FloridaMarlin

I'm always disappointed when the lyrics of pop songs are untrue. Especially after I hit Chumbawumba in my car.

Oh dear. I don't think this is an official decoration of the IDF. But if it is, a medal for such a thing is a poor deal compared to the 72 virgins on offer to any terrorist who straps a bomb to himself and boards a bus.

During the course of the summer, Eddie Jones has also spent time with the Orica cycling team while following the Tour de France, and also with GB women's Olympic hockey gold medal-winning coach Danny Kerry. Looks like he's making the running to take in other sports, not a case of Saints inviting him to get involved.

Even more respect to you. sir, for ploughing back through that load of drivel. I didn't realise I had wittered on so much about this, but it is a bit of a sore point with me. Those people who are asking about what happens to fans of the clubs possibly involved in this might be missing the point, that in the worldwide scheme of things, they are not really important and will only prove useful in providing a backdrop to the football. The main concern will be with those huge legions of fans in China and the Far East who will buy merchandise and TV subscriptions (although most of them will stream it for nothing). And they turn up in their droves at Old Trafford and Anfield taking selfies in any case. As for Darren Anderton's guinea pig. I knew his dad Norman, and I happened to mention that my kids wanted a guinea pig and he saud that as Darren had joined Spurs, he wasn't around to look after his. So I took it off his hands.

Oooh-er. http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/world-super-league-clubs-europe-8795828 I'm not one for saying "I told you so," but if anybody can be bothered to trawl back through my previous posts (I couldn't, and there's no reason you should) I mentioned this a couple of years ago. With Chinese backing, and Murdoch keen to broadcast it, it seems almost inevitable. Discuss.

Shatov sounds like the sort of accident you might have after a lamb bhuna.

I'm not sure who that condition would be made with. The decision as to whether he would be called into the Danish Olympic squad would rest with the Danish Olympic body and the Danish FA, not as a condition of sale with Bayern. I'm not sure Saints would be able to go to the Danish Olympic Association and say; "We - an English club - won't buy this player from a German club, unless you agree not to pick him for the Olympics." Their attitude might well be: "Sorry, but that has bugger all to do with us, and if we want to pick him, we will."

I'm not sure who that condition would be made with. The decision as to whether he would be called into the Danish Olympic squad would rest with the Danish Olympic body and the Danish FA, not as a condition of sale with Bayern. I'm not sure Saints would be able to go to the Danish Olympic Association and say; "We - an English club - won't buy this player from a German club, unless you agree not to pick him for the Olympics." Their attitude might well be: "Sorry, but that has bugger all to do with us, and if we want to pick him, we will."

Like all but the top five or six (yes, I know we were top six last season) at the start of the season, every PL club looks around to see if there are three worse teams than them. I can see at least half a dozen worse than us. Granted, nobody has a divine right to PL status and although they have been run like a whelk stall for a few years, few would have seen a club of Newcastle's club go down. But providing we don't make the huge, calamitous cock-ups off the field they made - and I don't really see any signs of that, despite the Chicken-Littleism of some on this forum - we should be safe. Now THAT might sound like a lack of ambition, but like it or not, that's the basic aim of most clubs ,and I don't think we are vastly different. Work from the premise of getting a minimum of 40 points, and anything else is a bonus.

Especially if the new contracts agreed with other players mean Fonte is no longer the highest-paid player in the squad. It might well be a bit of manoeuvering on the agent's part to maintain Fonte's status. Just because a player is on holiday it doesn't mean that discussions are put on hold. People don't live in isolation these days, and that's why players have agents, they delegate these sort of negotiations to them. It's farcical and naieve to think that aspiring buyers approach the clubs first to ask for permission to talk to a player. That's just a formality and if Saints issue a statement that United/Everton/Spartak Moscow have been given permission to talk to him, then you know the deal has already been done.

We have to be careful of libel laws (especially Inference and Innuendo). We don't want to cost the site a fine or closure threat.

From what I hear Cook sails very close to the wind and if he is not careful this will not be the only fine he will have to pay.

Good move. If i was a young, talented and up-coming keeper I would be interested in signing for a club that has the current England goalkeeping coach in its ranks, even if it meant sitting behind Forster in the pecking order. Genuine question. Why is he now Head of Goalkeeping and how does that differ from his previous role/title?

Law 12: Sending-off offences A player, substitute or substituted player is sent off if he commits any of the following seven offences: • serious foul play • violent conduct • spitting at an opponent or any other person • denying the opposing team a goal or an obvious goalscoring opportunity by deliberately handling the ball (this does not apply to a goalkeeper within his own penalty area) • denying an obvious goalscoring opportunity to an opponent moving towards the player’s goal by an offence punishable by a free kick or a penalty kick • using offensive, insulting or abusive language and/or gestures • receiving a second caution in the same match It's still down there as a straight red card offence. The point I was trying to make is that this has always been there, but for whatever reason, officials at the top level have always fought shy of using it, probably for fear of reducing a game to a very short-sided one. Because of the fear of implementing this law at the top level of the game it makes it harder for officials at the lower end to do so. Players who are sent off on a Sunday morning for calling a referee a "f***ing cheating c**t" cannot understand why they are sent packing when they see professionals calling the referee exactly the same thing on TV, stay on the pitch. What is required is consistency. But rather than consistency from the top, the FA have tried to implement consistency from the bottom upwards. When the Respect campaign began, I had to attend a seminar with local league clubs on cleaning up the game. This stems from the FA's concern at the poor retention of referees. There is little problem recruiting refs, but after a season of being abused, sworn at and generally mistreated by unthinking numpties who would not have a game of football if it wasn't for the referees they berate, a lot of refs throw in the towel. (Incidentally, I once heard an opposition club secretary say "I hate referees, they are a waste of time." When I asked him how he thought matches would take place without them, he was completely flummoxed.) The suit from the FA told us that we had a responsibility to clean the game up from the grass roots level, but when I asked him if it would be better to clean the game up from the top downwards (for the reasons above) he said; "If we started applying the rules properly for professional football, we would end up with games of eight v eight, or being abandoned and nobody wants that." Again, it's a question of consistency. It is right that a referee in a Sunday League match sends a player off for calling him a cheating F-ing C***. Law 12 was instigated to preserve the referee's authority. Swearing at a referee displays the ultimate lack of respect and undermines that authority, and I don't think it is harsh to dismiss a player for using industrial language. What is not right, is that a professional player is not - up until now - sent off for the same offence, and hopefully this is what the FA are trying to address. But I have my doubts. Some referees will take Law 12 to the letter and send players off for swearing if the pitch is in a public park. The most complaints the FA and county FAs receive is from little old ladies walking their dogs or mums with their young kids strolling through parks whose ears subjected to swearing and foul language, and the FA is very conscious of the game's image. Those referees mindful of this will warn both teams before hand that it is a public place, and that action will be taken. Other referees couldn't care less about the swearing in a public place and do nothing about it.

Nothing new here. It's always been in the laws of the game that the referee has the authority to dismiss a player who shows foul or abusive language or dissent towards him. Refs have just lacked the bottle to implement it. If - and it's a big if- they do this rigourously and consistently in the PL and FL, it might improve things at grass roots level. Referees lower down the scale have always tried to apply these rules but have been undermined by the behaviour of pros, who can clearly be seen to be getting to away with effing and jeffing at refs on TV.

People might have said that about Koeman as a player at centre back. Like Blind, he wasn't the tallest and wasn't blessed with pace. But like Koeman, Blind is an intelligent player who reads the game well, and also uses the ball well from the back. That was a huge element of Koeman's game and what made him the player he was. You might not be able to argue that Blind is as good as Koeman was, but I don't think Blind is an awful CB. Besides, it might keep daddy Danny Blind happy and sweet for when he gets the bullet as head coach of the Dutch national team, although Bert van Oostveen has got to go as well before Koeman will consider taking that.

A piece of news that was quietly leaked out in the post-Brexit turmoil. It's all part of Murdoch's ploy of circling the BBC. He will throw money at the PL radio rights in an attempt to exclude BBC, and 5Live, which does an excellent job of covering football. Soon, all the BBC will be left with is the Football League. There is no money in that for Talksport/NewsCorp and the BBC will be left to cover the scraps of the FL as part of its remit as a public broadcaster. I know there are people on here and elsewhere who deride the BBC and the principal of the Licence Fee, but you have to remember the idea of a public service broadcaster is that it is there for everybody, for those who cannot afford to access PPV broadcasting. And, of course, the government in the shape of the DCMS just rolled over and let Murdoch do it. We once had a Monopolies Commission in this country which at the very least, looked at things like this.

I had a conversation yesterday with the sort of arrogant Liverpool fan who makes you wish all the bad things for that club. He dismissed any suggestion that Saints do things differently to other clubs and do not - like Liverpool - think a problem can only be solved by throwing money. He derided Saints way, and said that if he was a Saints fan, he would want to know where all the money we pulled in through transfers, was disappearing to. I had to contain my laughter when he said - without any hint or flicker of irony on his face - that any club owned by a billionaire should be buying players in the the £30m-plus bracket, not shopping around for bargains at around the £12-15m mark. He dismissed our recruitment policy and the use of the black box, and said; "I don't think Southampton are doing anything different to what any other PL club is doing. They might just have a better scouting system." I asked him what he thought of Liverpool paying £34m for Mane, when they could have got him from Red Bull Salzburg two years ago the same way we did, and his astonishing reply was: "we can afford to let other clubs take the risk for us." Best of all, I thanked him for the £100m-plus Liverpool had contributed to us, and he regarded every single signing from us as a huge success, especially Lovren. When I asked whether he considered Lambert a good purchase, he said: "Who? I don't recall us having signed Lambert, he's never played for us." I thought I would dangle the bait and told him Bertrand had signed a new contract, and he gobbled it up. "It might make him a bit more expensive when we come and get him next year, but we can afford to do it." You may think I was talking to a vacuous teenager in a Liverpool shell-suit, but the saddest thing is the he is an intelligent man, a CEO in a major southern regional company.

I thought it was more like this. http://kisscartoon.me/Uploads/Etc/12-24-2014/6118063bear.jpg

Depends where in China. This chap seems to like it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_White_(football) Saints could do a lot worse than get him back to run the academy one day. I know for a fact he would jump at the chance and his coaching credentials are top notch. As for your dismissal of China. I went to China - mainly Beijing - for business a couple of years ago, and found it to be an amazing place. If you don't like crowded places, steer well clear. But if you're the sort of person who likes to sample the different cultures of the world, why not? For all its embracing of western consumer products and some of its lifestyle, China is so different it is gobsmacking, and while some people might find that off-putting, others will find it fascinating. As with any big city, Beijing has its s**t holes, and you can see them even if they try to hide them from prying Western eyes. And clearly there is a big income gap between the urban rich and middle classes and the rural poor, many of whom still live in 19th century conditions. Like most footballers and high-earning executives, his pay packet will be enough to ensure he can seal himself off in a bubble if he chooses to, live in the most exclusive part of the city (and in Beijing's case, it is pretty exclusive) and never go near the grubbier and more interesting parts. But Pelle is quite an intelligent sort of guy (as most European footballers are, I have to say) and you would be a nitwit to live somewhere like China and not at least sample the culture, even if you don't embrace it. While it might be a tester for him playing under the megalomaniac Magath, I would not imagine living in China to be too demanding an experience for Pelle. He certainly goes with my reluctant blessing. I know he took some stick on here, but I think he is a top class striker.

You have no idea how prevalent this perception is. CM has either skewed or totally removed some people's sense of reality, but never mind, E-sports are becoming an increasingly important part of our sporting life. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rich-taylor/rise-of-esports-is-a-game_b_6784174.html These events attract huge crowds to the venues, in addition to audiences of millions online. The rewards for the professional gamers are huge, with a recent gaming championships coughing up a $2m prize fund. Without wishing to stereotype gamers, the sponsors which plough huge sums into it are those you might expect of armchair sportsmen, such as Coca Cola. And it somehow sums things up when football's governing body decides to get in on the act. http://www.fifa.com/interactiveworldcup/ Although the BBC is asking whether professional gaming is a sport, http://www.bbc.co.uk/guides/zygq2hv contacts in BBC Sport tell me they are geearing up to cover it as a sport, although that may be prompted because they have been financially hamstrung out of an ability to cover mainstream sports. Still, as this thread is about summer transfer targets, don't be surprised if some of these turn up on this thread with demands we sign them. http://usvsth3m.com/post/54920294470/11-legendary-championship-manager-players-whose

Lots of people in Self Pity City - and not just the red half - wondering why Liverpool City Council are investing in Everton's training ground when they have a vastly wealthy new investor who is giving them a £100m war chest and everything. Liverpool council's rationale is that they lease the ground to Everton and will make money out of the deal. A quote I saw today from a councillor went something along the lines of "If you have a house you rent out, you are more likely to get a good rent for it if it is in good condition." That would be a fair enough argument if your tenant wasn't a wealthy individual who should be funding the upgrade himself. Besides, I would have thought Everton would want to own their own training ground, not lease it from the council. Most things in that crazy city defy logic, but of course, that's what makes them lovable, cheeky, scouse jackanapes.

That's why Sky and BT chuck shedloads of money at the PL. Sky especially are not interested in the development of young players. Sky is all about creating an attractive product to sell and they are not interested in the long-term development of young English players and its effect on the national team, especially when Fifa and Uefa exclude them from major championship finals. They have summers like this when terrestrial TV hogs the footballing limelight. The very reason they hand over big money for rights is so clubs can spunk £20m on a player, it makes the PL more glamourous, although not necessarily the best. BT's motivations are different, they are looking to corner the broadband market, and can afford to chuck money at football coverage as something of a loss leader. A mate in the broadcast industry told me that Sky are bracing themselves for BT blowing them out of the water and nicking all the PL rights at the next round of bidding. Sky have already lost the CL and EL to BT (lots of acronyms there) and they have been buying up the rights to the MLS and other bits of football and other sports which they wouldn't have touched with a barge pole years ago (Kabadi, anybody?) in anticipation of having their BT foundation stone knocked out from underneath them. Good time to be a PL club. Even better to be an agent.

The lawsuit pre-dates that and provided his initial antipathy. As somebody else on here pointed out, he is inconsistent and scatter-gun in his approach. The same English managers available to Saints were available to Everton when they appointed Koeman but that did not attract his attention.

Oh yes. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2005/oct/26/pressandpublishing.thetimes