dronskisaint

Just cottoned on to this - great read - thanks

He got his 'Fergie-time' added on...where tf did 5 minutes come from? Didn't do him any good anyway...psychotic Irish t*at

They're doing a 'kin good job of dropping to bits by themselves...place should be condemned along with the team.

Unusually for me with anybody's assessment I agree with all of this - excellent summary - we were watching the same game!:D

I'm thinking that we're really developing some quality in depth in the squad. Credit Fish for the fact we haven't missed Harding in his absence & Holmes for adding balance & flair (if not speed..although once he outstripped someone!) to the left side. If we can keep everyone happy it bodes very well for the number of games that are looming ahead....It's a great feeling being a Saints fan right now - just driven 250 miles with a smile on my face (got bigger when Beckford spoiled Bagpuss's day) :-)

Played ok at a difficult stage of the game, chased & harried as is his game & did all that was asked...the icing on the cake would have been to put away Antonio's cross. Sadly he's 5ft 8" not 9'0"! I'd be happy if he stayed

'Can we start a sweepstake on what on earth can happen next?' It could be called a sweepskate?!

'Westwood Ho (hohohohohohoho)'?

Big one...muddy green bit in the middle - smells bad - that bin!

Saints fans - legends! Watched very stuttering feed & listened on Saints player & never heard the home fans....congratulations to all there. Team very controlled...aside from the discipline but ....hey...we're on our way to Wembley - I can't worry about that now. The ref was a totally card-happy ****** too & we hopefully won't get another one like him. We're going to Wemb - er - lee!!

Corpulent Whore wrote - 'How many pages/ posts is this thread running to now? When you looked like going pop the situation merited a two page thread on POL. Still, I guess that proves that, like you keep telling me, we're far more obsessed with you than you are with us.' You seriously misunderstand the reasons behind those statements? 1) A couple of barely literate pages is about the 'pinnacle' of eloquence on POL & probably done with much licking of pencil lead & furrowing of brows. 2) It's not obsession - It's just that we have a well-developed sense of humour exacerbated by the puerility of your enjoyment when we were having our problems. I admit to feeling really down about our prospects but yours (compounded by the feeling of 'what goes round comes round' engendered by your simple but sad joy at our perceived demise) are just about as bad as they could be! We could not have written a better revenge script if we'd had a team of Oscar winning screenwriters working for us than the one that you have brought on your demeaned & petty selves. What a fantastic screenplay...surely the freedom of the city should be awarded jointly to the assembled cast of bent Russians, potless Arabs, shifty, jail-bound ****neys, story telling execs, increasingly desperate banned lawyers, disaffected & unpaid players past & present......my sympathy extends all the way to finding you a deep hole in the Solent to jump in & end your misery - but please don't think that will do any more than add to our fun! I repeat - what goes around, comes around,,,Bye then - you won't be missed!:-)

Pulis as a gift?

I was listening to Solent on BBC icast before the 'contractual' switch & it went from no cut outs straight to the annoying gaps. It's the Saints Player feed that needs sorting in my opinion

Can't believe this one ever attended a school:D

Jackson - cheaper, slimmer & doesn't roll about like a fat swan trying to get people sent off!

Got some Porridge fans on my staff here & opinion is divided on everything except his pace & the fact that he didn't get on particularly well with Gunn or Lambert...both played him though. Apparently he's very quick & whilst he didn't stand out in the two games against us this season I do remember abusing him for kicking Lallana. Last year at Carrow Road (2-2) he looked very good - I think a dedicated right back with youth (compared with Murty) & pace on his side & with a new challenge & a possibility of a contract can't be wrong. The signings record of the management team has been pretty good to date & I'm happy to trust their judgement over mine.

'Originally Posted by Whitey Grandad An associate of mine is friendly with Daniel Levy at Tottenham. he said that the first two years were fun, meeting other chairmen and all that stuff. Then it all started to get a bit repetitive.' He's going to be pretty busy sorting out the administration that follows saggy the bankrupter around fairly soon! :-)

Not sure if this has been on before....pretty scathing generally but the skates get a particular lambasting & Saggy the twitch too - From The Guardian site What a waste of money – the Premier League's best-paid flopsAs Portsmouth stare into the financial abyss, more and more players on lucrative contracts are languishing on the sidelines Comments (202) Buzz up! Digg it John Utaka celebrates scoring a rare goal for Portsmouth following his £7m transfer from Rennes. Photograph: Eddie Keogh/Reuters John Utaka was Portsmouth's record signing when he joined from Rennes in July 2007 for £7m. In two and a half years, he has become their record waste of money. Utaka has started 31 Premier League games and scored seven times in all competitions. Since claiming five of those goals in his opening season the Nigerian's form has declined disappointingly. This season his highlight was scoring against Hereford United in the Carling Cup five months ago. Despite Portsmouth's well-documented problems – Avram Grant has only 17 outfield players, and is operating under a transfer embargo – Utaka has started only twice in the league, back in August. Not only was Utaka rejected by Nigeria for the Africa Cup of Nations that starts tonight, he did not even get into the 32-man preliminary squad. Portsmouth are debt-ridden and threatened with administration. Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs served a winding-up petition on the club just before Christmas, and Portsmouth cannot find the £10m required to lift the transfer embargo. Utaka, meanwhile, continues to enjoy the rewards of his four-year contract on a barely credible £80,000 a week. If he stays to the end of his term, the total cost to Portsmouth will be about £23m. That would be enough to secure their immediate future. Utaka, through no fault of his own, is an ongoing liability who arguably represents the worst piece of transfer business ever conducted by Portsmouth's chief executive Peter Storrie and the club's former manager Harry Redknapp. On landing him Redknapp said of Utaka and another player signed that day: "I'm delighted with the pair of them, they will give us an awful lot up front. We're bringing in people who are ready to play and it will make us stronger." Utaka's new strike partner? David Nugent. The £6m acquisition was, strangely, never given a run in the first team by Redknapp, and is currently farmed out on loan at Burnley, having started 18 league games in three seasons, often out of position. Portsmouth, though, are not the only club guilty of signing players on lucrative, long-term contracts who run up massive bills while sitting on the bench or playing in the reserves – much to the disgust of resentful supporters. Seven years after Observer Sport first featured the "waste of money" signings, further scrutiny of the Premier League provides evidence that chairmen, chief executives, directors of football and managers are still patsies for players and agents with slick negotiating skills. In 2003 Everton's Duncan Ferguson (10 seasons, 59 goals) and Leeds' Seth Johnson (£7m from Derby, 15 league starts, one goal, £35,000 a week) were among the costliest mistakes. In 2010 Utaka is joined by, among others, Liverpool's £11.5m Ryan Babel (five-year contract, £45,000 a week), £17m David Bentley at Spurs (six years, £50,000 a week), and several Newcastle United players who are on £50,000-plus. According to the accountants Deloitte, salaries continue to be a bigger drain on finances than transfer fees. In 2003, the total transfer spend was £248m. In 2008 (the latest available figure) it was £675m. The wages cost £548m and £787m respectively, so the gap is closing between transfer fees and wages, but the overall outlay nearly doubled in five years. "It's accelerated out of all proportion. And, it's a massive, massive capital outlay for the potential return," says David Pleat, the former Tottenham manager and director of football, who is now Nottingham Forest's special adviser. "If you pay a very high fee there's not many clubs you can hive that player off to if they're not successful. Some of the have-nots have been absolutely stupid, like Portsmouth, and have just paid for what they consider assets in pursuit of short-term glory. A lot of clubs are loaded with players on high salaries who they'd have massive problems manoeuvring to other clubs." Such mismanagement by Portsmouth (their recorded wages outlay for 2008 was £54.6m) has left them with the near impossible task of shifting Utaka, who is trousering the sort of money earned by marquee performers at Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool or Chelsea. Even Arsenal's best-paid player, Cesc Fábregas, apparently earns "only" £60,000 a week. The problem has not gone away for Redknapp in his new role at Spurs. His current problem high-earners start with Bentley, who signed for Spurs a few months before Redknapp's arrival in 2008. The return for more than £20m spent on Bentley's transfer fee and wages so far: 21 league starts, a single goal, a drink-driving conviction and an England career stalled at six caps. While Chelsea were relieved to sell Steve Sidwell in 2008 after a single £50,000-a-week season in which he made seven starts, Aston Villa fans are not so happy with Martin O'Neill's decision to pay £5m for the midfielder. He has played for Villa 32 times and is seen by regulars as excess to requirements. At Anfield Babel, who has made 24 League starts since 2007, and Andriy Voronin, five goals and 14 starts for his £30,000 a week deal before this week's move to Dynamo Moscow, have disappointed. Liverpool's debt is £350m and rising. Pleat adds: "I believe [Arsène] Wenger runs a football club like a football club should be run. There is a definite balance between what comes in and what comes out." This month, Wenger was indeed contemptuous of overspending and financial incompetence. "Professional football is about winning and balancing the budget. That's the basic rule, one I fought for. All the rest is half-cheating. For every club it has to be the same. I always pleaded for financial fair play. The clubs belong to the fans. That's all I feel my responsibility is, to keep the club in good financial condition." Wenger's comments followed Chelsea's statement that they were now free of debt, having converted £340m owed to Roman Abramovich into shares. He spoke ahead of Arsenal's meeting with West Ham, another financially stricken Premier League club hoping for a buyer, one willing to take on their £70m liabilities. Who, then, is to blame when clubs spend so much money – waste so much money – on underperforming players? Listen to Seth Johnson and, it appears, the players should not be held responsible. Johnson says of his infamous move to Leeds: "I would have been a fool to turn down the money. It was nothing to do with me – everyone in the country would have done the same thing." The Professional Footballers' Association would hardly advocate any changes that might curtail members' income. "I don't like salary capping, it's an artificial structure," says the PFA's chief executive, Gordon Taylor. "The fact that there's more money in the game than ever is more reason to have strong financial propriety. It's like playing cards for big stakes, you can lose much more heavily." The Premier League's stance is that what clubs pay players is their business. Pleat agrees. "Alan Sugar [Tottenham's chairman from 1991-99] said many years ago at a Premier League meeting, 'Gentlemen, it doesn't matter whether the television company gives us £3m or £33m, we'll **** it up the wall on wages.'." Below the top tier some effort has been made, though not universally. Four years ago, League Two owners agreed to cap wages at 60% of turnover. But League One and Championship clubs refuse, despite campaigning from Lord Mawhinney. Echoing Sugar, the Football League chairman says: "After I'd told the Championship clubs we'd done a new media deal for a 130% increase in their TV revenue, one chairman said, 'Brian, for God's sake give us some help because if you don't put in some form of regulation, we're going to **** this money up the wall on players' wages'." One advocate of a salary cap is the Hull chairman Adam Pearson. He returned to Hull this season after a stint with Derby, and wants to offload several high earners to cut the wage bill by around £9m and avoid serious financial problems. Pearson believes the game would benefit from having limits imposed on their wage bill, and said: "Clubs have to have a grip on wages. If a club has a turnover of £50m, for instance, then 55-60% would be an acceptable amount to spend on wages with maybe a further £1.5m to be paid on agents' fees. "The rest could then be used on improving the infrastructure of the club. It is not rocket science." There is, however, no prospect of Premier League clubs collectively deciding on a salary cap, according to a League spokesman. One successful agent concurs, while also telling Observer Sport: "In my experience, clubs are not bargaining hard on contracts." This is a familiar refrain to Pleat. "Players who are promoted to the Premier League and get increased money won't accept it all on appearances. And the big problem is the agent won't accept that, if relegated, the player will take an X per cent pay cut in basic salary. "We've given all the money away. Players have had shrewd agents acting on their behalf and the clubs have succumbed."

Does the embargo extend to the Blue Square Premier then?:eek:smt083

True, fair point...right in front of me but I still hate him so was even gladder he got what he deserved

+1:mad:

Thank you...looks like the outcome may have been worth the suspense!

Am I the only one who doesn't have a clue where this is going? :-(

Poundland for Pondlife Stadium?

I'll pay for the taxi.....