Danny

Don't forget, Stoneham had far more ancillary uses planned, such as an athletics stadium, five-a-side pitches, community pitches, tennis courts even. To support those key aspects of the development it needed extra commercial revenue, hence the reason for the cinema and shops being included. St. Mary's had all of that stripped out and thus the extra sources of income were not needed, although I believe the reason SMS is 7,000 seats bigger that Stoneham is because dropping the community sport aspects of the development didn't quite offset the drop in revenue of the loss of the commercial side, so the club hoped that the extra seats and hospitality suites would sort that out. No-one person made a mess of Stoneham - the three councils playing party politics are the key reason it didn't happen. Lowe made many mistakes, but his role in SMS being built (and Stoneham not being built) is not one.

Give us 10 minutes and I'll be there.

"We cóck up your finances so you don't have to."

Wasn't Fratton Park designed by Archibald Leitch, just the same as most stands and terraces in the 1920s? That's why the North and South Stands at Fratton are the same as the East and West Stands at The Dell. Fratton Park was built as a functional building, as were all football grounds - Functional, Identikit, Bland, Boring Cathedrals of the Mundane. The difference is generations have grown to love it because it's theirs. Just the same as they will the modern stadiums, which will all change as years go on and developments take place. No Saints fan misses The Dell because of how it looked. They miss it for the memories they associate with it.

I'd be up for that - DanK_SFC

House of Love was written about the Gulf War, fact fans.

Seeing as Surman is a predominantly cultured attacking midfielder and Hammond is a defence-minded box-to-box all action midfielder, it is hardly a direct comparison. Schneiderlin would be a much more similar type of player to Surman than Hammond.

Seeing as they've never been higher than the third tier, that's unlikely.

If you have Virgin Media broadband at home you can get one of their 3G dongles for £5 a month (well, that was the offer a few months ago, which I assume is still going on).

This: http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/2261574.Modern_business_hub_to_replace_former_department_store/

I've put loads of effort into getting as many trophies as I can on the campaign and Spec Ops, and after a bit of a break I'm going back to online and repeatedly getting hammered. This may take some time...

I just hope they let me in!

On the other hand, we haven't tried to sign anyone with a £40k a week contract.

England are already bidding for both, and FIFA will make the decision for both tournaments next December.

I'm not after a laptop, but I have to say I find Elmo lurking behind the door in the first photo a bit disconcerting!

To be fair to him though, he wasn't part of the the board which spent £7m we didn't have, causing all the problems. Your point remains, though.

Fair point!

I didn't quote him on it because it doesn't matter. The issue is whether or not it can be done - not how it will be done or who said it. I included the Wikipedia link as it might have contained information that people reading the article might find interesting. I thought this might be a useful addition to the article. Perhaps I was wrong, I don't know. I'm sorry of you don't like it, but that's your right. In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with that article - as pointed out, it is purely my opinion on whether Southampton should be considered for a World Cup bid, and I don't pretend it is anything else.

Well it's never happened to me before, and I know for a fact that many reporters feel exasperated by such claims. I don't have time to go into a huge debate now, but with football clubs, information gets out and people find out. In the past they would mention them to a couple of mates in the pub but now they put them online. Seeing as the paper isn't instant, people assume the paper has copied the story from elsewhere - which isn't true at all. But, I can understand why people think that. Other times, something may appear online (on a forum such as this for example) which we are also aware of, but we can't just print and be damned unfortunately - media law means we have to stand things up, which takes time, whereas at the moment forums seem to have a bit more leeway than we do.

Sorry, ESB, I may not have made myself clear - I'm Dan Kerins, the Echo journalist. I wrote both the article in the Echo and have edited the Wikipedia article in the past.

I wrote that Echo article - as pointed out it is a comment piece - and the 'facts' actually came from Andrew Cowen circa 2003. Coincidently enough, I also wrote that part of the Wikipedia article, sometime around 2006-2007 - you can check this in the edit history of the Wiki article. The information was never given a reference on Wiki as I couldn't find a reputable online source. However, seeing as I was in the room when Cowen gave the facts, I felt they were likely to be accurate.

I love the Wasteland map (mainly as you can't do that) but everyone seems to skip it.

IPlayer has been on the PS3 for over a year - it's just in the last 3 months or so that they added a direct link to it from the XMB rather than having to access the page via the web browser. Having said that, I imagine the XMB option boosted the numbers using it quite considerably.

Yeah, I did. Go and play a game and check it then. That's what made it come back for me.

Erm, right. You tell yourself that.