stevegrant

Without an indepth knowledge of how mobile telecommunications work, but with an "appreciation" of how such technology *might* function, that sounds like the biggest load of complete bóllócks I've ever heard. Mobile telephone masts, to my knowledge, may reach some sort of bandwidth threshold every now and again, but it will only be at times when users are absolutely hammering the network in that area (e.g. between 23:00 on New Years' Eve and 01:30 on New Years' Day). However, these will be network-wide problems, and as such you'd be able to see very similar problems with another mobile on the same network in the same location. As Baj has highlighted, there can be no "backlog" in terms of network availability. Mobile telephony doesn't work on the call-centre principle of being put on hold until there's enough operators (bandwidth) available for you to use. There may occasionally be a backlog of data, e.g. SMS/MMS/GPRS e-mail, etc, but of actual network access? I wouldn't have thought so.

A ridiculously dominant performance considering the number of non-first choice players in the side, although it should be noted that Germany were a bit below full strength as well. I don't get this whole "Carson howler" nonsense. It was entirely John Terry's fault (and he admitted as much in the post-match interview, credit where it's due). Fortunately he came up trumps despite potentially being offside and probably climbing all over the German defender for the winner. As good a performance as it was, it's still nowhere near 1/9/2001

Well the main reason for having two separate boards (i.e. SLH plc and SFC Ltd) was because of an FA/PL rule that the football club itself had to have its own board, and that chairman would attend meetings etc. Southampton Football Club Limited is the member organisation as far as the Football League are concerned. However, I would take the comment in that article with a mountain of salt - I really can't envisage the relevant governing bodies (PL in WHU's case and FL in ours) accepting that the debt accrued by the holding company isn't directly linked to the football club.

I'm struggling to think of any occasion where a top-flight team has gone into administration, so as you say there's no precedent. However, I'd be very surprised if the standard 10-point admin entry penalty wasn't applied to the Premier League. With the amount of money floating around in that league, it really takes a hell of a lot of financial mismanagement for them to be forced into administration. In terms of the link between football club and holding company, I don't see any way that West Ham would be able to claim that the debt of the holding company ISN'T linked to the football club. I haven't heard anything about it actually happening to West Ham, and if it did I would have expected it to come after the January transfer window and their inevitable fire sale.

Totally agree. £76 a week at the national minimum wage for people aged 22 and over of £5.73 per hour means that those on "Jobseekers" Allowance would have to work at least 14 hours per week (more if you include NI and PAYE deductions) in order to receive the same amount of money. If you fancied a relatively easy life and were given the option of either a) being given some money for doing nothing or b) being given some money in exchange for working for at least 14 hours per week, which one are you going to choose? It's a no-brainer. It's not even as if there aren't any available jobs. I've just had a quick look at CWjobs, which is one of the main recruitment websites for the IT industry, and they are currently listing more than 15,000 available jobs, and that's just in one industry. Obviously the finance and construction sectors have taken a bit of a bashing in recent months, but there are still jobs available in those sectors so long as people are willing to accept that their financial worth to companies in those sectors isn't what it used to be right now.

Presumably because many of the 1.85m recorded unemployed would rather sit on their arse all day for however much they get in benefits these days than earn a little bit more but have to work their arses off for it. There also seems to almost be an arrogance about us as a nation that some jobs are "below" us, and as a result these roles invariably get filled by foreigners who are just happy to have a job and be paid for the privilege.

I think that's a bit harsh. I'm far from a BNP sympathiser, but you only have to look at the leaked list of members to see that there is plenty of independent and intelligent thought within its membership. Whether it's rational or not is another matter. The stereotypical "skinhead oik", as Nick Griffin described it, probably isn't interested in the actual politics (i.e. winning seats in councils and parliaments), and as such they're more likely to be members of organisations such as the National Front than the BNP. There's also the quite legitimate argument that a hell of a lot of people in this country are fed up with Labour and Conservative governments who have promised a hell of a lot and failed to deliver on lots of their manifesto pledges, and as such are looking for alternatives. In the current climate of job losses and global and national recession, it's perfectly understandable that some people would choose a party like the BNP who appear to have a very clear policy on something that affects many British peoples' chances of getting a job, i.e. immigration levels. It's quite a simple equation, if there are fewer people in this country who are eligible to work, there is a higher chance of somebody getting a job.

I don't really pay too much attention to the BNP and its policies, but I think I saw somewhere that one of their main viewpoints is that the Human Rights Act is essentially a load of ********... mildly amusing that they're quite happy to use that act to defend themselves, I agree

We'll have a chat about this and some of the other suggestions that have been made. It's not that we're not reading them all!

In fact, it wasn't either... On The March. Got the two lesser-known fanzines mixed up. I think both had fallen by the wayside by the time I started buying the Ugly, around the late 90s.

Pretty sure the "Hope you die soon" cover was from the Red Stripe fanzine, not the UI.

I think you've answered your own question there. They were happy to rescind the correct awarding of a red card against John Terry for a rugby tackle that had absolutely no intention of playing the ball, and yet throw out a worthwhile appeal. But of course John Terry is the England captain...

I was made aware of the possibility of Crouch making such an "invitation" (I'd probably call it more of an ultimatum, personally!) on the day of the Swansea game by someone quite close to Crouch and my words to him (as they always are when I hear such rumours - I'm sure he's bored of hearing the same thing from me every time ) were "I'll believe it when I see it". If it has happened, then fair play. However, I would have thought that Crouch would have made Barclays aware of the invitation/ultimatum/offer along the lines of "There's a conditional offer to inject new capital into the company based on the two major shareholders currently on the board matching it, but they have declined the opportunity to do so", which could make Barclays force Lowe/Wilde's hands in a "put up or shut up" (i.e. put money in or resign) way. By the look of it, that hasn't materialised. I don't understand the logic in that argument, really. While he may be able to engineer a bigger stake than he currently has if the club was in administration by making an offer to buy the club at a (presumably) much-reduced rate, it would also assume that nobody else was able to place a better offer for the creditors, which - given Leon Crouch's supposed willingness/happiness to lose part of his own personal fortune on ensuring the future of SFC - seems highly unlikely. It's far more likely that the Fulthorpe group, if it turns out they're not just a bunch of timewasters, would then be brought into play as it wouldn't require as much investment to buy the club in administration as it would right now. Also, if we were to go into administration, the club's asset pool would be stripped bare by the administrators in order to satisfy the creditors. In reality, that means goodbye to all of our better players, and it probably means goodbye to Jackson's Farm and quite possibly the necessity of some sort of hideous sale-and-leaseback deal on St Mary's. From that position, I don't believe there would be much/any chance of Lowe being financially better off post-administration, which is the claim that people seem to be throwing his way.

Yeah, you fat bastard I think this argument has run its course.

I would say the more obvious answer is that nobody in their right mind would "invest" (i.e. **** money down the drain) in SFC/SLH in its current perilous position. I think the three of them would be far more willing to listen and perhaps negotiate on such a deal now than they were a year ago when SISU were floating around.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/internationals/7727451.stm A few injuries: Michael Ballack (Chelsea) Philipp Lahm (Bryan Munich) Clemens Fritz (Werder Bremen) Marcell Jansen (Hamburg) Christian Pander (Schalke) Thorsten Frings is out after a dispute with their manager, and Kevin Kuranyi retired during half-time of their qualifier with Russia last month, but apart from that, it looks a pretty strong squad.

Defoe has also proven in his countless chances for England that he can quite happily score goals against the likes of Andorra and Kazakhstan, but can't do it against the better nations. Here's his England goalscoring record: Sep 04 v Poland (1) Sep 06 v Andorra (2) Jun 08 v Trinidad & Tobago (2) Oct 08 v Kazakhstan (1) Poland are the highest-ranked nation from those, currently at 32 in the FIFA rankings. Trinidad are 78th, Kazakhstan 125th and Andorra 194th. He has 31 England caps (somehow), but has scored in just 4 of those games. Time to move on from that experiment. Darren Bent is in good form at the moment, he should get a chance, as should Agbonlahor.

He batted further up the order in the first game and his first action was to run out KP who was one of our only hopes of chasing down the ridiculous total set. I agree that he probably *should* be higher up, but he doesn't do himself any favours with his abysmal running decisions. Not sure I'd agree with that - in my opinion, Collingwood is still a far more accomplished part-time bowler than Bopara. I'd entirely agree about his batting, but you could then also make the case for Collingwood's fielding ability (I don't think there's a better fielder in the squad) often being worth the number of runs he now seems unable to score with the bat. Bell is the ultimate 30s and 40s player - gets in, looks well set, and then plays a stupid shot to get out. I'm not sure who else I'd have opening the batting right now though. Prior does exactly the same, plays some good shots to get in and then skies one to give his wicket away. I understand Gough's comments, although I personally think it applies more to the Twenty20 side that went to Antigua. Alistair Cook was in that squad... I mean, really? He's the most non-Twenty20 player I've seen in recent years.

One positive to take from today's game is that at least Flintoff looks as though he's back in decent nick with the bat. He got an absolutely shocking decision against him in the first game, so couldn't really judge how he was looking, but today's knock was decent. The real blow was losing both him and Pietersen in the same over - that pretty much killed it when it looked as though we might have a chance of rescuing the game. Certainly an improvement on the first game, although they'd have found it difficult to be any worse!

The main issue with FM Live is that you're always paying for it, unlike an "offline" version of the game where you pay £30 or however much up front and that's it.

I'm sure he'll still try to defend the indefensible. The long and short of it is that SI have, once again, released a product that isn't fit for purpose at the time of release (hence having to release a patch 15 hours later). They've tried to prevent piracy with a over-complicated product registration process which hasn't been tested to cope with the likely demand on the first day of release and has proven to be completely incapable of handling the number of requests.

15 hours after the game was released, they've issued a patch! http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php?t=60956 Some ****ing hilarious bugs in there - my favourites: and the best of the lot...

Yep, I'd totally agree. Clubs with a lot more money than us could possibly take something like the transfer window system to the EU stating that it's a restriction of trade, and I think they'd probably win that case.

Apparently they've made a complete balls-up of the new product registration/activation procedure they've tried to implement for this year's release. It seems that, in order to run the game, you need to have already activated it. If you don't have an internet connection, you can do it over the phone. Good to see that SI are moving with the times and doing away with all that old-fashioned DRM and copy-protection nonsense... They've had problems with: a) some of the characters in the product key printed on the back of the user guide being illegible/ambiguous; b) activation phone line simply cutting users off after they've entered their product key c) the download service stating that users don't have an internet connection, despite said users posting on internet forums at the same time Oops.

I agree there. While I'm neither pro or anti Lowe, per se, you only have to look at the contrast of opinion on him on here to see that his very presence has divided people. It's what happens at a hell of a lot of clubs every single summer, things get built up and then after most of the season tickets have been bought a star player gets sold or some sort of major change is brought in. Alan Shearer was sold to Blackburn on 24th July 1992 - the league season started three weeks later. Also, I don't understand how you (or anyone) didn't forsee a major overhaul of the playing staff in the summer. In the second half of last season, everyone was going on and on saying that we should be playing the kids because "at least they'll be energetic and look like they care, and they won't cost us anywhere near as much money". We shipped out lots of high earners, promoted a lot of the younger players who were hungry for first-team action, which was exactly what loads of people were asking for and exactly what was necessary in pure financial terms.