JackFrost

The Brighton result was the classic "In form, confident Saints losing against a **** poor, low-in-confidence team" syndrome, something that has haunted us for years. I think Pardew is doing a good job currently, getting out the relegation zone will give us a big boost I think. Just hope we don't get out of the relegation zone just before we face Tranmere

As Falconer was basically Blair's yes man, preposterous is exactly the right word. He even topped the usual garbage from Melanie Phillips last night

I actually attended a talk not so long ago by a bloke called Andrew White who is otherwise known as "The Vicar of Baghdad". He runs the only anglican church in Iraq. Now as well as running the church, I believe he also works for the home office and regularly carries out negotiations and discussions with both Sunni and Shi'ite leaders. He said that in the lead up to the war he was on the phone to a home office official and was warning him that measures needed to be in place to avoid ethnic tensions. He says that this home office official then categorically told him "Religion isn't a big issue in Iraq" Says it all.

I remember that time recently when a national paper did an obituary on some film director or someone and a guy had edited his wikipedia page for a laugh and said this recently deceased bloke had written the S Club 7 hit 'Don't stop movin'. The national papaer swallowed it whole and printed it!

I can't believe the dredging issue isn't much more of a widely spoken debate. I'm old enough to remember the times when river dredging was a widespread occupation nationally. We had as much rain back then as we do now, if not more and we never had anywhere near as much flooding as we do now. Definitely not on the scale of ****ermouth anyway. Sure there's been a hell of a lot of building on flood plains since those times but I bet dredging would make a massive difference if it was done now as much as it used to

Since yesterday (wednesday) we have had a two-tone dialling tone that started on all of our phones at our house. After investigation we discovered that someone somewhere has somehow swapped our phone number with another local number (A different number has flashed up on other people's caller displays when we've called them), we've also tried ringing our number from our phone, it dials but no one answers. Our phone provider says it is BT's problem and BT previously said we need to contact our phone provider. Another factor is that I've unsuccessfully tried to install O2 Premium broadband (Just broadband package, NOT phone and broadband package) at our house since last Saturday. I rung O2 who said there appeared to be a problem at the 'exchange' (didn't catch whether he meant the O2 exchange or our local telephone exchange) and said an engineer would sort it. I told them about our phone number being swapped and they said they had absolutely no power to swop our number and this particular problem had nothing to do with them. We thought it was an O2 balls up initially as it is a bit of a coincidence this happened just a few days after I tried to install the broadband but this other number isn't even an BT number (which you need to be able to get an O2 package) Has anyone else experienced this?

Totally agree, when i saw the news the first thing I thought was "final nail in coffin'. I thought Hart could hardly have done a better job in the shambolic situation he was put in.

All this inquiry is gonna do is waste millions of pounds of taxpayers money to tell us that Blair et al went to war "in good faith"

A company I used to work for used parcelforce regularly at one time and whilst we didn't have any trouble with things being lost, the amount of damaged goods in (other) company standard packaging was ridiculous. When sending anything we had to mummify it. I remember one occasion when some **** delivered a couple of expensive touchscreens to us. He barged the door open, slammed them down on the floor and was generally rude. After we'd cut through the "please handle with care" tape he'd cracked them both. We had no end of trouble with them. Went to a different company and had hardly any other problems.

Scary thing is, he could be winning more major tournaments than not in 20 years when his body is on the wane. He is that good.

That might be due to the fact he took the club over when it was in complete freefall and saved us from relegation that season? You don't think that might have something to do with it? Your posts are saying to me that you are only judging our recent managers performances on the quantitative statistics alone. Sorry but that is extremely short-sighted.

Totally agree, I think seeding has nothing to do with this debate. When the draw was first made I was saying that the Irish had a very good chance, The French team now is not the team it was of 10 years ago by any means. Until there is another official or video technology is used for dubious goals this will happen again and again and again and again. . . . . . ..

The seedings do of course favour the big teams but on the other side of the coin, if they were unseeded you could end up in theory with one group of France, Italy, Spain, Germany, England, Portugal and another group of Andorra, San Marino, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein. So not seeding the groups could well result in **** poor teams qualifying (not quite to the extent of my illustration but even so) and teams that are a gulf in class above not qualifying. If you don't have the best teams at the world cup, it aint gonna be as appealing. Seedings have to be earnt when it comes to group stages. Besides with the current system who would have expected Slovenia and Slovakia to qualify? They certainly weren't top seeds and worldwide they certainly weren't the only 'smaller country' to qualify for the world cup ahead of teams seeded higher. However with the play offs I can definitely see the argument of not seeding it as it's only a one off knockout. It would make it more of a lottery.

You have ignored the fact that the managerial situations were completely different as to when NP and GB were here. Burley had one of the best squads in the league, publicly aimed for the absolute minimum in the league, and made numerous schoolboy tactical errors and bizarre tactical decisions on a weekly basis to get there. Decisions so bizarre us uneducated fans could see they were losing us points. Needlessly changing winning teams for games we lost, sticking with average players no matter how poor their form etc etc. I'm sure I don't need to list them all. The appointment of Pearson was the classic 'closing the door after the horse had bolted' on the part of Crouch. The club was in freefall, the board room unrest was in a crescendo, none of the players wanted to be here and half of the first team weren't here cos they'd been loaned out to other clubs. We were sliding down the table at an alarming rate and IMO NP did a a very good job in keeping us up. The reason why so many knock GB is because after relegation he had far more resources and quality players at his disposal than any other manager in our recent history and he achieved very little with it. Pearson (for example) did a far better job with far less resources. Your trying to spin the statistics to suit your own flawed argument. He actually W3 D7 L4 in his time here. 16 points in 14 games. Considering the resources he had when he was here and the dire state of the club? Very impressive IMO. (and look how both Pearson and Burley are doing now respectively) Besides, if you've just so happened to have visited any fans forum for the Scottish national football team recently, you may find the contents of certain threads re Burley strangely familiar. . . . . .

The most inevitable sacking in world football. He was absolutely clueless for the majority of his time here. In our playoff season we had on of if not the best squad in the league, half our team was made up players on the fringes of their international teams. Gb achieved the absolute minimum and made multiple schoolboy errors to achieve that. He preferred very average british players no matter how terrible their form was (Makin, Wright, Best, BWP, Davis when his goal kicks went 18 yards to a player on the other team). It often amazed me how many Scottish players had to 'withdraw due to injury' during Burley's time in charge there. Kris Boyd called it right from the start

I try not to watch Scotland games now, as they bring back chilling memories;) Whilst it was a poor performance last night albeit against a team with a new manager (teams always play well just after a new manager is installed), if it was up to idiots like SaintRichmond we'd have 20 managers a season. The key thing is now, (and Pardew knows it) we need a reaction.

my cricket loving mate has just informed me that some guy hit a six and the ball hit the sixth storey wall of a block of flats outside the ground

Glad he's gone. Oldknow seemed to be a dubious character.

I love that saxophone on A Touch Of Frost

I wouldn't mind betting a lot of the Afghan tribes change sides as soon as they get a bigger pay packet. Just shows how deep the corruption is.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/8357262.stm From what the bloke at the met says, that could be nasty

LOL Rambo in Rambo 3 would be THE number 1 most wanted terrorist if he was around today. (and was real) :wink:

Concerning Afghanistan, it's very much a damned if we do and damned if we don't situation. Afghanistan is a failed state, it's a black hole riddled with corruption with the American supported government as corrupt as anyone. Afghanistan is merely a battlefield where the Taliban come out to play after they've been trained up in (a lot of the time) Pakistan. This is where the root of the problem is.

He's a player I've always rated. No nonsense and not afraid of putting his head where few people would put their feet. He's the sort of defender we need and thanks to Burley's tactical lunacy hasn't really had a chance to get a decent partnership going. He's not quite in the Claus league of goal output but a goal for any defender will put their confidence right up.

The ref is going to be suspended apparently http://msn.football365.com/story/0,17033,8652_5687969,00.html Not a bad decision, maybe it will help to even out the bias towards towards the top 4 teams when it comes to penalties if this is done regularly. I sincerely N'gog will get a suspension as well