bridge too far

The difference is though that if we default on our mortgages, the bank can repossess in the knowledge that they can sell the house on. As has been said by many before, the market for football stadia is not as large as the market for houses.

I think that's (sort of) what happened last time,although pundits are suggesting it will be the service sector that will take the biggest hit this time whereas it was the manufacturing sector last time. If you're young, free and single it's comparitively easy to up sticks and move elsewhere to a job. However, if you have a mortgage, and children who are settled in local schools, it's not that straightforward, is it?

I get Saints Affecting Disorder - does that qualify too?

Hey, so that's the master plan, is it? The business will purely be an academy. The football club will cease to exist or will simply become a pub team. Is this why GH is over (was it last week or is it this week)?

A bit like a garden centre, you mean? Sow the seeds, water and feed them and then sell the resulting plants on to other people to have in their gardens? So SLH is about being a 'garden centre'. The football club is an aside. SLH could, in fact, exist just as a 'garden centre' and the football side could close altogether. Is that what you're intimating?

Apparently 'arry's going to persuade him to sign for Spurs now

We don't - we pass wind. HTH

I wonder if that was more a case of playing for the new manager than 'arry's wonderful tactics? You know, like our guys always play well when a new manager comes in

How do I feel? Betrayed. I'm sensible enough to know that clubs' fortunes rise and fall. If I felt that the right things had been done but, nonetheless, we'd failed, I'd sort of shrug my shoulders and say 'que sera, sera'. But when my club has been used as a toy - an experiment that's gone so badly wrong - and the perpetrators of the experiment have spoiled a club that used to muddle along in the top flight with highs and lows for their own selfish ends, then I'm angry - very angry.

I don't care how they feel. I only care about how I, and thousands of other fans, feel about MY CLUB

The supposed benefit of PFI ise the transfer of risk. Private developers accept the risk of delivering (a building) on time and at a contracted cost. The public sector rents the facility for usually 25-30 years and then owns it. Credit crunch aside, I find it hard to believe that a private developer would be prepared to take the risk, quite honestly.

But we might not be rid of them. This point has been made over and over again. They could just buy the club back from the administrators at a knock down price!

Exactly right. I think at the moment there are about 600K vacancies. If unemployment rises to 2 million (optimistic estimate) what are the other 1400K supposed to do? In posting this thread, I was pointing out that we are very lucky to be in the UK and to know that people, who through no fault of their own are out of work, do at least get some support, even if that support is as simple as getting eye treatment for free to at least give them a chance to get work again. There is no such safety net in the US I think.

We're sure all Saints fans will join us in a minute's silence for the sad demise of Portsmouth Football Club I wish

Maybe 'Arry's using nosebags instead of his usual brown paper ones?

We are pleased to formally announce that a takeover has been brokered by Marc Jackson.

I've got the bit between the teeth now. Oh fetlocks - I can't think of anything else

Off at a slight tangent but did anyone else hear the commentators on the Villa / Ajax match say how they couldn't understand Ajax' policy of developing youngsters and then selling them on thus having to rebuild. They thought it just didn't make sense.

I think he'll experience far more fear in prison.

In the mane, I would agree with you.

Humour reigns I see. Will we now be saddled with loads of horse jokes?

Well it's not quite THAT bad. She usually wakes up around 8am and, since I promised my daughter that I'd entertain the baby, I'll have to get up at 7 instead. Not really such a hardship and worth it for the lovely smiles Her mother was a baby when we did the 'don't change the clocks' experiment. It was great! But we'd reverted back to it when her sister was born and I remember how difficult it was persuading a baby to wait an extra hour for the ol' t*tty

Fair point. I can't imagine protecting myself at the expense of my child but then I've never been in her shoes so it's not possible for me to understand and not right to judge. Apparently he had been violent to women before although he had no convictions for it.

This has absolutely horrified me. According to the judge, the mother was in the lowest 1% of intelligence. Apparently she was scared of him because he was so violent, but surely she should have found a way to find help beforehand.