Lighthouse

Yep. They had about 8 more kids than they can actually afford. Granted this isn't always the case, but you've picked a very poor example to back up your point. You talk about the current financial system being upheld. It needs to be reformed, granted, but allowing it to collapse completely would be catastrophic. You talk about still being able to hunt, fish and grow. That's all fine if you want to live in the stone age, but to maintain society as we know it we do need a functioning monetary system.

Some people are fickle Football fans are a very large group of people Ergo there are a fair few fickle football fans The problem is everyone remembers the muppets who stick out in the ground. We could get beat by Coventry and Forest and there'd be half a dosen fans shouting "Adkins Out" at the back of the stands. What happens? Everyone comes home, jumps on their keyboard and starts typing "FFS! Our fans are such a fickle bunch of stupid Mongs FFS! There were hundreds of fans singing Adkins out FFS!"

I disagree. It's easy to say 'poor starving children, evil greedy banks' but the bigger picture is far more complicated. I know I'm stating the obvious here, but a world wide banking collapse wont really help these Greek children. Moreover, there will be tens of millions more family accross Europe plummeted into poverty and struggling to support their children.

Pretty sure Andrei Pernejcky (no idea if that's spelt right) was the other 'keeper we took up their.

Has to be the Boro goal. If Spain did that in a World Cup final, we'd never hear the end of it.

I struggle to sympathise with anyone who barely earns £10k a year and thinks it's reasonable to have 10 children. The kids I feel sorry for yes, but not the parents.

Exactly. How many Latvian fans did we pick up when we signed Marian Pahars. Hardly any and he was their best player. I've no doubt we will pick up a few fans in Asia if this goes through, but I think people talking about Park at Man Utd and 19,000 replica shirts are getting a bit carried away.

It must be pretty much a cert for the OS to put it up like that before the deal is confirmed. Hopefully the work permit goes through easy enough, this chap looks decent.

I'd rather not if he's got injury problems. There isn't all that much space in our treatment room these days.

Remember Poke playing in a 5-0 defeat under Pearson away to Hull. He was carrying a knock IIRC.

Yep, that's unrealistic actually, I'll give you that one. Although I'd have said going after one of Blackburn's better players is distinctly 'underwhelming' when compared to Owen, Shakira and half the other silly rumours I've read on here.

That's the point I'm making. We've got 5 of each and we're still short of cover in both possitions. Sure nobody could have predicted the injuries to Barnard and Seaborne, but that's exactly why we shouldn't have kept DC and Jaidi. They can't be relied upon to provide cover with their injury problems, hence we're now up sh*t creek. Yes, those were the 5 strikers I was counting. I do include Guly as a striker as I think he is better there. Plus he has pretty much been forced to play up front for a couple of months thanks to injuries to DC and Barnard, not to mention Forte's inadequacies. Let's not go back to 2004 with our massive squad of crap or injured players.

Exactly. That's a large part of the reason I was against new contracts for players like Connolly and Jaidi in the summer. We're paying them a pretty substantial wage and between they've been injured more often than not. Right now we've got 5 centre halves and 5 strikers on the books, and people are talking about signing 2 more of each. It's not good for the balance sheets.

We did bring in 4 players. Cork, Jos, De Ridder and Fox probably cost about £4m and their combined wages will be substantially greater than whatever we were paying AOC. Could be to the tune of an extra £3m a year. Even only taking one years wages into account, that only leaves £5m for players in January. Appart from Wham chucking silly money at their promotion push, nobody is really spending big in NpC. I doubt we're skint, but we haven't got sh*t loads of money to spend on players.

Only 2 for me. The one and only Chesny and Jennifer Ellison (Scouse bird, gets them out for lad's magazines, Steven Gerrard was knobbing her about 10 years ago) Edit: Just googled a few of them. Apparently Heidi Range is the hot Scouse one from the Sugarbabes, who I'd heard of but didn't know by name.

Just because we didn't spend that immediately, it's not to say we wont this transfer window. Plus some of that money would have been spent covering our losses for the previous year. Plus you forgot Hooiveld and Cork, two more quality signings with sizeable wage demands. I'm not saying we would sell Lambert for £10m, then go and buy another striker for £10m the next day. However I do trust Adkins and Cortese to sensibly invest the money over time. It's all accademic really, nobody is going to bid £10m for Rickie Lambert. We bought him for £1m when he was 2.5 years younger and a top L1 striker. A decent scoring run in NpC isn't going to negate his age and increase his value ten fold.

A settled squad is one thing, but offering £10m for a player just turning 30 is absurb money. As romantic an idea as it is to think we don't need the money and we aren't a selling club, it's just not true. If someone comes with a ridiculous bid like that, I'd take it. Decent England internationals have been sold for less than that.

£10m for 30 year old Rickie Lambert? You'd be MENTAL to bid that kind of money and we'd be just as mental to turn it down. Yes Lambert is vital to our success, but for £10m we could get 3 Maynards, Lutceiwicz, Sharps etc. who are about 5 years younger.

Why? They are looking likely candidates for relegation, whereas we are top of the Championship. Ambitious maybe, but realistic.

From that lot I wouldn't mind Hoillet, Klasnic or Rodallega. Trouble is all three are stuck in relegation battles and I doubt their parent clubs would be willing to let them go in January.

Bart Sordell - Maynard - Jutceiwicz - Beattie Sharp - Tandoori - Owen - Benjani Rhodes - Vokes COYR!!!

Still 25 minutes left. Come on Saints!!!! Boro are getting d*cked. Somehow we will still be top after all this.

Alan Bennett scores for Cheltenham. Dyer and Skacel have also scored and Crouch has a brace. Any other ex Saints scoring?

What if we applied for it a few days or weeks ago.

Get in Blackpool!