Verbal

Oh, that's alright then.

Damn. Already did.

Why do violent thugs have such fat heads? (along, it seems, with all Chelsea supporters).

Dost thou think? Forsooth!

If you take the rest of professional football into account, then probably. If you take the rest of all chairmen of any kind of business, throughout the universe, running companies known or yet to be created, then no. Obviously.

You like?

Quite. I think you should make this a separate thread.

Good. Join the cult. Get an iPhone. For every unbeliever we convert, we get a free token in Apple heaven.

Unfortunately you won't be able to stop the Tories from winning, but the next election will see the end of Brown.

Yeah, I know what you mean - and I expect he'll have to ride to their rescue within months of the Tories taking power.

It's not even the politics of the Tories that bother me so much as the sheer lack of talent. Osborne in particular is a prize idiot, for which he repeatedly provides ample evidence. And he will have his finger constantly on the economic nuclear button. Compared to him, the bumbling Norman Lamont was a giant.

Crab Lungs' blood pressure, RIP.

I half suspect FF is saying this only so that he can see you throw a wobbly.

Swanny, you are taste personified.

I can see this sailing through the 'fit and proper person' test then...

But who ARE these guys? No one in Saudi seems to have heard of Al Faraj. And I know the Saudis and Israelis have always had under-the-counter dealings, but in a club whose badge is the ascending star of the Crusades over the declining crescent of Islam, how does it play in Saudi, I wonder, to have Al Faraj recommended by an Israeli agent and then appoint an Israeli DoF? Maybe, suddenly, the higher-ups in Saudi have become enlightened, and they've decided to include Pompey in the Middle East peace process. Either that or the club reminds both of Beirut.

Saw it too and came to the opposite conclusion. Trotman flicks the ball into the goal - he doesn't give it a swinging kick. That suggests to me the keeper didn't have it fully under control. In any case, what a great poacher's goal! You don't see many centre backs nicking goals like that.

I don't think the scientists had any real say in it - and have never heard any scientist making such a claim. On the other hand, plenty of scientists will say that manned missions are an expensive distraction from doing real science. I remember when Apollo 13 took off, public apathy was such that virtually no one was watching. And that was less than a year after the Apollo 11 landing. Without public support, and in the midst of the Vietnam war, the massive cost of the Apollo programme could never be sustained.

The water - or ice - is at the poles. The moon landings were close to the 'equator'.

'Can't manage?!' Of course they can manage. NASA has been sending landing probes to Mars - a tiny bit more challenging than the Moon - since the mid 70s. If NASA decided to invest precious resources in trying to quieten the few paranoid noodleheads who believe the Moon landings were faked, they'd find themselves in a vicious circle. New evidence would in turn be dismissed as fake. The problem is that the 'moon truthers' are, by any other name, just another internet-wired cult. No amount of evidence would ever satisfy them. It would be like trying to prove or disprove the existence of God.

Nothing and no.

Ditto. That would play incredibly badly in Saudi. Just as badly as when someone in the middle east works out exactly what the Pompey club badge actually means and where it came from.

It's a bit like asking why a gorilla should play the drums. I have no idea. But it just works. The people who dream this stuff up (like the Argentinian who came up with Phil the Gorilla and the bouncing balls down the San Francisco street) get paid a FORTUNE.

We'll have to think very carefully about whose career we want to curse with next season's player sponsorship.

He walked away because as Lowe drove more and more youth players into the first team, they were getting slaughtered on here. Sad, really.