St Marco

Not really about a player but an interesting thing i saw on wiki (must be true right?) Atletico Madrid The club was originally founded on 26 April 1903[8] as Athletic Club de Madrid by three Basque students living in Madrid. These founders saw the new club as a youth branch of their childhood team, Athletic Bilbao.[8] In 1904, they were joined by dissident members of Real Madrid.[9] They began playing in blue and white, similarly to Athletic Bilbao, but by 1911, Athletic were playing in their current colours of red and white stripes. Many believe the change was influenced because red and white striped tops were the cheapest stripes to make, because the same combination was used to make bed mattresses, and the unused cloth was easily converted into football shirts. This discovery of a cheaper option probably persuaded them to change and influenced the Madrid club being come to known as Los Colchoneros nickname. Other more plausible account of the reason to change colours is that both Athletic Bilbao and Athletic Madrid used to buy Blackburn Rovers blue and white kits in England.[10] Once in 1911, Juanito Elorduy, former player and member of the board of Athletic Madrid, went to England to buy kits for both teams. He did not find Blackburn Rovers kits and bought Southampton red and white ones instead.[10] Athletic Bilbao adopted the full Southampton kit with the red and white striped shirt and black shorts. Whereas, Athletic Madrid adopted the red and white shirt but kept Blackburn Rovers blue shorts, leading to them also being known as Los Rojiblancos. So there you have it, if it was not for us Madrid would have a different emblem and kit!

Depends on your definition of big? If you mean by attendances then our average of 22161 last season would of put us around 6th. In the championship you would imagine that would go up by about 3k-4k which would put us 2nd behind Leeds. In the championship we are deffinatly one of the bigger fish based on infrastructure and attendance for sure.

It is the food chain though isn't it. We all have our place. But right now it would appear (at least if you believe what the press say) that we are ahead of Burnley at least. The same thing will happen to us with Alex sooner or later. I think modern football has always been that way.

I think permanent bans are a bit harsh..... While i didn't find him as funny as some of you guys, he was deffinatly a character on the forum. Just give him a weeks ban or something. We all say dumb **** now and then.

Reading the Burnley boards http://boards.footymad.net/forum.php?tno=104&fid=297&sty=2&act=1&mid=2117285682&page=1 and have to say there are some really lovely comments on there! They think we offered him £20k a week. Chelsea accept £1m bid. It is a done deal. But my fav comment has to be the one where the guy says something like "I thought they were broke and went out of business a few seasons ago? How can they afford players and wages like that? Or are they just continuing like before where they are spending money they don't have?" For someone to reply saying "They are now owned by the estate of a multi-billionaire"..... I know it sucks for them but you have to admit for the first time in a longtime it is nice to be in a position to be able to buy quality players ahead of other teams

To put it into context. Alex has scored more goals in one season then Obertan has in 5 seasons. It would be a huge drop in quality to what we have now imo.

I think it happens to everyone as you get older. You sort of start paying less attention to the charts and then you never really look at it again. The thing is there are some really great bands out there coming through. It is just they get little attention. As mentioned above your best bet is to join something like LastFM or Grooveshark and that will recomend music to you based on your tastes. Your always end up finding some gems from that. Mainstream music is in deep **** and rightly so. The music industry is so out of touch with the modern world. Reality tv has hijacked it and because of that it makes it hard for new bands to get on tv/radio. The death of something like Top of the Pops shows how it has changed. The future of music is as i mentioned above services like Grooveshark http://grooveshark.com/#/ where you just type in your music and play, no need to download anything, no need to pay anything and so on. And it will then give you suggestions to stuff you might like. Like i was listening to The Doors on there a week or so ago (i like all music old and new) and it suggested a song called "Through my eyes" by a band called "The Creation" ( http://grooveshark.com/#/s/Through+My+Eyes/3ttKoA?src=5 ). I never heard of these guys before and thought it was a quality track. Did a bit of research into them and found out it was from the 60s and they were not famous at all really! You would of thought it was recent. But even if your not into that type of music it will always find something that you are into.

Obertan and hash Brown for Alex.......are they having a laugh?

Interesting read. Based on what he say's and if it is true then we will probably play Skatesville around boxing day. My prediction would be Burnley away as our first game. Based on our two squads as they are right now i think it would have draw written all over it.

Here is some E3 gameplay Gameplay from tank battles Is awesome! Love the new engine and how the world changes from what you do. Like when you fire the tanks dust kicks up and if you do it a lot it does it to the point where you can't see! And new Metro Map trailer [video=youtube;aPu7-LtLKmU]

Of course. But if you could not afford to get it last season why not hold off a season and save up? Is it really the end of the world that you can't go to every game for a year? Let's be honest here saving up £400 should not be too difficult. At the minimum wage that is 66 hours. Just over an hour a week. If you can't put £6 a week away then it is time to re-think the career or spending habbits! I would understand if it was a house or a car but £400 is not that much in the grand scheme of things. I am sure a lot of people spend that much just going out in a few months. All i am saying is that people get caught up in the whole debt thing too easily and then pass the blame on. The reality is if you held off for awhile and saved up you would not have any issues. You would not be in the circle of needing to keep get a loan every time season ticket time comes around! But even then this season you only have to pay 50% and then pay the rest over 6 months. I don't think that is too bad. That is like £200 up front and then another 3 payments of about £66 each. To me it seems the club can't win. It will always upset some.

Maybe the moral here is to not spend what you don't have? Not sure how you can blame the club for peoples personal financial situations?

To be fair though Antonio has a similar record to AOC in his season here. Don't get me wrong AOC is by far the better player but Antonio did pretty well too. He scored 7 goals from 22 starts. AOC scored 10 from 25 starts. AOC had 8 assists and Antonio had 5. Which would put AOC at a goal every 2.5 starts and Antonio at goal in every 3 starts. However i think Pardew was right to throw him into the team when he did. Sometimes players are put in too early but i don't think anyone can say that about Alex. The lad has a very bright future ahead of him and hopefully that will be with us. In regards to Howard i think it would be a bad signing. We can do much better then that.

I don't understand how people could not be prepared for this? It happens every year...... It is like saying you didn't prepare for xmas then complain on xmas day you needed more time! The increase in prices though is a bit steep. My renewal has gone from £393 to £515. My maths is not great but that is an increase of 30% right? They have re-introduced the installment plan which is 50% up front then 3 further payments in sept,oct,nov. So technically if i did that i'd be able to spread it out over 6 months so when you look at it like that it isn't so bad. Hopefully the increase will be down to the fact we will be signing some quality players!

Ah ffs..... These hackers need to get girlfriends or something.

The Championship is a difficult league let's not deny that. However i don't think Swansea have a better squad then us and look what they did. The stand out player for them is Sinclair. If he had got injured the team would not have done nearly as well in my opinion. He scored 19 goals. The next best scorer for them was Dobbie with 9. In top scorer terms that would put him 47th... If you look further into their stats your see their top assister was Nathan Dyer with 7 assists. Way down in 32nd place. However where Swansea shine is that they keep goals out, they have the 2nd best record for clean sheets. But they still lost more games then the top 2 combined. Point being i don't think we have much to fear from this league. With the squad we have right now i think we are a top 10 team. We have Lallana and AOC who are quality players. We are talking maybe £20m beween them. In terms of a left and right winger i think we have the best two currently in the league. Strike force wise we have Lambert who has scored 56 goals in just 2 seasons. Barnard who has scored 24 in a season and a half. Add to that Connolly and Do prado and i think we have a very strong strike force. If we added a fast striker it could be one of the best. Defence wise again i think we have among the better defences in the league. 20 Clean sheets last year which is a club record and was the best record in league one. If we can get a defender in off Fonte's caliber to replace Jaidi then again we will have a strong back line. The only areas i am concerend about is central midfield and goalkeeper. Davis did make a fair few mistakes last year. If that continues into next season then we will have to get in a new one or give Bart a chance. Which personally i think he deserves. As the squad is right now anything to far below 10th and i'd think we didn't do so well. If we get Cork in, a quality pacey striker and a new CB then i don't see why we can't be going for a top 6 finish.

In terms of his development i don't think moving to a big club would help him right now. Let's not forget the kid has only had one season. If he goes to any of the big clubs he will at best sit on the bench. He won't start games for a few seasons yet. He has a chance to go into his 2nd season in football playing every game in the NPC. A huge step up from league one. Playing so often will help him develop more then having pots of cash to swim around in. It makes you wonder if his parents really do have his best interests at heart or if they just want to exploit him for as much money as they can get. If it is the latter then they should be ashamed. It seems loyalty in football has all but gone. The kid has a great future ahead of him. But it should not be forgotton who has looked after him for almost 10 years of his life. Who gave him his chance. The family owe the club more respect then they have shown it in my view. I feel sorry for the lad as i am sure he just wants to play football like any kid that age does. He needs protecting or it can go so wrong for him as we have seen so many times with talented people who get things too soon. I hope he does not become another one of them. His dad needs to set a better example.

How do you have an election with just one candidate? Isn't that what happens in dictatorships?? I hate the FA but i think it is time we left Fifa. The more info that comes out about the whole Qatar thing the more it makes me angry. They have a population of about 1.5m people. Have never qualified for a world cup. Have never got past the quarter final stage of the asia cup. Have an average attendance to their main league of just 4000. They hosted the most recent Asia cup (2011) and had an average of 10,000 people. They have few stadiums above 20,000 seater let alone a 90,000 one for a final. They will make 5 stadiums for the world cup which will be all 45,000 seater. Now i am no maths genius here but if you only have an average of 4,000 people watching what is the point of having a 45,000 stadium? If football was that popular wouldn't they have already made stadiums to seat these people? It is pathetic that a country like Qatar who has almost no footballing history at all on the international stage should be allowed to host a world cup in this way. They should wait until football get's more popular naturally, not try and force it down the necks of their population. That is what ****es me off the most is that it is given to them simply because nobody in the middle east has had it before. And because of the money thrown at Fifa by them. Football has changed a lot over the years and it needs to go the same way as the IOC. You can't give out the Olympics to places that don't really have any history for the sports. Of course these events should belong to all of the world but to give the biggest one of them all to a country with a population less then Manchester and the infrastucture of the non league is a total joke. If they want to take it to new places take it to places like India,Philippines,Australia,Canada,Holland,Portugal,Sweden,Cameroon,Nigeria,Denmark,Greece,Egypt,Jamaica etc etc... There are so many countries out there who could argue that they are more deserving by either having bigger populations, having a bigger football economy and so on. That is why Japan and South Korea deserved it because while football on a domestic scale might not be to the standard of the PL they have a history of good players over in Europe which helps their national team. And the population love football. Ji Sung Park is bigger then Beckham in asia. With the Qatar national team only 1 player plays outside Qatar (Egypt). The rest are nobodies. And with the network that clubs have today in terms of scouting players i am sure they are not unseen talent waited to be discovered. They are most likely just ****. On top of all that there is a chance that our domestic season will have to have it's times moved so we play either a winter world cup or an early spring one. Why should we have to move our league times? As i said the more info that comes out the more it makes you think it is time we walked away from Fifa. They need us not the other way around.

Think your find quite a few of those were injured. We had a massive injury problem that year where we had to get lot's of players in on loan or older players joining. I remember going to that WBA away game where we had to get something (think they were top and playing well at the time) and seeing our team sheet. The defence was Jermaine Wright,Luketti a semi cripped Perry and Surman. Had Wright bought in to go in goal too. Now i don't know about you but if i saw that defence and saw that the most inspirational guy in the team at the time (Surman) was bunged into defence i would fancy my chances of scoring quite a few goals! Add to that those non-work horses Idiakez, Safri and Euell in midfield and then John in attack means a really poor side imo. That team was screwed for sure. Pearson just delayed the inevitable by a year.

I actually thought the single-player in Black ops was the best one since MW1. MW2 i just didn't like. Felt it got boring quite quickly and just wanted it to end. MW3 the more i hear about it the less i am liking. Gamespot have a preview up where they don't seem too impressed. But i would guess that is down to the guys who made MW1&2 all leaving Infinity Ward so MW3 will have a different vibe. But the thing that i am not liking the most is the reports that MW3 will start a monthly subscription for the COD franchise. Tomorrow details will be announced for that service. Playing the multi-player will be free but expect it to be a bogged down version. For things like more maps, weapons and from some reports your even need the sub to see your stats. Activision are known for milking their titles but if you need a sub to basically get what we have now then i thnk a lot of people will pass on it.

Those saying the pl is rubbish or been poor this season etc i simply don't understand.... I hate Utd with a passion but by that logic the teams in europe this season have been poor too seeing as Utd got to the final with ease including beating spanish sides twice? Personally i think the pl has been much better this year as more teams can beat each other. I'd rather have that then La Liga where the top 2 in 76 games lost just 6 times between them.... I imagine if we had that as our main league the hatred for teams like utd would be much higher! That said i don't want Utd to win because i am english, i want them to win because i got a free £10 bet from skybet on them to win at 3/1!

I think DICE are one of the most talented groups out there. They make the best multi-player games. Battlefield 3 will have a single player but the multi-player will be the main reason to buy it. The Frostbite engine will add much more realistic components to multi-player. Like buildings being destroyed. The area will looklike there was a battle there. With COD that just does not happen. Battlefield 2 was awesome for it's time. Your never forget when you first got to fly a chopper or fighter jet. The maps are huge and have loads of mini fights all over it. There are no choke points and random spawns. That is one of the things that annoys me about COD. They need maps where you have to either assault or defend something. With COD you just go round and round and the things your fighting for are pretty pointless. There is no thrill of knowing your behind enemy lines and you could get capped at any momment. That is what made BF2 so great. You could get a group in a chopper and fly across the map. You might get shot down by a jet but you also might go un-seen. Then you get to take an area. When you do that you know the enemy will be coming for that spot so you try and get into a defensive position. Which means you could have some epic fire fights. Medics bringing people back to life. Support groups flying in supplies and ammo. Planes dropping parachuters and so on. To me COD games seem all about the numbers, how many you killed, what xp you got, what rank you got and so on. BF games are about the action. The memory of a kick ass close battle is the reward. COD will sell more, no doubt about it. But BF3 will be the better game in terms of metacritic/reviews. Dice have spent a long long time on this game. Can't wait!

The reality is if we got promoted next season the vast majority would be over the moon about it. A lot of today's fans (me included) grew up with Saints in the top flight. Sure we didn't always do so well, had to escape relegation most seasons but when we did win it was all the more special. We all remember the scores, games like when we beat Man Utd 6-3. The Premiership right now is a 5 horse race. It used to be a 2 horse race. As time goes on that 5 will turn to 6 and so on. As more clubs are bought out by rich billionaires the more teams there are that are competative. Look at it this season. Anyone could of won the title up until a few weeks ago and a lot of clubs could of been relegated on the final day. If you said at the start of the season Man Utd would only win 5 away games all year most people would of laughed at it. Most teams in the league can beat each other. A team that is down won the League Cup and so on. The PL is exciting. It is the best league in the world. I'd love for us to be back amongst it. I'd love to see world class players week in week out at our stadium. Hopefully a lot of them playing for our club!

Not bad, i remember they had QPR at something like 14/1 to win it last year. Forest were favs at 15/2.....18/1 on us getting promoted is worth a tenner for sure!

Totally agree. If you look at the current squad we have now you would have to say we were deffinatly a top 10 squad in the NPC. Sky bet have it like this West Ham - 7/1 Leicester - 7/1 Birmingham - 8/1 Southampton - 10/1 Forest - 10/1 By the start of the season i'd imagine we would still be in the top 6 with the bookies. But it all depends on what happens in the summer. In my opinion we are 2/3 quality signings away from being promotion contenders. If we got another CB of Fonte's quality in for Jaidi, an attacking central midfield player and a fast striker of proven quality at this level then we will be up there or there abouts. Nobody expects promotion. But what i do expect is the club to give the funds if we have them to Adkins to go out and get those players. Because if the plan is 2 years in the NPC then the majority of this squad will still be here after next season. If it is not good enough to get up this season then why would it be the following one? Our resources mean we should have the ability to give it a good go. But until the first day of the season you can't really say your expectations as we will add to the team and lose players.