stevegrant

My belated thoughts: Davis was excellent, once again. One thing I've really noticed about him this season is that his distribution has improved a hell of a lot. One pass he made perfectly into the running path of Nathan Dyer in the first half which put us on the attack would have had journalists creaming their pants if Steven Gerrard or Frank Lampard had done it. As Long Shot has pointed out, he's not great on crosses, but then he probably knows this, hence why he doesn't come for many. Those he did come for (I recall 3), he claimed quite comfortably, though. Defensively, we were pretty awful. Surman looked good when he was in the opposition half, but suddenly transformed into a Sunday league player when he went back into our half. Lloyd James needs a rest, IMO. He had an absolute shocker last night (although I don't think he's been particularly good or solid all season). I would expect Wotton to play at the back with Perry on Saturday, with Cork moving across to right-back. The midfield looked "ok", but far too often found themselves either too far forward leaving the defence exposed or too far back leaving John and/or McGoldrick too isolated to do anything once we got the ball back. Lallana looked good again, but there's only so much he can do without help from those around him. Also, I don't think there's much point in playing a 4-5-1/4-3-3 switching formation if one of the wide players isn't going to stay wide. McGoldrick spent most of the first half drifting all over the place, and I lost count of the number times Wotton or Gillett had the ball in decent areas in the middle and clearly wanted to get the ball out wide on the right where we had space, but DMG was stood somewhere in the middle. While the ethos behind the system is that positions are, to an extent, interchangeable, it does still require a vast amount of positional discipline. I think last night's performance was the worst of the games I've seen so far this season, but in that sense I'm pleased we still managed to get something out of the game. Ipswich should be there or thereabouts for the playoffs this season, they've brought in a number of seemingly high earners, so a draw against them isn't a "terrible" result, IMO. We looked dead and buried at 2-1, the heads dropped and we had a 10-15 minute spell where we couldn't even pass 5 yards to a team mate, but they got their heads sorted and showed some bottle to come back. Yes, the equaliser may have been a bit fortunate in terms of how it fell to Pekhart, but you've got to be in the position to capitalise on opponents' mistakes. If only Dyer had done likewise at the start of the second half...

I thought it was £35k?

Not a clue what flybe's finances are like, but they won't be anywhere near as strong as Ryanair and easyJet.

Assuming they can ride out the storm, I'd agree. Plenty of low-cost alternatives are going to hit the wall in the next year or so, by the look of things, which will leave Ryanair and easyJet, I guess. They've generally been the main ones anyway, but they'll probably be the only ones left in the not-too-distant future.

Not really saying much, is it?

It's also quite opportunistic by LTSB. They're in a pretty strong position at the moment, particularly with HBOS' problems and the relatively low exposure they had to the US sub-prime market investments. Could be a good time to buy HBOS shares right now - they won't go much lower than they are now while the merger talks continue, and if it goes through, they'll probably at a reasonable price then.

In order to legally get tickets for England away games (i.e. from the FA and not from touts), you'll need to be a member of englandfans+, which costs about £70 for two years. In order to guarantee yourself tickets for games, you'll have to have built up loads of "caps" by going to previous games. If you're not guaranteed a ticket, you'll be in a ballot, although most games at the moment don't seem to be needing one due to the massive drop in demand in the last year or so. Of course, you should be able to get tickets on the black market, but generally it's more hassle than it's worth, particularly with often-harsher punishments on the continent than in the UK for that sort of thing. The best-value accommodation and flights are booked up months in advance. Basically as soon as you know when a game is taking place and in which city, you will need to have booked up within 12 hours of the announcement to get the best deal. Some companies run package deals, but a lot of those are the England equivalent of the Saints travel club.

Given that he/she/it always puts a smile there, and that he/she/it almost always writes complete crap, that's a fair assessment

Isn't that the idea of an autobiography though?

He's quite possibly the most annoying and unfunny "funny" blokes I've ever had the misfortune to see on television. The fact that Jill likes him only reinforces my opinion.

Sooo many holes...

I'm not entirely sure it's an inability to learn it, I think he doesn't want to learn it! That and the players Commoli has signed for him have been mostly turd. If Spurs hadn't lost Frank Arnesen to Chelsea, him and Jol together would probably have consolidated their then position of 5th, widening the gap below them and probably closing the gap above. Commoli is the main problem Spurs have. He is in charge of transfers, and he's been ****ing rubbish at it.

What, like the new investors that were "definitely" taking over last summer? How's Bill Gates' talks coming along, anyway?

A rather excellent article on the subject... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/sport/football/premier_league/newcastle/article4761813.ece

Because of Sussex's win against Middlesex during the week, yesterday's result was irrelevant as far as we were concerned. We'd have finished second regardless of whether Sussex had won yesterday or not.

From my seat, I had no complaints about the red card. A naive decision by Lancashire, unnecessary and very reckless. I thought we did pretty well in midfield, Lallana and Gillet in particular were outstanding. Davis was also excellent. However, defensively we were a shambles for most of the game. I'm presuming Perry wasn't fully fit, otherwise there was no real reason to throw Lancashire in for his debut against a side who always have strength up front. Going forward we were fine until it came to the final ball. We had the beating of QPR in most of the midfield, but the crosses and through-balls were poor. It wasn't all that surprising that our goal came from intricate passes down the middle rather than out wide. Dyer showed plenty of willing to run at the full-backs, but it's all a bit futile if the cross sails over everyone's head and out for a goal kick every time. Surman got forward reasonably well, so I think I'd rather have him in midfield with Skacel at left-back or a "specialist" left-back on loan.

A director of football role is generally performed by someone with a long track record in club management and particularly in the transfer market. At least that's the idea, anyway! Wise is relatively inexperienced in both, particularly given the sums of money involved in Premier League transfers. Wise himself wasn't employed at the time, but the reason Redknapp didn't take the job was because Ashley's intention was to appoint a director of football to control the transfers, so Keegan must have been similarly informed. Perhaps he thought "yeah yeah, I'll believe it when I see it", and if that is the case (which wouldn't surprise me in the slightest) then he only has himself to blame for not paying attention to what Ashley said he was going to do. I think Ashley is just out of his depth, a hard arsed egotist in a world of ego's angles and media luvvies. He COULD have shared his structure and vision and processes with Keegan, but didn't, he just appointed Wise and sort of forgot to tell King Kev, and why? because he doesn't trust anyone person to spend his own money.....

Last time I checked, Mike Ashley was English I think it's more a case of Keegan being a media favourite, along with the debate over whether the director of football role can work in this country. It clearly CAN work, but you need the right person employed in that role. Dennis Wise is very clearly not the right person.

A case of it never rains but it pours for Surrey... they've been docked one point for their slow over rate!

Current table, including Somerset's draw with Durham: 1. Hampshire 15 160 2. Somerset 14 159 3. Durham 14 157 4. Nottinghamshire 14 156 5. Kent 14 147 6. Sussex 14 141 7. Lancashire 14 135 8. Yorkshire 14 135 9. Surrey 15 120 Incredibly unlikely that we'll get anywhere near the title, considering everyone else has a game in hand, but that should see us safe from relegation, which was the main concern.

I guess the idea is that it offers far more real-life opponents (i.e. all of them are controlled by other humans) than a standard network game of FM, and where it's all run off SI's servers, there's a "guaranteed" connection, rather than either a) having to restart because the host's connection or PC couldn't cope with all the data, or b) wanting to play at a given time but the host not being online. It's a decent idea because CM/FM has such a large and fairly dedicated following, and there's likely to be a reasonably big crossover with people who like playing massive multiplayer online games, and at £5 a month (if I remember rightly) you can see the business sense in it as well!

139/8... resistance over, perhaps?

No, I actually mean 9-6-10-4

Dimi currently has figures of 7-6-1-2 :shock:

Interesting... according to the BBC scorecard, Surrey have sent James Benning in at 3 instead of Ramprakash. Not entirely sure I can see why...