FloridaMarlin

The only culture on the Septic Isle is in a yoghurt.

In the piece, Klopp says he has the financial backing of the owners. Would that be the same owners - John Henry's Fenway Sports Group - who said after they were caught with their trousers down, they would not pursue their interest in van Dyke to preserve's Liverpool's integrity?

What do you expect with Boothroyd in charge? And to those criticising Redmond, at least he had the courage to step foward. It takes nerve and confidence. For all his rep as The Guv'nor I'm pretty sure Paul Ince was a serial hider when shoot-outs came round.

You tell me. People below deride him as a third world coach but he has an impressive record. If you accept the role of a youth team coach is to develop players rather than win trophies then his record is largely immaterial. Fifa think enough of him to make him part of their elite coaching programme.

Because the FA is an old boys network, who do not have the courage or vision to put the coaching of our Under-21s. and the future of the England national team, into the hands of somebody like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_White_(football) Southampton lad, one of the most highly-qualified coaches in the world, and who applied for the job. Why not be daring and give somebody like Gary a chance?

I feel sorry for his wife.

What will it take, or at what point will a Premier League club report another for illegally approaching (tapping up) one of its players? Somebody will say everybody - including Saints - does this but Liverpool appear to have perfected in to the level of an art form with the way they use their media lickspittles to first spawn and then build the story until it almost becomes a fait accompli. There is not one attributable quote in any of the stories linking van Dyke but Liverpool can now sit back confident their work in sowing seeds is done and they can reap the harvest.

Oh dear. They think they are going to get Gary Monk/Nigel Pears on or Aitor Karanka to replace him.

I see David Bobin has died, aged 71. Although latterly of Sky, older members will know him from his days as a Meridian sports presenter. Nice guy and one of the last of the Gentleman Broadcasters.

I'm sorry, but I'll disagree with you there. Like Romeu and Davies, he worked his socks off to nullify Liverpool's threat. Granted, he didn't play eye-catching passes, have searing shots at goal, or go steaming into tackles, but I think he's proved recently that he knits thing together in midfield and it is better as a unit when he plays. The thing with Ward-Prowse is that he never hides when we are possession. He always wants the ball and is willing to receive it. That's the sort of quality that team-mates appreciate and managers like. The three in front of the back four were a great shield, and apart from the pen and the late header which FF saved, Liverpool were pretty much limited to long-range pot-shots which were no trouble. In the past, we have seen Coutinho undo us by picking the ball up 40 yards out, making 15 yards and letting fly. He wasn't able to to do that today because JWP and the others stood up, didn't dive in and fenced him off. That's intelligent and disciplined defending. I would say the best testament to that, is to ask how many free-kicks Saints gave away 20-25 yards out in the sort of position that Coutinho can pop in? I can't recall one.

"Executing Seating" - a seat on a treated wooden plank thick enough to guarantee you won't go crashing through the floor of the stand and up in the tea urn of the snack bar.

Good luck with getting planning permission for a football stadium in leafy, rural Titchfield, assuming there is anywhere you could actually built it. If there is any open land in Titchfield, it is only there because it is likely to flood when the River Meon overflows (which it does many times every winter). It would cost a lot of money to control or divert the river Meon, even assuming you could do that. Lots of environmental groups would ensure that would never happen. Once you get west of Titchfield, you are getting into SO postcode territory. Again, they are faced with the problem of a lack of available land on the Sceptic Isle, or land off it on which they are likely to get planning permission. Either way, it will cost a fortune. You cannot build a modern stadium for the £1m per 1,000 seats it cost to build St Mary's and others back in the day. The days of relatively cheap stadiums have gone, they have missed the open-top bus on that one. And he doesn't seem the sort to spend the £60m the phew would be demanding. Incidentally, he seems to have gone overnight from being a millionaire to a billionaire in the P****y Pravda.

Top half at least of South (main) stand closed. It's one of the few wooden stands remaining and some of the gaps between the boards are alarming. They concourse below can be seen through some of them. North stand upper tier also wooden and giving cause for concern. It too, is wooden and fire and safety officers are worried that no number of fire extinguishers would be enough to prevent another Bradford City. So that would be the stands along both touchlines. Milton End also inadequate in terms of toilet facilities, and also exits in the event of emergency. "The best emergency exit is on to the pitch" is no longer acceptable to safety and fire officers. What I was told.

Oh dear. Trouble at t'mill. Leaflets being handed out at yesterday's triumph over Cambridge United prove they are in a right flummox over whether they can have their slice of lemon drizzle cake, and still eat it. How do you confuse a Pompey fan? Not by putting him in a barrel and asking him to pee in the corner but by asking whether he wants to be part of the bestest, biggest fan-owned club in the world which is at the heart of the community, or whether they want a rich bloke to fund them. Michael Eisner has thrown a real spanner in the works. His conditions for taking over are that he insists there will be no fan representation on the board, that he will only spend the absolute minimum on the TTT to bring it in line with safety regulations (which hints there are safety issues) and that he will look for land within a 15-mile radius of the Island of Dr Moreau for a new ground, which raises the spectre of taking the club off the island!! This promises to split the fan base between those who want the club to remain 'fan-owned' and therefore likely to kick around in football's basement for the foreseeable future ("But we love it down here, this is proper football, not like the plastic Premier League) and those who want a return to the good old days of a thick, rich person spunking his wealth on them ("Is Riquelme still available? We'll be able to bid for Messi") Of course, in their deluded ideal world, the fans would still retain 'ownership' (how much will Eisner pay for that 'share' you so lovingly bought a few years ago?) so they could continue their proud boast, while at the same time being passed blank cheques by some rich guy just grateful to be given the chance to be associated with the bestest and most famousest club with a fan with a bell and everything! As the leaflets say: "We are not opposed to Mr Eisner. We are opposed to the loss of a community-based club which his business model would represent." Other choice comments include: "It's not about whether Eisner is a good chap. It's about the fact there is only one Portsmouth FC and once it is sold to anyone, they can sell it on to whoever they wish" (well. they would know all about that). "We need ownership for the long term, which we know have with fans ownership" "We believe in a sustainable fans-owned club playing at the highest level" (that will be League One, then). "FC United of Manchester raised over £6m to build a new ground and AFC Wimbledon have advanced plans for a new ground, in both cases without diluting fans' ownership. Pompey is a much bigger club than either of them. We can develop our ground in stages, enhancing income and the level the club can be sustained at." There is a No to The Takeover website (Notothetakeover@hotmail.com) where you can voice your views, if you wish. And we thought this thread was beginning to lose steam and wind up? Break out the popcorn.

You'll be pleased to know Solent University has nothing to do with it. That's Solent Ltd is owned by SIX TV Ltd, trading as That's TV, with the That's Media Ltd as the ultimate parent company, it operates out of Highbury College in Cosham. In 2012 the government wanted to set up hyper-local TV stations in its bid to compete with BBC regional websites at the behest of regional newspaper owners, who felt the Beeb's local web pages were affecting their circulation (see 'Graf Report') That's Solent principally won its bid because it had Esther Rantzen on board as their cheerleader. As soon as they won, she realised it was a crock and cut her ties.

Despite a win over Everton, Lowe was going to sack Jones on the Monday, but when the allegations broke he was left in a dilemma. Whatever you think of Lowe, he mostly tried to do the decent thing and he knew that if he went ahead with his plans to sack Jones, people would have thought he was doing it because he thought Jones was guilty of the allegations. He didn't want that to happen so he put Jones on 'gardening leave' to clear his name, and appointed Hoddle on an interim basis. Of course, when the charges collapsed, Jones thought he was going to get his job back, by which time Hoddle had done a half decent job. The post-script to this comes with a piece Martin Samuel did for The Times (where he was working at the time) where he described Lowe's handling of the affair as 'Shambolic', Lowed sued for defamation and although The Times/Samuel claimed it was a comment piece, Lowe successfully claimed that any comment has to be based on provable fact and they could not prove he had acted in such a way. Lowe won £250,000.

Could it just be the fact that Puel, who sees the players every day in training, knows which of his defenders is sharpest and is best suited to a place in the starting line-up? I, for one, have been impressed with how Stephens has progressed alongside a vastly improved Yoshida. There is enough belly aching - both on this forum and in football in general - about clubs taking the easy route and signing ready-made foreign players instead of developing young English players. Somebody might mention our EFL Cup final defeat, but I can't recall any opposing striker completely undressing him since he came into the starting line-up and he's been integral to some of our better defensive displays (Liverpool in the EFL semi-final, West Brom on Saturday) Stephens has got a chance he might not otherwise have got but for VVD's injury and I think he has taken it. Good for him, good for Puel and good for the club. Having played almost half a season in the top flight, and with a full first-team pre-season under his belt, we could have a cracking central defender on our hands next season. Let's throw this out there, then. At this moment, which young English central defender would you rather have in your line-up. Stone or Stephens? Perhaps it says something about Puel's

Managers are blinkered and only see and moan about decisions which adversely affect them. Fat Sam not seeing an obvious pen is the same as Mourinho bleating about the introduction of video technology after Zlatan had a goal harshly ruled this week but the same thought strangely not occurring to him when Gabbi's goal was ruled out in the EPL Cup final.

They didn't need the last quarter of the game against Liverpool. Just the last 15 minutes to score three goals. All these things are relative, and as such, you need to put them in perspective. To dismiss the opposition as "a team like Bournemouth" implies they are utter crap. Clearly they are not and some people have a false and inflated sense of entitlement if they think we just have to turn up to get three points. I'm sure Liverpool fans felt something similar when they were 3-1 up.

"We want our T-shirt's and sweatshirt's to be the clothing you choose to wear while you plan and achieve your dreams." Top punctuation there. A company and its website always look really professional when the punctuation would shame a seven-year-old. Also, the spelling of the company's name is surely wrong. Should it not be must try harder. with two Ts. Otherwise, it becomes must ry harder, or mus try harder. The company and the club deserve each other.

So does Hampshire CCC!

Having had time to think about it in the cold light of day, Andre Marriner's performance yesterday should ensure he never gets another major final. It's never a good idea to blame officials for defeats. There are always more important reasons to be self-analytical. To be blunt, neither the referee nor the linesman stuck any of United's goals in the net, and you can be critical of Saints defensive naievety at times. But as I said in my post last night, tight games hinge on fine margins, and two of those affected Saints adversely. The linesman - quite rightly - has come in for a lot of stick, but the ultimate responsibility has to lie with the referee. To be fair to the linesman - and there is little reason to be - he might have thought that Bertrand got a touch. He is 60 yards away and from that distance his depth of vision is limited. But at this point, the referee should have asked him who he was flagging for, and if he received the answer "Bertrand" then the ref should have informed him that he did not touch the ball. I'm not sure the referee ever consulted the linesman. He might well have assumed that he was flagging for Gabbiadini and assumed he would not have raised his flag had Gabbiadini been onside. In which case, that is poor, poor refereeing. The referee was not in a position to judge whether Gabbiadini was onside or not, but he was in a position to see who got the last touch. If he is not in a position to make a judgement call on whether a player is on or off, he should not assume the linesman has made the correct decision for him. The referee is ultimately responsible for all decisions made under his jurisdiction during the game and by not consulting his assistant, he abrogated that responsibility. Marriner should certainly be carpeted for not applying the laws correctly on Lingard's trip on Redmond. If the offside goal was a wrong judgement call, the trip on Redmond is not. The laws clearly stated that a deliberate trip or attempt to trip an opponent who has gone past you, is a cautionable offence. The fact that Redmond stayed on his feet and allowed Marriner is immaterial. At the first opportunity when the ball was dead, Marriner called Lingard over and at that point, he knew it was a foul and he should have applied the law. He has no leeway on this. The laws were amended exactly to remove this sort of situation, and to remove any leeway a referee might be minded to give. How many times do you see referees brandish a yellow card to a player for tripping an opponent and with a shrug of the shoulder, mouth the words: "Sorry, but I have no choice"? Marriner had no choice yesterday, and the fact that he did not sanction Lingard according to the rules, is a failure on his part, and falls short of the standard expected of top-flight officials. He didn't dismiss Lingard, and United had the luxury of not being reduced to 10 men for the last 20-odd minutes, which again, could have had a major bearing on the outcome of the game. To an extent, it's all academic, as the records will show that United won 3-2 and the cup is nestling in their trophy cabinet. But if nothing else, we can only hope that Andre Marriner's performance will ensure he is not awarded another major final.

I think the game turned on three moments for us, which shows how football is a game of minute margins. Gabbiadini's disallowed goal - if we go 1-0 up, it is a completely different game as United have to come chasing the game. Romeu's header which hit the post - had that gone in, we go 3-2 up and they would have been deflated. But the third moment - and I think the most significant and the poorest refereeing decision - was when Marriner let Lingard off the hook when he tripped Redmond. He was booked first half for exactly the same thing, and Marriner did not apply the letter of the law, which he should have. I hate to see players diving, it is the biggest blot on the modern game. But Redmond staying on his feet kept Redmond on the pitch. Had Redmond gone over, Marriner would have had little option but to send Lingard off. In that instance when Redmond gave Marriner the opportunity to play the advantage, he also gave the referee the get out of jail card he needed to not dismiss Lingard. When the referee eventually caught up with Lingard, the moment had gone and he got away with a ticking off, when it should have been a second yellow. Again, as with the disallowed goal, and Romeu's header, if United are reduced to 10 men with 20-odd minutes left, it is a different game. The difference today is that United had three moments in the game which they took advantage of (to be honest, they did little else up front but score, although you could argue that is clinical finishing). We had three moments which cost us dearly, two of which were beyond our control.

Poor old Jim. That day back in 1976 meant so much to him, especially the goal, that it remains sharp and crystal clear in his memory. “I remember his goal. He wasn’t a left footer but Jim McCalliog passed the ball, Mick Channon headed it on and Stokesy hit it with his left peg from about 25 yards into the top corner. Fantastic - past Alex Stepney as well.

I feel sorry for Thing One at the bottom of the screen, desperately looking for Thing Two. Nice, professional piece of video making.