Wes Tender

It is an excellent device for the legal profession to ramp up costs and fees.

Yes, but the £30 grand tends to show the landlord in an unfavourable light, as it seems on the face of it to be a fantastic figure, totally unjustifiable against what it appears to cover. And we have the landlord's side of the story, but not the tenant's. Let's wait for that to come out in court before pre-judging for either party.

The swimming pool water went green, so patently the entire pool had to be replaced. Ditto the windows which weren't cleaned and therefore also had to be replaced too and the chip to the hob required a top of the range new replacement. The overgrown garden needed to be replanted to plans drawn up by a RHS Gold Medal designer with plants supplied by Hilliers. Hence the extremely reasonable cost of £36,000.

A very well-balanced and sensible response. I can't think of one single poster on here who "has decided they support the chief executive rather than a sports team, but apparently this forum is crawling with them. Presumably they all go to the match just to catch a glimpse of Cortese rather to watch the team play.

West Ham are as likely as Man Utd to go down. It is suggested that we are waiting to see what the position will be regarding whether we will stay up or not. Expert authorities on these things haven't yet declared that Saints are as likely as Man Utd to be relegated, so presumably there is still some reasonable doubt as to the situation. But otherwise there is no real hurry to get Puncheon to sign a new contract. He has done really well this season and must be one of the first names on the team sheet currently. If as I expect, we bring in an even better player to the right wing in the Summer, then he would still be valuable cover. And he has expressed his happiness at being here at the moment, whereas his past career has been blighted with stories of him being unable to settle and disputes with other clubs, as indeed there were problems with us too. He might get a better offer from some other Premiership club, but at the moment West Ham and even Newcastle don't look to be particularly good career moves. Providing that he isn't pushed too far down the rankings by new signings, or emerging starlets from our academy, then he might well decide that his personal happiness with us counts for more than a higher salary and a fresh start elsewhere which could carry the risk of him being unsettled again.

I'll remember that one when I next get caught by the speeding radar trap Gestapo. You can't fine me again, I'll say, it's a breach of my human rights. You've already charged me for that crime the last time.

What do you mean, if? They are as likely to go down as Man Utd.

No, it doesn't particularly bother me. But if I'm the victim of personal abuse like that from Misguided Missile, then I reserve the right to respond in kind. I have no problem with you in that department and I don't mind a bit of banter. But when somebody has to resort to juvenile playground insults just because a poster has the temerity to disagree with them, then many on here are finding it increasingly tiresome and some have expressed that opinion even on this thread.

To paraphrase one of your Labour heros, Dennis Healey, being attacked by you is like being savaged by a dead sheep.

Guided Missile made himself look like a really pathetic anorak because he had kept a post of mine in notepad or somewhere, just so that he could trawl back to it some time much later to quote it verbatim in an attempt to try and score some petty points. Several posters commented on how bizarre his behaviour had seemed at the time, so I'm surprised that he would wish to remind them of it. In the event, he had the whole situation totally wrong anyway, so I see that I will have to rake over old coals to put him right yet again. I lapsed my season ticket in protest against Lowe, although I still attended nearly all of the matches apart from three or four. I took my ST up again when he was ousted. I continued with my ST into the third division and all the way back. So his assertion that I gave it up because I didn't want to watch lower division football really couldn't have been wider of the mark. I have enough posts on here commenting on matches during that period and if anybody doesn't believe the veracity of whether I attended them, then frankly I couldn't care a toss. Knowing what a saddo Misguided Missile is, it wouldn't surprise me at all if he could still retrieve that original post of mine. He has such an over-inflated ego that he can retrieve other posts and threads that he posted ages ago, just so that he can say hey, look at me, wasn't I clever? Most posters just wonder at how inadequate he must feel about himself to feel the need to have justification for his opinions.

Who's after a row? I agreed with you in principle, but just pointed out the flaw in the logic, that the best players don't always make the best team. Generally, probably, mostly, but not always. Also, there is room for debate as to who the best players are, as that is a matter of opinion. Additionally there have been enough instances of so-called elite players just not living up to expectations at other clubs. So was the logic flawless or not?

On paper and in general terms you would be right. But it isn't flawless logic, as it isn't necessarily the case that they would play better together than the players they replaced. Anyway, define better. A player might be technically better but have an attitude problem or some other reason why he might be inferior to a less gifted player.

And that those who describe it as such are the biggest mongs of all.

Let she who is without sin cast the first 14 pounds then.

They will survive this season, because they are as unlikely as United to go down. But they need to sign somebody of Lambert's calibre to ensure their survival next year.

Where does this £6.6 million for Lambert come from? I thought that it was only £1 million. Presume that's therefore a valuation, but whose? But otherwise the telling stats that are of more significance favour Lambert as the better player. Benteke might well improve in the future, as he is only a youngster, and then so might Rodriguez. But the comparison is between the two of them now.

We all thought? I never for a moment thought that the spending far beyond their means would result in anything other than their financial meltdown. It was only a matter of time. Likewise I was always confident that what we had in terms of our infrastructure, the stadium, training ground, academy, comparatively low debt, etc, would make us a decent prospect for somebody to take an investment punt on us. One can only hope that if Cortese does seek to sell us, it will be as an even more investable commodity, attractive to somebody else with as much ambition to take us further and the money to achieve it.

How timely! I just posted without reading this from you My comment is particularly fitting for you. One really has to worry for the security of the country if people of such juvenile immaturity are defending the realm.

These are exactly my thoughts. I've seen enough changes in English football during my lifetime to acknowledge that nothing is impossible, as improbable as it might seem currently. I remember Liverpool before Shankly when they were nowhere and United before Busby, Leeds before Revie, Forest and Derby pre-Clough. If anybody dares to suggest that one day we might find ourselves towards the top of the division as a result of the ambition of Cortese, backed by the Liebherr money, some with closed minds will try and ridicule you. A word of advice to anybody with an open mind trying to convince others of the possibility of success in that endeavour; don't use analogies of other historical events that were once deemed to be impossible. That will only go right over their heads and then they'll trawl it up as a stick to beat you with. It's really quite puerile, the sort of thing that they should have left behind in the playground.

Whitey mentioned three reasons for the increase in demand for housing. You've only responded to one of them. In your response to my point replying to Hockey Saint, then yes, of course there has been a substantial increase in the value of properties, but what the hell have prices over a quarter of a century got to do with anything? Hockey Saint was commenting on negative equity during Thatcher's term in government, as was I. You two are all over the place in your comments.

Please don't try and preach to me and label me as wearing rose-tinted glasses. I lived through it; did you? I am entitled to draw my own conclusions about how things were, with some perspective about how they had been through Harold Wilson's and Callaghan's terms in power too. Were you of an age to understand what that was like, or are your opinions only formed by what you were taught or what you read about it?

Christer Warren, Darren Potter, 2 Chinese players?

They sold their council houses for a huge profit. So are you saying that Hockey Saint is wrong when he says that people who bought their council houses then went on to suffer negative equity? You can't both be right. And this housing crisis you mention; it couldn't have anything to do with rising population and immigrant numbers, could it?

You sound just like one of those spotty youths that used to sell the Socialist Worker rag in the High Street of a Saturday morning. The electorate must be really gullible, eh, to vote for Thatcher solely on the strength of an advertising campaign on Unemployment? It couldn't possibly have been that they had been fed up with Wilson and then Callaghan and the Winter of discontent, Labour having to go to the IMF cap in hand to bail us out because of the financial mess that Healey got us in to. The family silver you speak of was inefficient nationalised industries, overmanned, offering dismal service and a really poor product. Labour has been back in power since Thatcher and Major. Why didn't they renationalise those industries and put "the family silver" back into public ownership? As for your point about low pay, I was earning £6.50 a week in my first job at 16. How I would have loved the £1 an hour! Pay rates are only relevant in the context of what they are for in terms of the type of work and the qualifications and responsibilities it entails. Your point about the Council Houses bought by former tenants falling in value and causing negative equity is just so ludicrous, it's laughable. The whole point is that most bought at a much reduced price reflecting the fact that they had been paying rent for many years. I very much doubt whether there were very many at all that fell in value below what people paid to buy them.

What's a tweet?