Window Cleaner

Big score indeed but I don't know if we can reasonably expect to bowl them out twice now as they've made a really solid start.

Well there was Niasse and no doubt others.

Well there was Niasse and no doubt others.

Looks like it was an excellent batting day for Hants yesterday. 500+ and 5 batting points should in theory be possible.

Looks like it was an excellent batting day for Hants yesterday. 500+ and 5 batting points should in theory be possible.

And he'll turn us down again. Don't think we'll bother myself.

Arsenal used to be a dab hand at it, signing players that had no chance of getting a work permit and loaning them out until they qualified. Some of them never even played a game for the Arse and got moved on after a few seasons. Not sure that Chelsea don't do it either. This lad had probably been in Belgium for a while and can get citezenship in a year or so if he doesn't get the required number of Nigeria appearances beforehand.

I thought Conte wasn't overkeen and considered the price excessive but perhaps that's just some journo's opinion.

Don't think Koeman actually wanted him anyway. Bloke runs around a lot but the end product is oft missing. Good deal for Everton, made 6 million or so on him.

In any case I see an awful lot of 50 million + rated players being sold every day by the media, I don't yet see any of these fantasy football transfers actually happening. Early days yet but many will end up where they started in May with not a bent halfpenny being spent on them.

Don't see why it's unsustainable, they got a couple of million less than us from the PL Sky fund, their gate receipts would be far less but I don't think that they have the top heavy academy structure that we do. Some seem to think that we can afford 20 million for a player and yet Bournemouth can't. Their wage bill must be about 2/3 of ours or less as well.

Same as most things in our age, with smoke and mirrors.

Incidentally, Tello is signing for Real Betis.

Who would want to be Bournemouth really. They have ground to make up and their reasonably successful season last time out may permit them to do that. We're already there and don't need such acquisitions as they're currently making, why Les even said so just las week. Sometimes I kind of wish for the old pre massive communication days when we had a couple of months off from football in the summer. Team just came back out in August, hardly changed from that of May. Mostly the same players, same manager, often the same kit etc. Summer was for cricket, tennis and Hengisbury Head.

Yep seen that hence edit, got 2 already. Is the wicket that vilainous then ?

That would be playing with fire. It would only need one big hitter to get fixed and we'd be toast. Sometimes you just need to settle for what you have, ie 9 points. No-one else will win either and we'll not win the Championship anyway. Cripes, didn't realise we'd actually declared..an got a wicket to boot.

Not really, I remember the old keepers and some of them were unfit, not very alert and didn't really read the game well. This new breed is mega fit and most have a certain intellegence for the game about them. I'm sure that if you looked at the number of penalties saved in say 1989/90 and again in 2016/17 you find a vast improvement for the latter. In fact you can see it here: https://www.transfermarkt.com/premier-league/elfmetertoeter/wettbewerb/GB1 Frazer saved 3 out of 9 penalties last season and he was about the best at it. Go back over the years and you'll see that back in say 99/2000 the best rate was far less. 93/94 is a real revelation, a couple of keepers saved one of five and the rest had a zero percent save rate. NB: Did we really concede 9 penalties in the league last season ? One about every 4 games or so, need to correct that then.

But the thing is keepers are getting better and better and in a lot of cases bigger and bigger. Most are over 6ft 4 now and that gives them more reach in all directions. An average keeper used to be pretty..well average but now some of them are really excellent footballers. I'm sure a lot of 1990s keepers were of nowhere near the standard that today's youngsters are. A penalty used to be a gift goal unless you farked up but now it's probably a 70/30 shot. Look at Bravo yesterday, bit of a clown but he managed to save 3 penalties anyway, that's because at penalty saving he's a pretty decent keeper.

Really not great again the batting today. We now need to shut up shop, straight bat everything and wait for the close. Batsmen seem to get in, try to force the pace and get out when they do. Just need to let it go because if Somerset get their tails up we're not in a great position with a fair few overs left. And it gets worse, Vince went for a big heave I presume and got caught, Bailey then run out next ball.

But scoring on this wicket with these balls is not easy. We're at 2 an over today, Monday at about 2.5 and Somerset were at about the same rate. As Dawson said, it's like hitting a bar of soap.

As I surmised then, they didn't declare, we got them out quite quicly though and we seem to be in no hurry to get ourselves into a sticky situation by looking for quick runs.

Would be good but I don't see it happening. They need the win points far more than us and I really don't see us giving them much of a chance to get them. Draw, Hants 9 points, Somerset 8.

Well yes, they need to improve considerably so you'd expect them to spend a packet wouldn't you.

Hah, gets us a wicket every time, you know like going to the beer tent or going for a slash. Crikey, Holland is on fire.

Playing again but by the looks of it losing a day and a half or so to rain might be a bit of a boon. Back to our can't bat/can't bowl configuration again !!