stevegrant

I think Mardle's a decent choice as a wildcard pick because he'll always draw a crowd and get the atmosphere going. I suspect that's their main thinking on that one. Totally agree re Klaasen/Thornton though...

I think the Premier League rules stipulate that a club has to be able to play games in temperatures as low as -3. They don't state how a club has to achieve this (i.e. it doesn't say "all clubs must have undersoil heating", unlike the SPL), so I'd be surprised if Pompey were hit with anything more than a trivial fine. If anything, they should just be made to reimburse any fan (either home or away) who was left out of pocket having already booked train tickets etc, rather than have the FA/Premier League profit from it.

Or perhaps he's referring to their FIRST 8 games of the season under Ramos where they had 2 points from 8 games - perhaps it's almost a veiled defence of him as the performances since Redknapp has arrived (apart from the inevitable honeymoon period) have generally still been rubbish. Of course, he's clearly still trying to cover his own arse for what will be an amusing second half of the season for most neutrals. Interesting that the only other time where he publicly slagged off his players was when he was in charge of us, and we all know how that one ended...

£15m well spent by 'Arry judging by yesterday's non-appearance by Defoe It felt really strange cheering a goal scored by Wigan!

Torino, if memory serves me correctly, where he lasted about 4 months before being sacked.

1997/98 Saints 1-0 Man United 1999/2000 Man United 3-3 Saints (I'd class that as on a par with beating them at home) 2000/01 Saints 2-1 Man United 2003/04 Saints 1-0 Man United 2000/01 Saints 3-2 Arsenal 2002/03 Saints 3-2 Arsenal 1997/98 Liverpool 2-3 Saints 1999/2000 Saints 2-1 Liverpool 2001/02 Saints 2-0 Liverpool 2003/04 Liverpool 1-2 Saints 2003/04 Saints 2-0 Liverpool 2004/05 Saints 2-0 Liverpool 1997/98 Saints 1-0 Chelsea 2000/01 Saints 3-2 Chelsea 2001/02 Chelsea 2-4 Saints How's that?

And John Terry's fantastic save...

Webb gets all the "big 4" games these days. He's generally got most decisions right today, with the exception of tolerating Wayne Rooney's tirades of abuse.

Reminded me of when Keegan lost the plot with his "I'd LOVE it" interview Now there's a thought...

Not for the first time, I suspect. I am surprised Stelling got it wrong though, not often that happens.

Dunno if it's escaped your notice, but we've been selling players in order to keep the finances in check for years - even before we got relegated. I am intrigued by the perceived "sustainable business practices", though. How is it in any way sustainable to run a company possessing a negative net worth with a wages/turnover ratio of around 95%? Matchday revenue can't be much more than £10m (if it's even that much), which is about 20% of your income - TV and prize money obviously accounting for the rest as far as the profit and loss account is concerned - and that 20% would only just about cover the wages for Sol Campbell, Peter Crouch and Niko Kranjcar. The sort of ridiculous amounts of money that are being paid to PFC's squad are the complete opposite of sustainable.

I don't think it's a case of the players feeling Moores had more nouse than KP, rather that they just felt KP went about things in completely the wrong way and with dreadful timing as well. As far as I can see, the problems between Freddie and KP are (predictably) ego-related. For years, Freddie was top dog, particularly among the press, and now this ****y upstart from South Africa has come in and taken his crown away.

Even more of a problem when the pair of them hate each other...

I wouldn't say it's "no support", rather "not unanimous support". From everything I've read, he had the backing of about half the team. Whoever leaked this to the papers is the cause of this - if it had been kept in-house, a sensible resolution could have been found. Andrew Strauss will almost certainly get the job now, but I wonder what KP's situation will be... will he still a) be selected (almost certainly, I'd have thought), and b) actually want to play? And people thought the Aussies were in turmoil...

Strangely, I don't think they'll get the chance.

Apparently so. Pompey also still owe Spurs money from when they bought Defoe last year, as well as from the signings of Younes Kaboul and Pedro Mendes, apparently, although I can't see how they'd still owe on Mendes, given that he signed 3 years ago!

It's like Spurs whinging like mad when ManYoo clearly tapped up Berbatov and now think it's fine for them to do the same thing with Defoe and Downing.

Is the answer Glenn Hoddle?

Sorry. Thought I'd done those shortly after the draw was made... obviously not

To be honest, I reckon Man City would probably be quite happy to do just that...

Got to say, I never saw that one coming...

Perhaps you should have read it a bit better then. There's very little "support" for Lowe in there aside from (paraphrased) "he's there, he has the support of enough shares to remain there for now, so unless we want to see the club go under, there's no point in embarking on countless nose-spite-face crusades". See above.

You should be able to do this already by choosing the "Subscribe to this thread" option from the "Thread Tools" menu. You'll probably have to change a setting in your profile if you don't want to receive an e-mail every time someone replies though!

Which would have been a lie, which would have led to an even bigger outcry by those who clearly have nothing better to do than concoct conspiracy theories about how The Dark Evil Mr Lowe is some sort of world-dominating Illuminati.

I don't deny that Distin is an excellent defender, but given the various different things that can (and will, IMO) dent his value, I just can't see the price being any higher than £3m. As I said, he's the wrong side of 30, other clubs are aware that Pompey are skint which means any offers received will be lower as they will think they can get away with it, and if he's unhappy the club will probably want to get him out of the club as quickly as possible. Without seeing the list of players whose contracts expire, I would guess that a number of those are among your better players, and they're all going to need replacing. From the outside, it looks as if the squad as it is at the moment isn't big or strong enough, so without those 13 players, that's going to need significant spending to replace those players. Money you appear not to have. Yes and no, I suspect. Cutting your cloth accordingly will involve only spending what you're actually bringing in whilst reducing the debt - with gates of 19-20k, that's not going to leave very much to spend.