Minty

Apologies - not being a regular TMS frequenter, I didn't realise that's how it all started!

You are aware of the potential irony of that statement I hope!

Idea: Now that ZSM is trawling SaintsWeb, how about personalised word clouds for individual users? Not that I'm expecting incontrovertible proof or anything, but it would be interesting to see just how often alpine posts a word that might be considered positive, and how often pap uses the word 'conspiracy'... amongst others...

That would've been more appropriate. I prefer to deal in the facts as we know them (or as we are presented them, before Pap dives in).

Pretty sure Pochettino had the balls out from day one last year... can't recall specifics though. Just having the balls out from day one doesn't imply we won't keep our fitness levels up... but without knowing the full extent of the training compared to last year, difficult to know much more than what we can work out from what we see on the pitch.

That was never confirmed, only an unconfirmed rumour at the time.

Perhaps this article might make for interesting reading at this time. And maybe it should be reposted every transfer window? http://www.fourfourtwo.com/features/truth-behind-transfer-window-rumour-mill

A photo of a piece of debris a few miles from the main crash site shows clear evidence of a fragmenting warhead from a SAM: More pics and background here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/21/world/europe/wreckage-offers-clues-on-why-flight-17-went-down.html

I'll second that. Grandparents-in-law live in Bridport and it's a lovely area.

It's not my place to judge Sharp or Mayuka given that I've not seen either of them play for over a year, but I do trust Koeman to do as he sees fit.

Speak for yourself, I'm no hypocrite and don't want any rules to benefit us at the expense of others. And I can't grow a beard, let alone a cool one.

This is not about sentiment or the 'premiership trap door'. This was the simple statement that if a player can improve sufficiently to make a worthwhile contribution to the team, then we would all be happy about that, would we not? You don't think he will, and actually, my gut says the same. But if we were proved wrong, that would be a good thing, no?

Spot on. But this issue of patience has always been at the crux of things, and fact is most people have none in life, let alone football. Our culture and society is increasingly built on short-term expectations, be it company profit, sporting results, politics or a host of other things. As I just posted, I think this current shift might actually be to our long term benefit if we can now establish ourselves in Premier League mid-table and grow slowly from there.

Alps, on this and your other points in this thread, I have to say I agree entirely. MarkSFC's post was also spot on. For me mild success is to remain competitive in the Premier League, with the aim of incrementally improving, and to be challenging for cups *every season*. We do this by introducing young players from our Academy, by buying up and coming talent and improving it, not just buying players in, and with a manager who coaches his players, improves them, and who has a wide range of tactical awareness to knit all of that together. IMO, our sudden success last year, coupled with Cortese getting into players heads about what they can expect, have led to this inevitable dip, but we'll actually be better off for it in a year or two as things settle down.

I haven't seen anyone hanging their hat on it, merely expressing the fact that if, and it is a huge if, he were to improve then there may be a role for him. I think it's unlikely, but there's nothing wrong with the sentiment... it would be a bonus.

It's difficult to comment on specifics from those highlights, but what I think you can see is a bit more urgency in attack... a desire to work the ball wide, to get crosses in, to feed the front man and play off of him, for the full backs to push forward not just to provide width but also to run in behind... If I had to choose a word, I would say it all seems a bit more dynamic than what we had last season in attack. We need to see how it translates with better players and against better opposition, but I can see it might be a bit more exciting to watch, even if it means we are less controlled in possession and perhaps more open to attack ourselves. This is purely speculation based on cumulative highlights so far, but that seems to be a common theme.

Anyone else following this utter train wreck of a final innings...?!

Some good background on the SAM angle... http://www.janes.com/article/40902/civilian-airliner-crashes-in-ukraine-believed-to-have-been-shot-down

It was mentioned higher up the thread, ICAO work with governments and local aviation authorities on these things all the time.

Poor old Matty Targett. Even his SaintsWeb thread is under pressure from Luke Shaw's legacy...

Apart from 'gilles', the rest of the posts look like they could be written by undercover nutjobs to me. ChrisBurnsBelowSeaLevelHeader is clearly a nutjob, but I'm suspicious of them all...

Literally speaking you're probably correct, I sincerely doubt that there was any intention to bring down a civilian airliner, but I'd suggest that we're splitting hairs about how to describe this and that if, as all evidence seems to suggest so far, it was the rebels who brought it down with a SAM, then it has come about as a result of terrorist activity. Debating that point loses sight of the bigger issues here IMO. Some serious work is needed in that area, and any pursuit of violence to try and achieve anything is only going to result in more needless loss of life.

Good couple of posts above. My gut says that Reed and Targett will be the closest to the first team this season, of those yet to really break through, with perhaps McQueen a bit behind them. Shaw has gone, forget about him, lets celebrate the next Academy products

Fair play, those are pretty good prices. I'll be at a wedding unfortunately but probably would've gone if I could've.

Indeed. I suspect that this was basically a trigger-happy rebel who thought it was a Ukrainian military transport or similar, and who has now triggered a major international incident.