds = loss 8 blackpool = win 7 ipswich = loss 9 december leicester = win 8 sheff weds = draw 3 hull = win 9 coventry = draw 4 preston = loss 10 colchester = draw 5 barnsley = draw 6 january watford = loss 11 s****horpe = win 10 plymouth = draw 7 total Wins = 10 losses = 11 draw = 7 = 37 points which = 1.32 points per game SOOOo that makes the difference between Burley and Pearson 0.09. Which again is bugger all. Burley had 28 games so if he had the final 18 games at that ratio meaning he had 46 games he would of had 60 points. And if Pearson had a whole season at his ratio he would of had 56 points. So the difference is 4 points for the whole season. Of course you can use the stats to show whatever you want but if we take say the last 5 games for each we see Burley had 6 points and Pearson had 8 points. Again futher evidence to show Pearson was getting better and Burley was getting worse. But that is if you use just the last 5 games....

Personally i think this will be are hardest game of the season. They are a good team who have played together now for sometime and have gone through bad times and into good. A bit like what is happening now to us. After 10 months of doing the same thing i would expect us to be doing just as well results wise. However i would of loved this game to have been at the end of the season not now. I can see it being a very hard game and will go down 2-1. I would take a draw from this game, it would be a great result.

Just to re-correct your error It was 28 games with Plymouth being his last game on sat 19th jan. 3 games in Aug, 5 games in sept, 5 in oct, 5 in nov, 7 in dec and 3 in jan. Which again means he had a 1.25 points ratio.

Yeah have also played a fair few games now. I played straight away on the highest setting as come on now we are all quite experienced these days! What can i say, the best just got a whole lot better. The first thing i noticed was they have done a lot of work on that whole "keep my finger on x or a and i will magically tackle the player" thing. I did it and was seen to have caused a foul. And this is the thing, that tackle now has new animations were if you just barge into someone and press it you will get done for it. If you do it at the right time where the player has the ball slightly away from his feet you will stick a foot in and get the ball. Or it can cause you both to jostle i.e shoulder to shoulder. The other thing i noticed a massive change in was crossing. You can cross the ball so much better now with curving crosses in different directions. Tackling seems much better and the AI is once again very difficult. The comentary had changed which is great because last years was the same as 08's. Probably the best comentary i have seen in a game and sounds a lot more realistic. The crowd seems a lot more noiser now too. The thing which i like the most though is the 360 degrees movements. After being so used to the old games it is funny as you try and get used to it as before you just ran in a straight line but now you can see you vere a little bit and that is simply down to where i was holding the stick. The animations are awesome and thank god they have sorted it so the ref does not book you for your 1st bad tackle unless it really is a booking. I got an animation that was different then the old ones where it looked like the ref was giving the player a final warning, which was cool. So very impressed and can't wait for the real game. Apparently the demo is a couple months old now so like last year they will just polish things up before release. I scored a beauty goal with Lampard, and thats the other great thing you can save goals and show them to people http://www.easportsfootball.co.uk/media/play/video/9085759 You can see in that what i mean about the little touch to nab the ball. Great game

still waiting for mine to download.... I think i read somewhere that Sony updates the store at 5pm uk time so maybe it will be added then.