Verbal

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.

But whether you admit it or not, you have a consistent record of going after posters' families - as this thread demonstrates. Whether it's Wes's wife, or Daren's mother or Corky's children, or whoever, you should be more than a little ashamed.

Hypo, I think you've had a little flashback there to the dear-departed scooby - Sundance's one and only friend, who, it turned out, was living a little fantasy of his own.. Even the 'boot boy' label might have been his as well. No, Sundance's/19C's MO is more the deeply personal insults - usually attacking posters' families. (Wes, Daren, Corky/hasper, etc)

Oh, the irony.

If the team is improving in inverse proportion to the sinking IQ on this thread. let's hope we achieve true imbecile levels soon-ish. And to those with the Hammond organ witticisms - stop it, you're showing your age.

Sorry about that. One of yours is pretending to be one of ours.

Don't worry, Hasper. I'd only question the motives of anyone who were of such a delicate state as to read anything malicious into your children's reaction. We seem to have suffered a hopefully temporary plague of self-righteous hysteria.

But as I recall, you were part of the SOS gang of four who were actually given advance notice by Wilde that he was going to team up with Lowe to oust Crouch - but decided to keep quiet about it, even though Wilde had lied flat out about how you, as a group, wanted him to return as chairman. It also took you and a few other ITKs a while to wake up to the dangerously crackpot antics of tommac. Not pointing fingers, just saying that, as with other events in the club's recent murky past, not everything is really cut and dried.

Don't bother. I just wonder whether there's another football fans' forum anywhere that has its own noxious Dr Doolittle, lecturing the oiks among us on how to rear their proto-racist children, or how we're to selflessly buy season tickets in support of the cartoon character who came within days of destroying the club, or who pontificates on the serious and overhwelming misdemeanours of the one genius of a player who did more than anyone to see us through the enveloping chaos of the last few years... etc, ad nauseum. If you tell a story about Saints fans - any story - it's like a red and white striped rag to a mangy old bull. Eventually, he come galloping in towards you, but he'll headbutt you with all the force of a Southsea haddock.

Is he pacy? Because the best way to use his long throws is for him to take them and then scoot round and nod them into the net.

CoHo, if you're going to go on at this length, could you do a 'digested read' for those of us without the energy? Along the lines of 'P*mpey are screwed.' You get the picture. Thank you in advance.