Verbal

As what looks like fraud unravels at Notts Co, I'd be surprised if they make it through the season in League 2, let alone have any chance of promotion. Their supporters' dreams of reliving the glory days have been crushed - and they've lost control of their club because they believed the false claims made by anonymous characters from a secretive offshore company. 'Fit and proper' indeed.

So it is about power - or at least in your mind. You seem to have a deeply (and presumably unintentionally) low opinion of Cortese. As I've said before, the club and the paper will sort this out. And they will do it in an adult fashion, is my guess - rather than with a 'We're doing this because we can' childishness.

Then why are you so insistent that the Echo 'grovel'? Only because, to suit your own argument, you assume that the Echo must have done something that the others didn't. But what on earth is that assumption based on? It's something of a relief to be know that this tiff between the club and paper won't be sorted out with the interventions of a few on here, but (I'm sure) with sensible, adult mediation.

But that wasn't the point I was making. To repeat: you are failing to apply your logic to your own posts. What you now reduce it to is a balance of power. Presumably the BBC won't be banned because it is too powerful. Does that make it right - just because the club (in your view) can? If I were Cortese, yours are hardly the arguments I'd want to hear.

Abu Dhabi seems to make a habit of bailing out screw-ups. In the early 90s, the Emir also shelled out to many of the creditors of BCCI, the notorious gun-running, drug-dealing, terrorist-sponsoring Ponzi scheme that was, until Bernie Madoff, the biggest scam in history.

If you're going to argue in that way, then I do think you have to apply the same rules to your own posts. Your comments earlier about the Echo having to 'grovel' if a resolution is sorted out in the next few days does seem like you've made up your mind before hearing Cortese's statement, assuming he makes one.. As I said earlier, a grown-up response will in any case ensure that this will all be settled within the week - everyone has seen enough of Cortese's careful approach with the club to reasonably think that.

You wanted Ollie to win?

Less worrying then...

I don't think you realise - LA77 was being amusing.

There are quite a few worse strikers in the Prem - which is always a bit of a worry...

I'm sticking with my prediction.

Right, but I'm saying it'll be sorted out by next week. I wouldn't expect either side to grovel. That's just silly. Time for a grown-up resolution. I have faith in Cortese and his advisors to sort this out.

Wanna bet?

If FM says stewards were issued with photos to ID Echo staff, I'd be inclined to believe him, given his inside knowledge. But as you say, a search like this would hardly be foolproof. The larger issue is that the longer there isn't an explanation from the club, the more your position just seems like an attempt to close down the argument. In any case, I'd expect some kind of statement from the club tomorrow - any smart media management would dictate that. The club will have to address what seems on the face of it a bit of problem. The embargo appears to have been applied only to the Echo - and, worse, seems to have been imposed only after the Echo approached the club for comment on the plans. This isn't how embargoes work. They are applied at some point before the point at which information is released - in this case, either when the planning application is made, or when the council nominates the time and day that it makes the application public. You certainly don't announce embargoes after other media - including the BBC and even TSW - have covered the story extensively. If it turns out that the club did exactly this, and placed the embargo only for the BBC, etc., to break it, then fine - except that there still has to be an explanation as to why the Echo was singled out for sanctions and not the Beeb - and us! Either way, this is all an unhealthy situation, and both the club and the paper should move quickly to resolve it. It's all very well for a selfish few on here to say f**k the Echo, but there are people out there for whom it is their means of following the club. And it does hurt people. The photographers, for example, by following the club's apparent diktat (if this was the case) that they couldn't sell their pictures to the Echo would have lost income. Plus there's the issue of how the sponsors might feel about it, etc, etc. Everyone loses in the end. Expect it all to be resolved within the next week.

Just curious. Did you know FF was a Saints supporter?

Best antivirus? A mac. Never had antivirus on any of my Apples and never had a problem.

See above.

Leeds. For all the reasons brought up again by The Damned United. I keep trying to block out that crushing but horribly, nastily arrogant demolition of Saints by Bremner's ugly team.

How about both sides of this argument agree that the sooner the ban is lifted the better?

How strange that the swear filter didn't catch that.

You really wouldn't want your football club to fall into the ownership of a property company called, 'Reduce', would you?

But do you not see the smallest irony in the club banning the Echo then not talking to the press about why one of them is banned? Cortese has media advice, and I'm sure this will be sorted out quickly. I doubt very much that there is a 'smoking gun' - some huge offence for which the Echo is responsible beyond the perceived sleight of failing to honour a post-dated embargo. But we'll see... The reality is that everyone loses with the banning - the club, sponsors, supporters, and of course the paper. Clearly, we can't have a situation where Southampton, uniquely, is a city where football reporting by the main newspaper is verboten. That's just silly.

So England drew the 1966 World Cup Final then?

The ever-reliable Ben Goldacre has a very perceptive deconstruction of the psychological profile of a climate denier in today's Guardian. Goldacre - the author of 'Bad Science' - is no friend of flabby, poorly constructed scientific claims. So if anyone was going to provide a popular account of how the climate change orthodoxy is wrong, it would be him. Far from it. I'd advise St George not to read. It'll put a serious dent in his day. http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/dec/12/bad-science-goldacre-climate-change

It'll be there.