The9

The local council is North (East) Lincolnshire, as I once did a software install for them in Scvnthorpe (spent a week there, more dull than dreary), so I suspect your story is apocryphal. And cobblers.

My money's on the media knowing less than we do, hence the lack of coverage. Jaidi's got a ready-made file of English footballing experience they can look up, Waigo ? Too much effort, mate.

As I would have. This kind of "no fakes" behaviour should be encouraged. My dad bought me a purple velour adidas-wannabe tracksuit from France in 1988, completely missing the point - hell I wasn't going to wear an abomination like that if it didn't have the right label on it... I let him off for the wool-type long-sleeved AC Milan shirt from 1983 though, thin-striped design classic and back then their shirts were usually brandless anyway, except for a massive advert which made your belly sweat. On the Saints front, no-one's ever bought me any Saints tat, one of the benefits of not being local and the club's retail horizons not extending beyond the Isle of Wight.

Aldershot away is the only away I'd bother to go to, the others are either too much hassle for a midweek poxy cup or I've already been there. So Aldershot away or a home draw, pweeze.

I really think you're massively overstating the importance of giving the ball to the opposition full backs some 90 yards from goal in a situation where the opposition ended up with the ball from that tactic at least 50% of the time anyway. There's also plenty of potential benefit to whacking the thing as far down the park as possible and trying to win it back 45 yards further down the pitch by marking the defenders at the throw-in. If they're doing it anyway, why not make a profit on it too? It's not like he had a bet on the opposition to score 3 penalties and was catching corners.

Actually the FA banned any betting on matches by players in December 1997 as a result of an investigation, I've already posted that link. IIRC, the rules prior to that review stated that players weren't permitted to bet on the results of matches. This was a rule from prior to the emergence of spread betting, i.e. betting on the minutae of games not just the result, and the FA specifically went out of their way to review matters in order to ensure the rules covered it once it became obvious this was going on. If it had already been part of the rules they'd have just puniched players until existing legislation. Last season we were more than competent at kicking the ball off the pitch, but none of the players were old enough to bet anyway.

You'll have to remind me how many goals we conceded that season directly from defensive throw-ins in the opposition's half... I'm guessing none, though they were shipping goals left, right and centre from everywhere else...

Then he'd have to have been pretty dense to be hoofing a kick-off out of play backwards towards his own defence, AND you'd have to wonder what Shipperley was doing running the wrong way to be on the end of it, as well...

A : Walking the length of Britain and playing for Scvnthorpe. B : Worldwide, crying in a World Cup Semi-Final. In Britain, probably scuffing the ball past Andy Goram in 1996. In Norway... Actually I just asked my bird, and she said "cricket" and "football, crying and leg-breakingness". Either way, I don't get your point.

He wasn't even cheating them, they chose to take the bet from someone in a position to influence the result of it...

LOL, the whole Wimbledon team was at exactly the same "scam" for a while and no-one seemed to mind that when the news came out about 10 years ago... EDIT : Oops, my mistake, the throw-in "scam" was first noticed in May 1997, as noted at the end of this Dec 1997 article about far more serious stuff : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sport/football/39045.stm Either way, not important, hundreds of teams always whack it straight off the pitch upfield anyway, serves the bookies right for running a book on it. Then again William Hill ran a book on who was going to be the WWE Champion once, and that's always been predetermined.

I wasn't there on Saturday, but in contrast, last Tuesday Lambert won about 15 flick-ons (against a decent standard "Premier League" defensive pairing) and Saga got nowhere near about 14 of them. I don't care whether we sign a 7 footer or a 5 footer as long as someone actually bloody reads that Lambert is going to flick the ball on all day long and actually runs for it.

I thought Theo Robinson looked pants when he came on against Saints.

Pardew gives some interesting examples with Sidwell, Reo-Coker, and less convincingly James Harper and (comically, of course) Hayden Mullins "going on to better things"... but then Mullins went from West Ham reserve to first teamer, before things went bad for him. Not a bad set of players to give as examples, though how much Coppell rather than Pardew did for the Reading players is open to debate. Apart from all that, isn't it nice to have a manager address the issues directly and see it on the OS for once ?

Main change was the eleven players in Saints shirts trying. That's all there was to it. Every one of them knew that if they didn't put in the effort then we'd get stuffed, so they tried. That's it. Effort. And yeah, the ref missed everything important.

That was 5 seconds after their bloke in the box did exactly the same thing in front of the Northam, getting a shot off soon afterwards, he could hardly give it.

Probably best to leave the analysis to the people who actually saw our team running their guts out, closing down, passing effectively at a high tempo and generally running the show for the majority of the match against Premier League opposition then ? It took them kicking us after the ball had gone for an hour before Birmingham took over, it wasn't fitness, it was more the dampening effect of seeing Murty stretchered off, along with the loss of James in the middle - and the usual act of giving Gillett a hospital ball when marked by two players facing his own goal in his first 5 seconds on the pitch, which has happened in about 3 matches now and tends to limit his effectiveness...

I was applauding the best Saints performance at home in a good two seasons, we were very unlucky to lose and ran the game for 70 minutes. They haven't played that well since Reading away last season.

Last night it was due to half the team being crocked by late tackles, as well as the obvious rigours of chasing supposedly better players for 90 minutes. As it was, we played by far the better football until Murty was injured.

Actually I think that last night showed all of us who actually saw the game that the side we've got, rather than being tacking in ability, is only lacking in motivation and effort in their League games. They proved themselves by playing football at a much higher tempo and ran the game for getting on for 70 minutes against a Prem side, before getting kicked out of it due to the ref's failure to spot endless foul, dirty and late tackles. As far as I'm concerned last night's game was an eye-opener for what those players are capable of WHEN THEY TRY.

My missus said that the Birmingham player deliberately stamped on Murty after the ball had gone. Like you I was watching the ball at the time.

I am sometimes, if rarely. Hamster managed to get me confused with Griffo after the Fans' Forum match (though as he won MoM it's not all that surprising, LOL).

You mentioned him above, I wasn't there.

I think Torres' accusation of bovine secretions was a tad harsh, but I completely understand that the circumstances and timeline of 2007/8 don't seem to leave much room for an approach to noted chav tracksuit and baseball cap-combo wearer Tony Pulis, so it's understandable why he thought it wasn't true, especially as the following transfer seems to be based on the unlikely premise of someone honouring a gentlemen's agreement in modern football. Also, FF is entitled to withdraw himself from posting if he likes, but I don't really think that one response is sufficient grounds for it.

You and your bloody cliques on here... You've met The Banana Factor...