Verbal

The best and most exciting teams to watch don't have or need dedicated wingers because they have pace and power throughout. Watch Arsenal on the break - or, it pains me to say it, Chelsea, when they're rampaging through the weaker sides in the Prem.

This is all, of course, quite funny - but also a bit like two bald men fighting over a comb.

Very Dave Brent.

But just imagine what a run of good results will do to attendances. It should become a virtuous circle: good attendances = a financially healthier club = more funds available from our cautious but calculating owner = more success. Just need a win to start it, of course! And norm, the word you're looking for is 'harumph!' (For best effect, you need to say it while wearing pipe and slippers, brandishing a lemon shandy in the snug). Anyone who doesn't take a certain degree of pleasure in P*mpey's troubles is lacking that essential human quality of schadenfreude.

That's settled then. Thanks.

This is a bit like the NHS thread. Murdoch's slimy, self-serving assault (hardly the first, by no means the last) shouldn't hide the fact that there is a lot wrong with the BBC. As someone who's made programmes for it fairly regularly, it always amazes me how little of the £1.6 billion trickles down to actually making shows. The reasons are not hard to find. Walk into White City, for example, and you will see more 'HR' officers, middle managers, 'compliance' managers, technical support, department heads (and their various assistants), property managers etc., than people actually making programmes. And the status accorded to programme makers is just as plain. I recall finding myself sat near a producer called Deborah Cadbury. She was bang next to a large photocopier, at a desk in an open hallway. Yet she's a BAFTA and Emmy Award winner writer and producer. The hallway she sat in was filled with spacious offices occupied by those useless HRs, property managers, etc. The whole culture at the BBC is civil-service-like - and is, as Greg Dyke said not too long ago, 'hideously white'. Actually it's worse than that. It's dominated by public-school, Oxbridge-educated whites who have learned the arts of climbing the greasy career ladder and all the bullying, intimidation and brown-nosing that goes with it. Here's an example. I once attended a meeting with Michael Jackson, then the controller of BBC2. Trailing in his wake was this character doing a more than passable impression of Uriah Heep - 'ever so 'umble'. His name was Mark Thompson - now the director-general of the BBC. He's regarded by many as the worst D-G the BBC has ever had, and has presided over a series of scandals, including Queengate. He's also grossly mishandled dealings with the government on a whole range of issues, which is widely seen as having compromised the BBC's independence. Whenever the BBC has a financial crisis - which is often, despite the billions pouring into it - the cuts fall first and usually exclusively on the production staff and freelancers, the people at the sharp end out there making things. For example, when a 'black hole' was discovered in the accounts about three years ago, the result was a swingeing cut of production staff, notably at the Natural History Unit, the people who make all the Attenborough series, and one of the jewels in the crown. The result was that some of those talented people left the industry. If you want a graphic demonstration of waste, take a look at the BBC Birmingham headquarters at the appropriately named 'Mailbox'. A few years back, BBC Birmingham was based a Pebble Mill, an ageing but expansive piece of real estate, with plenty of studio space, etc. As a result of mismanaged property deals that ought, in my view, be considered a scandal, Pebble Mill was sold for peanuts, and the Mailbox taken on at sky-high (no pun intended) rents. how did the BBC present this? Well, because they'd wasted millions in the mismanagement of the whole affair, they put out press releases trumpeting the 'extra investment' pumped into the regions. If you go into the Mailbox now, it is a cramped, overcrowded, unpleasant place wholly unsuited to its purpose. It will no doubt eventually close. Despite appearances, perhaps, I'm actually a defender of the BBC. But it needs serious and drastic reform to re-focus on its core activities, and to remind itself that it's there to make seriously good programmes. Its current output, given the resources, is truly pitiful. But even that is preferable to a world in which the likes of that irritating nepotist James Murdoch dominate even more in deciding what we watch.

Name and shame the guilty.

Distin really knows how to leave a sinking ship - give it an extra puncture below the waterline. Still, you can hardly blame him. http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/New-Everton-signing-Sylvain-Distin-fears-for-Portsmouth-future-article135947.html

Can someone please explain what the f*ck that smiley is supposed to mean? Have you and TDD got nits? And obviously anyone calling for AP to leave is certifiable. So maybe that was TDD's intention - to smoke out the loonies.

Impressive for a ref. But doesn't it break some implied notion of impartiality?

S Club 7.

I think it's the reason Germany got into the arguments in the first place. Read Schopenhauer while listening to Wagner and try telling me you right arm doesn't straighten and lift, as you develop an irresistible urge to qualify for a coaching badge, and claim mastery over all you survey with your 94%.

I'll let you in to a little secret - which may explain the spats with Mr '94%' Bizzle Read the German philosopher Arthur Shopenhauer's '38 Ways to Win an Argument.' The ones relevant to this forum are: 8. Make your opponent angry. and 38. Become personal, insulting and rude as soon as you perceive that your opponent has the upper hand. HTH ****head.

Voted early, voted often.

Have I missed something, or have the club said nothing yet about the extent of Murty's injury? And +1 for Volz.

I made sense? Sorry, not sure how that happened. And, like tiggers, sniping is what I do best! (But I do find your fence-sitting arguments vacuous at time - sorry that's just me, no doubt) Incidentally, I'm not accusing 19C of sniping. I'm accusing him of a bitter, obsessive (and therefore ultimately pointless) piece character assassination. The bottom line is that 19C's accusations make no sense whatsoever. I've seen no evidence of an overwheening ego on MLT's part, nor of arrogance,..nor of all the other cardinal sins of which he's supposed to be guilty. The fact that his arguments are (mostly) formed in complete sentences does not make them rational. It's the pure irrationality of his burblings on MLT that truly makes me wonder...

Frank, I think you'll find that 19C wasn't talking about laziness so much as MLT's 'ego', arrogance' and political duplicitousness. In your rather empty pursuit of some middle line, you're forgetting that most people on here are reacting to a nasty, small-minded attempt to brand MLT with characteristics he simply does not possess. All, it seems, on the basis of a book that our odd little friend hasn't read - as if the act of even touching it would somehow pollute his mind. Therefore small caveats about MLT's workrate seem rather beside the point. And as for 'lack of ambition' - I mean, for heaven's sake, how badly do some people wish he'd left, and for us to have drifted into oblivion sooner?

You should brush up on your trash talk. That's so last decade.

That would be the same Ponty who, at the time 19C first appeared, said that the mods were 'suspicious' and were looking at his and Sundance's IP addresses. I really can't figure out how to square that claim with the suggestion that Sundance was given an explicit amnesty. I don't want to make a big issue of this - it's just that, as far as Sundance/19C is concerned, he's for some unexplained reason allowed to operate outside the rules that apply to the rest of us. And someone should perhaps reproduce that Sundance PM in full. It has a few other gems in it which are relevent to the present tussles. Since Sundance is no more, I assume that no rules would be broken by revealing all its contents.

Staring at the walls again? The great thing about your truly asinine 'take' on MLT is that it seems only to have reinforced the admiration for him on here. You're clearly a walking, talking embodiment of the law of unintended consequences. Well done!

Are you slumming as an ITK now?

Barring several injuries, I doubt Gillett will get much time on the pitch in the next ten or so games. Hammond and Schneiderlin seem to be the first choice, with James (especially if a loan replacement is brought in for Murty) and Wotton higher up the pecking order than Gillett. (In support of this argument, I am and have always been crap at footy)

His days were numbered the minute his sponsor's name was announced.

Thank you, Mr Coming. With regard to your point 3., Mr Canteen did indeed miss this entire period, as he was born on 25 08 09. I hope that clears up any confusion in your mind (which in no way would I imply is unsound). Yours, etc., Verbal, Esq.

That is breathtaking. It's like the club was taken over by the pod people.