Window Cleaner

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 !!

Unless I've looked at an inaccurate forecast the weather doesn't seem any more promising today, cloudy, a bit on the parky side and cloudy.

Surrey have pulled off a master stroke in signing Sangakkara, perhaps we could have got him instead eh....

7 million £ is still a fair old amount for a player who can't play for you for at least a season and perhaps longer. Speculating on him eventually getting the requisite number of games for the Nigerian national side to eventually get a work permit. One to be left alone in my book.

Here's a little table with all known pre-season games for French L1 clubs . Obviously there are some gaps so you may be able to project where Saints could fit in. Doesn't look particularly evident though, perhaps we won't be playing top flight clubs. http://www.football365.fr/programme-de-reprise-de-clubs-2599047.html

Well as we aren't selling anyone worth a lot of money ( according to Sky anyway) anything is possible.

Well good oh, we can close down all the "top player" transfer threads then and just leave the Summer transfer targets thread open.:p

In any case he wasn't the only player to miss his penalty kick. I think it was Abrahams who missed early on and the second or third german. Couldn't watch it myself because a big storm cut off the satellite feed just at the moment of penalties. England didn't really deserve to win anyway, the 3rd German goal which was ruled out for offside was pretty fine cut, probably about half a foot offside actually, which all goes to show how finely balanced winning or losing can be so a missed penalty isn't any different.

Bonucci is 30, he's been at Juventus for a good few years and probably has 3 years or so left at the top, why would he abandon all that for a couple of quid more at the Chelsea circus...really.

All good manoeuvres to bump up the price by 10 million or so.

And they were not wrong !!

He wants to go seemingly, we're never adverse to a big stash of swans so he'll be on his way soon enough. Reckon we might get 55 for him. Don't doubt that Celtic get a cut so we'll end up 35 on the right side after all the counting is done.

Seeing as pink ball cricket was a bit of an unknown I do wonder if choosing to bat first was the wisest thing around. Our bowling seems more consistent than our batting just now and we could have let them find out the pitfalls first.

Just another José whim I'm afraid.

Solid start from Adams and Dawson today then we got bogged down and are now losing wickets.

Aha, Cat Stevens or Yusuf Islam as he calls himself now (Cat Stevens wasn't his real name either) Father and Son from Tea for the Tillerman, right?