Minty

Sometimes, I have been known to say that I would kill for a chocolate bar... Sorry.

Had the pleasure of working with Graham for 18 months whilst I was No.2 to the clubs official photographer back around 02/03 time, including the Cup Final run. Not kept in touch since unfortunately but he was a top guy.

Lendl has made the difference. A perfect example of just how your mental preparedness can really affect your performance. Well done Andy, onwards and upwards.

TBH, the main reason to watch SPOTY is for the montages and features about all the sporting achievements of the year, and this years is going to be awesome... I honestly don't care who wins it. It's a shame there has to be one.

Heh, The9 wrote only one line. This is most unlike you.

Stop trolling, all of you, it's obviously who alpine is referring to. Benali never was the same prolific striker as the one that turned out for England Schoolboys...

Depressed of Shirley, Wes Tender, rallyboy... good work chaps. Simple, effective, and no doubt soon to be completely ignored by PES, Ho and co in search of their next 'come back'.

There's not giving a f**k, and then there's actively supporting the opposition... not quite sure what the point of that is. England is my country so I like to see them do well whatever the sport. But I don't support them in the same way I do Saints, the affinity is just not there.

Managers and scouts also have opinions and players are signed based on those opinions. Sometimes even they are wrong and sign duds. So for me, this is nothing more than an interesting view from someone who has clearly seen a lot more of Ramirez than most of us, which I therefore respect, but it need not define Ramirez' entire career from this point forward. What purpose is served by trying to 'rate' him against other 'experts' or anyone else's opinion. Take it for what it is, and lets just wait and see what actually happens.

While I personally agree, I think it's a sad fact of modern life that access to new markets and new potential sources of income abroad are integral to most businesses nowadays, especially in an 'industry' (ugh, sorry, hate calling it that, but it is in context) which has such worldwide appeal such as football. We're a long way past the time when football was just a game.

It amazes me that the skates who do read this thread can't actually see, as has been nicely highlighted in the responses to PES, that we're not unreasonable, unintelligent scummahs with an axe to grind, but that we've actually been highlighting things which, if they took notice of, would HELP their club (in whatever guise it continues). Yes we take the ******, and yes we'll get some comedy mileage out of it, but all we're actually doing is providing a critique of the plans put forward and pointing out the problems they might face. We're like a quality control council. We're doing them a massive favour, if only they could see past their prejudices to notice. Hell, we could probably charge for our services if there was a cat in hells chance of being paid...

I don't think anyone is advocating that necessarily. Some suggest he is replaced immediately, others suggest he hasn't become crap overnight and whilst there are shortcomings, he's not as bad as some make out, but no one is saying he will be in the team all season. It's Adkins call ultimately, and I personally think Yoshida will come in to the side fairly soon, if not immediately, to stake a claim because as has been highlighted, we DO need to improve defensively (and that can be as much down to the whole team/defence, not just individual players). Just having an additional centre back of (supposedly) high quality, will put pressure on Fonte and Hooiveld, which may elicit a response from them, and so SFC is in a better position than it was, and I think everyone agrees we could still do with at least one more defensive signing in January, but we now need to work with what we've got.

My god, how pathetic.

Luton, all day long.

I'm not sure how the CB's themselves view it but certainly I do recall something, perhaps an interview, from Adkins talking about playing a right footer on the right and a left footer on the left. I would suggest it didn't matter so much when CB's were stoppers and little else, but now they are expected to be more comfortable on the ball and be more accomplished in their touch and passing, this is more important? I would agree that on this basis, Yoshi is more likely to play on the right alongside Jos, but who knows what Nigel has lined up.

Their old manager probably helped... he was pretty offensive.

Be interesting to follow their comments and opinions during his time here, thanks for the link though, interesting read!

That's the main thing. Ta for that.

Is he playing left back or centre back?

http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?39929-Tim-Vickery-on-Uruguay

Completely agree that we should always learn from all our experiences, but it could be that we were gazumped/went for a player with unrealistic demands/greedy agent or other reasons not *directly* in our control? All just as possible. (And no, alps, that doesn't mean I'm exonerating the club, merely providing alternate possibilities.)

I fear you're just being deliberately mischievous now alps. Of course it can. Bring on some quality debate... but without any particular evidence (correct me if I'm wrong) then the debate is likely to simply end up being 'I think we f*cked up', vs 'I don't'... hardly much quality in that! So, please, go ahead... what do you think the club did wrong whilst trying to sign additional players, that caused them to not sign?

Fair enough, it was my interpretation (and obviously some others) that the inference was that it was an either/or scenario. Before the season started I would genuinely have been happy with either option, and would be happy to leave it to Adkins' judgement. It's only hindsight that has allowed me to see the progress JWP has made, and Puncheon's improvement which now leads me to think that we didn't need as many new players in midfield as I perhaps thought previously, and so the addition of one TOP quality player such as Ramirez, is the icing on the cake, as opposed to signing two slightly (supposedly) lesser players.

I don't. I said, barely a few posts up: I fully accept the club may be at fault. But it is wrong to assume so IMO.

What's that go to do with my quite simple (IMO) question? Thank you. That's all Minsk was asking in the first place. As for the question/answer in red, I'm not quite sure on what you base this, which is the other main point being raised here... trying to understand how and why people have this feeling that the Ramirez signing in some way detracted from other negotiations when the evidence suggests that the signings of Mayuka and Yoshi were able to be conducted and completed at the same time...? And the questions in green, I actually agree with, but the follow on suggestion from these by yourself and some others is that this is the fault of the club, whereas we simply don't know why we didn't make other signings which Adkins alluded to and it would appear (I accept I cannot know for certain) we were trying to make at the same time.