Verbal

The job? Or a job?

One story told by a Tory MP with intelligence links last week is that Megrahi was a patsy for the Lockerbie bombing - which may not even have been a Libyan operation - but that he was positively identified as the gunman in the murder of Yvonne Fletcher. In other words, there's the suspicion that agencies of the British and other governments have sought to kill two birds with one stone - nail Fletcher's killer and make the whole 'who bombed Flight 103' go away. Freeing him keeps the lid on the whole affair - certainly more than allowing the appeal to proceed.

We may be crap at football, but no one is ever going to get close to challenging the Saintsweb Spelling Bee team.

You didn't say it, you winked it. Hence the ballooning conspiracy theories.

I fear nothing more than one of your predictions.

Like me, you're never going to know, because the only people who do insist on keeping up their nudging and winking act. I expect it of Weston, but I'm disappointed in the usually indiscreet Phil.

Is that it? I was hoping for something a bit more Watergate.

I thought it was your autobiography - Rupert Lowe: My Part in his Downfall.

This has got lost in the headlong rush of this thread, but seems important. Who are you talking about? And how did it, as Weston suggests, help drive the club into admin? Are these the deals done by Lee Hoos? Or before?

The posting of a guilty man.

Actually, I do expect other clubs to develop players for SFC. As many of the successful teams making their way out of these divisions and further up have demonstrated, the real skill is in spotting not an 11 year old, but a 21 year old who has found himself in the lower league but after getting plenty of time in games is really proving his worth. And as for 'not all will make it from the Academy', that's exactly the point. It's very hit and miss. I'm not saying you shouldn't have a youth squad, but the full-scale academy is a luxury that a League 1 team - even one backed by a billionaire - cannot afford, because it drains resources away from building a first team that can compete NOW, not (with some vague hope) in five, six or more years ahead.

No. He has a 50p head. And Heisenberg's no good either - too uncertain.

Scooby, is that you?

It was you? No wonder...

That was Cocu's Den. You can see the fort from the restaurant on the roof but it's also the best view of the Badshahi mosque. BTW, I walked up the steps from the fort entrance and couldn't work out why they were so far apart. Turns out they're spaced that way because they're not designed for humans, but for elephants. Part of the fort - the most elegant bit - was designed by Shah Jahan, the Moghul prince responsible for the Taj Mahal. Because it's in Pakistan, no one really gets to see Lahore, but it's an amazing city.

As Phil has pointed out, there's a strong chance that he can't. And if that's not the case, I at least would rather he wait until we get over this tricky transition stage.

You're not allowed them any more, Phil. You have to be under 16 or um pahars to qualify.

I'd agree with most of that. I just wonder if we're all a little too scared of proposing the logical next step. Stop spending a fortune on the academy, and build up the first team - just as Swansea did, and Hull before them. The costs of doing so are about the same or less (Swansea's promotion-winning squad cost less than £1m in total to put together). There was always something vaguely unseemly about chucking so many kids into the first team during the last disastrous year. It felt a little too much like exploitation. I don't know whether the scouting system collapsed because of the expense of running the academy, but I can't help thinking the two are related. Certainly the absence of power and pace in the team - the qualities that virtually all our opponents in this league will have to some degree - is plain enough when you look at the four or five slight figures ambling about on the pitch. It's time the academy tail stopped wagging the first-team dog.

Party pooper.

If that story's true, it really is the end for Dr Skate. No one is going to lend against the next three years' television revenue if there's even the remotest chance of relegation - because the TV revenues would be decimated. And I would hardly describe P*mpey's chances of going down as remote.

I'm appalled to say I agree with most of that.

Brilliant - and the The Dell looks as endearingly shabby as ever.

Exactly. I see the usual suspects are on MLT's back again with a drip-feed of coulda-shoulda-known-better. The problem with being ITKs on here - as historians especially should know - is that they have ALWAYS been recipients of whispers from one source or another, but NEVER had sight of the full picture.

Adopted.

Quite funny for a Janner.