saintbletch

I've heard that it's a strategy to drive up attendance and programme sales. SFC will give a "fan in the stand" a chance to manage the reserves. All they have to do is be in the stadium at half-time during a home game and frantically wave a match day programme in the air. Concerns about inconsistent selections, strange substitutions and unusual formations that might arise by having an "amateur" running the team have been dismissed with the club saying that "They've got to get used to that sometime."

It's true - I Google'd it so it must be How about a Peter Reid, Howard Wilkinson, Dave Bassett dream team? That'd be one for the purists.

After the fiscal embarrassment with Merlion, Michael was forced to "sleep around". He didn't like it and he'd lost a lot of self-respect, not to mention quite a few friends over it, but he had no other choice. But as he lay there next to Rupert in post-coital sadness, staring into the distance and thinking ruefully of what might have been, he began to wonder if Rupert had ever really loved him like Leon had.

This was also covered in the Guardian's irreverent footy email "The Fiver".

I take your point but I guess it depends on how empty that pint glass of yours is ESB. I would say that despite being treated appallingly, falling one division and likely to fall another, paying significant amounts of money to watch largely unknown players coached by inexperienced foreign coaches and watching their club ripped apart by a board wracked with division and rancour; 13,000 or so "customers" still regularly turn up each week. To me that makes football a special case where the "company", "customer" relationship is different from "normal" commerce.

...because the "customer" does not obey "normal" market behaviour in football? Because by having a slightly sub-standard product for any length of time in the football business can cost you £50M+ and perhaps your long-term viability? The stakes are higher and the time-scales are collapsed. "Normal" customers typically stop using a product if they no longer get value from it. This doesn't happen in football. If Virgin were to **** up, their customers would fly BA. In football the customer stays "loyal" but works from within to change things. It would be like 300+ people boarding a Virgin plane purely to abuse the staff, the pilot and the Chairmen (sic) - who don't even bother to fly Virgin themselves these days. This pressure is different from managing the expectations of shareholders perhaps once a quarter and then at an AGM. A change brings a relief from these pressures.

At last we understand why MLT and Bruce Banner were never seen in the same room together...

The Gimp from Pulp Fiction?

Rupert Lowe takes the time to greet and personally thank each and every one of the "Rupert must stay" marchers.

I wonder if this answers why we're having a press conference on Monday just to announce we'd promoted from within for the vacant manager's role?

Schadenfreude

Just because we haven't seen it happen in the past doesn't mean that we won't see it by the end of this recession/depression. We are living in extraordinary times.

At half time?

Wasn't NAMG purporting to be a legitimate construction/engineering company with apparently enormous plans/contracts to regenerate what of the smaller Arab states? Their head offices was in London but on closer investigation it appeared that they'd stolen the entire content for their web site from a legitimate construction/engineering company in "Poland?". Somebody made an attempt to contact the head office if memory serves and I thought they got through to someone. But I can't remember how they were supposed to be connected with the club. And didn't one of their press releases claim to have signed a definitive agreement to do "something" with a football club? I think the conclusion was that it might be a scam company but that we might not have been the intended victims. Having said all this I think I may have over the years one conspiracy/takeover has blended into the next.

...and I don't want to pour pedant petrol on the fire but if you're arguing about the difference between 2 and 1 tenths of an inch under 6"3', aren't you actually into the realms of quibbling about hundredths of an inch, and not tenths as you had stated? Just a thought.

Agreed. I do find it astonishing that people feel able to pass radical judgements on young players that are part of a team that is obviously not functioning as a unit. A weak TEAM performance will put more pressure on each of its component parts and will make them look worse than they are. Man Utd last night anyone? Perhaps we can conclude that he's not an absolutely stunning prospect. But IF we'd have been able to blood Lancashire alongside a commanding CB behind a dominant CM pairing and supporting a strike force that were keeping the other team's defences busy, he'd do well IMO. He's played England U19 games alongside Michael Mancienne, who IS hailed as a stunning prospect. That makes him better than Sunday league for me.

I think the point under debate is not the conversion of 1.90m but whether he actually is 1.90m tall. Wikipedia says he's 1.87m - 6' 1.5". Still tall but not "massive".

[An homage to Orwell's 1984] As Lowe's faithful lap-dogs placed the last of the cyanide capsules into Saturdays match day programs, BIG RUPERT watched over them from the telescreen. In a matter of days BIG RUPERT and his Thought Police would end thought crime amongst the Northam proles and St. Mary's would once again be empty.

This working for me... http://www.footysports.tv/content/sports/#splayer

01001100 01001111 01001100! 00111011 00101101 00101001

But my "Very Good!" to Nexstar was meant to be patronising. So it was ironic praise. But OK, you win. Kudos to 1976_Child for the first Godwin's law reference!

Very good!

Apologies in advance if others have already seen this but I had to link to this video. I think it's worth posting on the main forum as a reminder of posting etiquette. How to behave on an Internet forum. A few of us on here could learn a thing or two from it. It should appear in every forum's rules thread. Kudos to the first person to cite an example of "Godwin's Law".