once_bitterne

Were the moves of Bridge, Richards, Beattie, Walcott and Bale down the players and their agents wanting to move to clubs doing better than we were or were they 'cashed in on' by that nasty Wupert?

If Lallana does go in January it will be everything to do with the player (and his agent) wanting the move and not be controlled at all by Lowe wanting to 'cash in' on him

Is he Steven Gerrard's cousin?

Is he related to Steven Gerrard?

Hardly walking away with a clear reputation is he. It seems more like lack of enough evidence that they could build a case around.....

Well indeed. Nasty old Wupes is so devious he even managed to get Crouch to publish the last set of plc financial accounts that proved that we are in the financial mire just to perpetuate the myth that we are broke. Of course Alps, as you well know, Rupes has been able to pull up the false floor of his office at SMS and retrieve that famous bag full of gold and cash that he squirreled away by not 'pushing on' to make us a top 6 team when we were in the Prem so we in fact do not have any money worries at all and would have signed Robinho last night had it not been for the fact that he doesn't like living by the sea. What colour is the sky in Alpine World? Actaully, I know that one. It's grey, depressive and constantly raining.

With Holmes and Dyer on the pitch we have good opportunities to put in a lot of good crosses. The problem is that without John on the pitch we have little hope of turning any of these into goals.

I think the crowd would have fitted in the Dell (at its final attendance level)?

He was woeful. So far off the pace, obviously VERY worried about his knee and so was avoiding doing much that could but any strain on it and seemed to do nothing more than a half hearted leap off the ground every time the ball was in the air which always seemed to end up with the ball going straight to an attacker... I think the reality of Killer's return dawned today. Him coming back from a career ending sort of injury is a bit like bears riding bicycles, the surprise is not them doing it well but that they can do it all. I have a feeling that our best CB partnership was not even on the pitch on Saturday. Cork and Wotton will give us much that Killer and Perry can't. What I also is that in the friendlies when Wotton played CB him and Schniederman were able to interchange as the latter can play CB and was happy to drop back if Wotton ventured forward. It's lunacy to think that we can rely on Killer now as a starting CB. He is a great servant to the club but in reality JP may have it the wrong way around, he should not be rested for the Wednesday matches, he should be only playing in these if the starting CBs need to be rested.....

I think that's the problem, very few people have seen him play! 20 first team appearances at 6 clubs (mainly managed by his old man) tells its own story! Lord Lucan has been sighted more regularly than Pulis!

If it's more than £60 p/w we've been had.

Might it be an idea to get someone to wait outside of SMS and tred on said foot 'accidentally' as he walks out? How much exactly are Stoke paying us to take the lad on work experience?

How far we have fallen.... Once our made up takeover stories revolved around the likes of Paul Allen and Shiek Maktoom. Now they are about the 'Dave Merrington Consortium'!!!

I can't see the squad list on the page linked above! Where is it??

The low attendence is much more to do with how far the League Cup has fallen from grace in recent times more than a reflection on the club, fans, etc. If anyone thinks it'll be a poor show if we 'only' get 10k to the game then take a look at how many Palace got for their home match in the last round, 3,000!!

Just had major wrist surgery aint he?

That'll mean you might be a bit upset at Xmas time tho......

I think the reason is two fold... Firstly some people were sticking their heads in the sand and really believed that all our financial woes could be solved by getting the wages of Claus, Makin, Idiakez, etc off of the books and secondly they thought that as we were getting so late in the window without any of the players that we would hope to keep leaving that it may not happen at all......

Is he referring to his Missus?

Other than the big 4, only Spurs and Newcastle are ever present teams since the Prem began.....

Maybe he offered the club a tenner to train?

Not the greatest of ideas see as the window is coming to a close and any clubs in for Skacel, etc will surely play hardball if they know just how far down s hit creak we actually are. Have a read of the last accounts and you should be able to work out how bad it is.

Davies would be a great player to have in the team if WE were in the Prem but in the CCC he is a luxury we cannot afford. You don't need a great young talent worth over a million and on at least 10k a week to play CB in the CCC, we proved that last season when Perry and Lucketti did a more than competant job.

Umm, as he helped us stay up and also we have made a profit on him? Be honest why would he not ask to leave? He's only been here 10 mins so has no loyalty to the club at all. The best we can possibly hope for is to survive and be a CCC club next season. For Stoke the worse that can happen is that they are playing CCC football next season, but even then they will be a club in a far healthier financial situation than us. He will also be getting far more wages at Stoke than he is on with us. Why would a player like him want to stay and struggle to survive in the CCC? To Thompson, McG, etc they just want first team football but to the likes of Davies if a better offer comes along they will always take it. Let's face it, he wanted to leave and we are more than happy to take the much needed cash after not being able to sell Skacel, Euell, Rasiak, Saga, Thomas, Davis, etc. In reality we might have thought too highly of him anyway. We still shipped goals when he played and it was only when he played with Bennett that he shined for us, when partnered with Thomas he was not all that.....

We won't miss paying Vignal's wages tho..... The reason Surman is being kept out of left midfield is that he has the speed of a slug.