JackFrost

It's been the same for years in the PDC. Barry Hearn has got the "casual darts fans" (aka people only going for a booze up) going along with the genuine darts fans, meaning thousands attending each event and the prize money for the players skyrocketing. The loser of this semi final pockets 50k, the losing finalist pockets 100k and the winner goes home with 250k. Not bad for a game of darts.

And it's that knee-jerk reaction that was so prevalent on here when Adkins was dismissed (even if I do still think Adkins himself was treated badly) which was a common denominator when Lowe was outed and people were willing to back anyone because of the false premise that no one could be as bad as Lowe. When Adkins was dismissed it was clear to me without any hindsight whatsoever that either 1) Cortese was a tyrant that didn't have a clue what he was doing, or 2) he was someone with a clear plan who wasn't afraid of upsetting people/making unpopular decisions for what he considered to be the greater good of the club. I'm afraid to say I was fascinated to see who were calling for Cortese's head before they gave him the faintest chance that the scenario may just have been the latter, and that Adkins' replacement would dictate whether the decision was correct or not.

You can read as many hotel reviews as you like and there is inevitably ego involved but at the end of the day GM had Wilde sussed pretty quickly. In life ego is naturally fuelled by frustration at the perceived lack of recognition when someone turns out to be right in a long, heated and passionate debate, especially when many insist they are wrong. Wilde was a chancer that exploited the "Anyone but Lowe" section of the fanbase for his own ends. He put everything on black and as soon as it failed he was out of the club quicker than you can say "Jermaine Wright at Right Back". The sad thing was that a lot of the fans didn't see it as the murky grey debate it was and anyone who didn't back Wilde to the hilt were derided as "Lowe Luvvies", which I and many others certainly weren't. In response to the OP I don't know or care but the original post is structured strangely (intentional I don't know) as the initial question is asking what happened to Wilde and then the very next sentence is a pro-Crouch statement which combined was always going to kick off the old arguments on here. As it happens I think Crouch did a lot of good for us but I hope we're not going back to the days of the 3 amigos getting PR plants to post on here

1) Gaston will be loaned out and Hooiveld will be sold in January 2) We will get in one or two players in the next 5 weeks 3) We will finish 8th or 9th this season 4) Lambert will be sold in the summer if the right offer comes along 5) Reed and Gallagher will be featuring regularly in the first team 6) JWP and Shaw will get called up to the England senior squad

In that case I hope MP has a word with him about his nightlife activities

IT'S ADKINS

Gazzaniga did ok overall I thought but he's very shaky on crosses. It's thought he injured himself slightly in the first half as well but overall he did pretty well. Rodriguez and Lallana were brilliant and Fonte was solid as a rock. Also whilst Yoshida did have a few questionable moments with ball-watching/passing, his performance overall did reinforce the question why on earth did we persist with Hooiveld? With match practice Yoshida is capable of being a solid backup at PL level. Lambert looked better today also

If you get the wrong toy for Christmas it'll be Gazzaniga's fault

Hooiveld has been increasingly reminding me of Andreas Jakobsson this season, I don't get why he is chosen over Yoshida let alone Fonte. It's getting to the point where he's costing a goal a game. Gazzaniga and Fox are both suspect but there's a reason why they are our 3rd choice GK and backup LB. Hooiveld shouldn't be anywhere near our first time and is a liability. 'Unlucky' own goals are unlucky until they start happening with regularity. How did Gallagher do in the last 10-15 mins?

People say they expect them to survive but I don't think them going down is unrealistic by any means. I was chatting to some season ticket holding skate friends of mine and apparently the players have completely lost interest. These guys have been lifelong fans and for the first time they are considering not bothering going to away games because they are fed up of travelling hundreds of miles every week to watch their team play, only for the players to barely even try. They also reckon it also goes way beyond just being in a bad run of form and being demoralised, they think the players know that if they don't get promotion the **** will hit the fan and they know their not good enough to go up. Combined with the knowledge that the club are a complete shambles all the way to the top, it means the players simply don't want to be there. The problem Barker has is that he's already spouting about how the players don't appreciate what a great/big club Pompey are, but if the team sees through the manager's BS it makes the problem ten times worse. I think now is an absolutely critical time for them, IMO unless Barker turns the dressing room around in the next 6-7 weeks I think they'll go down.

Anyone told him that?

So he's presumably going to buy an entire squad to replace the current lot in January should they not improve?

or was it the national football team of Monaco?

LOL at Murray at 4:07 - "I'm going for 1st says Cleland" Unfortunately the BTCC died when the manufacturers and the money went out of it

Indeed he was but that doesn't make him a PL goalkeeper. 33 games in the 2005/06 season with Sunderland in the PL and 8 games for us in the PL is more than a "handful of games" Fair play to him for that He's 37 years old and was widely considered to not be good enough for the PL by Sunderland fans when he was in his twenties He's had 2 spells in the PL as first choice goalkeeper. The first time he got dropped for an 18 year old rookie and the 2nd time he got dropped for a 20 year old rookie, and you don't like him being compared to rookies? KD has been a fantastic servant for us in the lower leagues and I still think he could do a solid job in League 1 or possibly Championship level, but his key weaknesses mean he can't cut it in the PL and at 37 he never will. It's time to face that fact. The reason he's being compared to a "3rd choice rookie" is because he can't offer anymore than Gazzaniga as a back-up keeper in the PL, and due to their respective ages only one of them has any chance of improving and it isn't KD. We need to sign a solid jobber as number 2 to Boruc in January, and I'd be all for KD getting a coaching role here and going out on loan to the lower leagues while he can still play. I fear KD's status will only get further tarnished if we let sentimentality allow him to play in the PL again.

Some of those bring back memories of George Burley

Nope, unless they could prove the club were complicit in it, which I very much doubt they were

Your actually comparing soldiers under strict orders in world war 2, to a leader of a militant wing that commanded his militia to deliberately target civilians by blowing up e.g. restaurants/cinemas? On over 150 separate occasions? Did Mandela's struggle also justify him supporting and diplomatically intervening on behalf of brutal dictators like Abacha and Gaddafi after he became president? (Gaddafi bankrolled that election campaign by the way) I'm not denying that Mandela did an extraordinary amount of good in South Africa and through the world for racial equality and standing up for the human rights of the oppressed South Africans, but he isn't the perfect angel that the media are portraying him to be. Indeed Interestingly, the U.S. only considered him to be no longer a terrorist 5 years ago http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7484517.stm

Mandela himself has openly expressed regret and sorrow for killing white women and children as a result of his orders.

He probably had as much impact on racial equality and integration as anyone and his long struggle against apartheid has placed him as an icon for millions if not billions. That said I can clearly remember even only 25-30 years ago, when him and his cronies were planting bombs in shopping centres and killing innocent civilians. He was considered a dangerous terrorist when we were South Africa's biggest trading partner in the early '80s. Thatcher made the mistake of economically supporting the apartheid regime whilst Reagan denounced him for fighting alongside the communists. In some ways I have incredible admiration for what he ultimately believed in, but he also has a very murky past.

I's say that's more a very accurate summary of the current Labour Party

Few weeks ago they were 10 points off the relegation zone. They are now 4.

What was that about the hope?

as has been the case since when Gordon Brown first hired them 5 years before Cameron came to office . . . . Then again it's one of the Tories biggest mistakes that they extended that contract when they brought in the changes to the benefit system

I remember going to a Fulham vs Pompey match at Craven Cottage about 10 years ago. The Pompey fans spent the entire 90 minutes chanting "F**k off Fulham, F**k off Fulham" It was genuinely the most imaginative chant they could come up with