Window Cleaner

Doesn't make much difference,we still lost handsomely. Probably didn't get many more bonus points either.

We probably offered them Pulis and a fiver( paid in 4 instalments) though.

And to think we were second in the county championship a couple of seasons back, Warne must have been winning games all by himself.

looking unlikey now, Cork gone for a duck to the 2nd ball of the day(or I think it was) Richardson has shown that you can take wickets on this track so why exactly we were tarting about with Ali,Tahir and Tomlinson is a complete mystery to me.Our batsmen never have a chance, they're always facing gigantic totals and as we now always need to win they're under pressure from the first overs to knock them off quickly.

Lallana isn't too old,Mancienne is older and so are a couple of others,Alex isn't too young, the trouble is that they have been playing 3rd division football down among the hackers and cloggers.This standard is judged to be too basic to be selected for a major football nation in a major tournament. Now the Czech 1st division probably isn't much better but for England it's a problem. Fortunately for all our young players with international aspirations we're now in the NPC and the problem may just fade away,not for Senior International selection though.

To sum up then, it's not the hours you put in it's what you put into the hours. About the only thing I remember from my project management course at Cranfield, that and a room full of green objects and then being asked to list the red objects on exiting.

Jeez it's a long,long time ago now and as with everything Taunton's related it's complicated because they let you have a stab at an A level known as PAM in the Lower 6th before graduating to the fully separated Pure Maths and Applied Maths in the Upper 6th. I certainly did quite a lot of set theory in the syllabus along with vector algebra and some stats. As I was more inclined to physics I sort of concentrated on the Pure Maths aspect. I remember a load of gumph been forced into my head about Taylor's Theorem and McLaurin's theorem and Lami's theorem and a whole lot of other theorems.The basic calculus we did in the 4th form so it must have been part of the O level programme at that time, differentiation and integration as applied to basic stuff like calculating the area under a graph and that sort of thing.

Set theory was certainly part of the London A Level syllabus (Applied Maths I think) at the end of the 60s/early 70s.Couldn't say about O Level because I'm an ex Taunton's inmate where the reasonably bright passed from the 4th form to 5 Advanced without any specific O level attempt,you just picked up whatever you took early (like foreign languages in the 4th form) or the mandatory English Language/Lit and other time fillers such as Latin and British Constitution sort of crap in 5A.With 5 and 4 I have more A levels than O Levels but with that system it didn't pay to f*ck about in the Upper 6th.

Let's just see whether Lallana can hold down his usual role at the next level before we start making him out as some sort of CM messiah eh! For those of you with short memories the last time we were at this level Lallana's finishing was oft woeful and wasteul. He's progressed since then no doubt but as he can't tackle particularly well I'd think CM is a distinct no-no as of yet. All of our players with perhaps the exception of Fonte still have to prove that they can step up to this level match in match out or are still capable of it (this means Jaidi and perhaps Harding) This includes the fans faves like Lallana and Lambert.

Hampshire's bowling is pitiable and has been all season so why not make it a bit worse. We're down already so why not give the bloke a chance to get some Div 2 experience. Whoever recruited this bowling line up needs hanging, look at the figures from this match,Ali gone for 66 off of 11/12 overs without any end product,Tomlinson just a few less conceded already.If I can see that the bowling is all wrong from 800 miles away surely someone at the Rose Bowl can see it as well.

24 million £ in parachute payments this year and again next year is what it's all about. Plus as you say the prospective receipts from the sale of Parker and others will soon set them to rights.When you have parachutes and a couple of highly solicited players in your effective debt is just an accounting notion.Plus I guess they'll be selling Upton Park for quite a decent sum in the near future. As for Wildean gambles the times to do it if you must is in your first season down,gives you 2 stabs at the target instead of 1. As with the Wilde experiment you can always sell players afterwards to make up the balance. I'm sure that if someone took the time to work it al out we sold for more than we bought in the Wilde/Crouch era, trouble is the overpaid dregs that were left behind to draw down on the 3rd season.

Under the "old system" if you got O levels you had a fairly good decent well organised memory and could regurgitate stuff in the desired form on the exam papers. If you could get a couple of A levels then you had something about you that would enable you to cut a decent career out for yourself. 3 A levels with decent grades made you a thinker and a scholar,you knew your stuff and could develop it to produce the oft needed deductive reasoning to impress the board of examiners.When I went up to Imperial in the early 70s only 2% of the population attended University (mind you the word University meant something thenf,Portsmouth didn't have one, neither did Bournemouth or John O'Groats).

Is it OK to be not particulary fussed whether we sign Danns or Cork?? Not sure that either of them will add very much at all to our current side. Cork a bit more than Danns though, not sure where all this Danns worship comes from but then as this forum seems to number very many Danns experts perhaps I'm missing something. Probably no better than Guly.

Tomorrow week maybe for the pre-season checks with pre-season gathering for 4th July ?

Doncaster,Barnsley and either Coventry or Watford.(and I'd go for Watford)............simple.

He's not all that young, 20 ish I think,plenty of players of his age have 60/70/80 first team appearances to their name by then, especially when their club has done a 2 stretch in the third tier of English football.Relegation to this level was an opportunity to seize for players like Gobern and unfortunately he never did.He got a chance to show what he could do when we had injury problems in his sector, unfortunately for him the pr@t just went wild and got a 3 match suspension.Had he not done that he may have got more of a chance to show his mettle.

someone who's just downed a big bottle of Xanax??

Tribunal indemnity?? 125K at most, more likely than not a lot less. Strange how few seem to appreciate what "out of contract" means. It's a an indemnity decided by a tribunal for young players(provided we at least offered him a contract) and absolutely f all for those over 25 ; you can't sell them or part exchange them, they're just gone.

Morgan played 20 odd games for us in the Championship, in the early days before our lack of strike power became terminally negative ,the combination of Morgan and Holmes was oft very pleasing to watch and caused opposition defences no end of trouble.We just couldn't score and eventually embarked on a spiral descent.

Or may be it's just the average fan's attitude to constructive,possession football that's the problem. He always wants his team to be bursting forward and huffing and puffing,"the doer and the thinker, no allowance for the other" as my friend Ian once said.

q.e.d

You can't prepare for a season's opener against Leeds by playing games against Eastleigh. We have a good pre-season programme this time round so tough luck on Eastleigh.

This is absolutely spot on, Golac has been our best foreign player to date by a long shot. The youth of his forum always think that we are overcritical of some of the later players and managers but if you were amongst us at the Dell in the early 80s you would understand it.Saints were magnificent in those days and most of us can't forget it.

Elmander,though no doubt he could do a job in the NPC, has already signed for Galatasaray. Champion's League Football has immense pulling power, even if it's with a crap team in the back of beyond.

What do you expect? have you never noticed the reaction on this forum to passing the ball around and keeping possession until you can burst forward even it means going sideways and backwards as well? Yer average English fan's idea of a good footballer is a 5ft 3 in central midfield player who alternates between kicking the shîte out of the opposition,shouting idiotic commands at his team mates,bursting forward into the opponents box and then losing the ball to set up a goal for the opponents and arguing with the ref. It's no wonder that Wenger didn't want Wilshere involved, he doesn't want him anywhere near Stuart Pearce football. Mancienne in CM? yer having a laugh.