The9

Bags/shotgun me up front, number 9. I reckon I could rustle up a couple of quid if it comes down to it. I'll even promise to have a go at that van Basten-type scorpion kick reverse overhead kick goal too, that'll bring in the crowds.

I laughed. I couldn't believe it when I saw someone on the OS on the Michael Svensson Tribute comments suggesting he should have a testimonial either. Much as he's been loyal and done the right thing, we already paid him to be injured for nigh-on three years !

Well they haven't bloody well offered ME a trial, and I've got World Net coming up. AND I've scored at St Mary's more recently than any of our current strikers. Damn, you have as well.

I suspect we're stalling for time as we can't actually offer him a contract anyway.

I'll be amazed if Lita doesn't get paid at least £20k a week as well...

Fair point, but he's recently been a good player with a professional attitude and he's about as good as we're going to get at the moment. The fact we've even heard of him puts him streets ahead of most people we're going to be linked with anyway. Hopefully we'll also learn to start handing out 1 or at most 2-season deals to players over 32 as well...

Holmes was our player of the month for August and completely integral to the 4-3-3 working properly. Didn't defend against Cardiff in the opener but then sorted that in the remainder of his games and contributed plenty going forward. We also spent 6 weeks faffing about trying to work out how to play a system which had been reliant on using Holmes as a counterattacking outlet when he got injured, and the injury to him probably cost us about 20 points last season. Lallana, talented and hard-working as he is, didn't produce half of the end product Holmes managed in 6 weeks over the course of the entire season. Other than that, you're completely right.

I suspect that might depend a little bit on whether there's a takeover by people with a wad of cash or not.

Christ on a bike, THAT changes my perception of what's going on behind the scenes completely. I mean, yeah we can't currently offer him a contract due to untakeoverness, but he was Reading's captain when they walked the CCC, he must know the situation and even though he's now 34 (and played for Charlton 8 times last season) he's got to still have something to offer if he's fit. This bloke was playing Premier League football regularly in 2007/8.

He'd only sell us to Vince McMahon for 34 billion dollars as soon as he took over anyway. Little WWE wrestling joke for ya there...

Yes, but there's no evidence of that other than the word "initially", it's quite the leap of faith (especially from Fry).

Exactly. It is. There's been no "scuppering" going on, it doesn't even say what the consortium's reaction was, only that they were "initially" confident which implies (with no supporting evidence) that it was not the case at the end of the day. They are probably still just as confident of announcing a deal. Who knows, but there's nothing in that that tells me categorically that Pinnacle's intervention made any difference at all ?

Just seems to say to me that they were going about their taking-over business and found it mildly bemusing that a party that had withdrawn still believed they were in with a chance. I don't think it would impact on the bid/offer/negotiations etc one little bit.

You're not being pedantic, it is a completely acceptable and rational fury at the utter mangling of the English Language. Plus he's the only one that does it at the moment, so we might actually be able to stamp it out at source. Anyone coming out tonight to inebriate ?

3. No, because relegate is a transitional verb, but we might be relegated to League 2. 4. I don't know, who are they playing in their last few games ? If they are playing a team who is mathematically in danger of being relegated before the match and definitely relegated after the match then they may very well relegate someone.

Quite. In fact if anything we should be moaning that we don't have more trialists at this point. Get 500 people down the Common and bounce some balls off trees...

I've been laughing at this statement for about 5 minutes now.

Stern John > 4 David McGoldricks

Well, he went to Scott Mills' old school with Scott Mills yesterday... has he got a yacht ?

I'm happy to wait, as long as it works itself out. The next deadline we actually have to worry about is July 23rd wages, if you ignore the failure to sign players, employ a permanent coach and get in loans etc., which won't help us at all but aren't actually essential...

I think I'm pretty suggestible, but even I'm not taken in by Jackson.

Not only is my argument that teams won't always have 7 players on the bench not laughable, it makes a ton more sense that you insisting players are sitting on Prem benches just because they feel they have to fill the bench. Various teams have gone without a full complement of subs even before 7 were allowed. They are sitting there not because a lot of subs are allowed, but because teams are allowed to sign as many players as they like and pay them what they like, whether they use them or not - which is completely different and existed long before 1 sub became 2, 3, 5, or 7. Chelsea don't need 50+ squad players, but they'll sign anyone they can afford if it means the likes of Man U don't have them. Whether they kick a ball or not or whether they are a substitute is utterly irrelevant, as they've achieved their goal by having them in their squad (as seen with Sidwell, Parker, Bridge, etc). Milan started all this back in 1994 and back then you were lucky to be able to use two subs in a match - but they had two full teams for squad rotation. In terms of not naming 7 subs, I've said that teams CAN do it, not that they WILL. Clubs who are skint, have suspensions, etc might just choose not to worry about taking some of their reserves/youth side out of their scheduled matches just to have them sit there in case of emergency. I don't think many will, but why bother complaining about something you don't have to adhere to ? As it happens, I don't agree with Stuart Pearce (from 2008 ) : http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/article4375150.ece and Steve Tilson doesn't really make an argument : http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/s/southend_utd/8112406.stm

I don't think Gobern will have a problem fitting in at that level, he's probably the best of the kids at the moment and already has a little bit of experience.

Not usually, no, probably due to needing to sit on the bench. We tend to have academy matches on a Saturday morning though.

They usually do...