itchen

Who is this? And what has she got to do with Saints? (edit - I mean Corporal Stavely, not BTF)

He appears to be keeping his handkerchief (or several handkerchiefs, or the cash to buy Saints) down his shorts. I suppose that's because he has no sleeves.

Oh how I'm looking forward to the scenes of overweight, shirtless Geordies waiting to greet their new manager...Denis Wise? Harry Bassett? Harry Redknapp? They're a big club you know. I gather Portsmouth was the club keen to take Joey Barton in a player swap but balked at being asked for an extra £4 million. Figures.

They wouldn't necessarily have outline planning permission - in fact I'm fairly sure they haven't. What they would have is the City Plan which will have detailed the desired uses of the Meridian site and also for the area around SMS (and everywhere else in the city). While it's sometimes possible to get permission to build something not in the plan, to turn down a development that's in line with the plan would be grounds for a successful appeal.

Which players have been sold that the fans want to see? Davies possibly but I can't think of another.

I wasn't there. Does that help?

Is it because City are a "massive club" ™?

Oh God, it's still going on. I thought everybody might have sobered uo by this morning and got back to discussing the game as opposed to each other's psyhological quirks. We played badly we lost. Previous two games we played well and won. Two games before that we played well but lost. Such is the season. I've no doubt we will play well and win again enough times to finish in a respectable position.

Told you.

That's not a bad attendance considering it was live on TV and the opposition had to come from the other end of the country.

I think the problem was his fussiness. We'd get a free kick and try to take it quickly but then he'd stop it until Blackpool had set up their defence. When there were temporarily two balls on the pitch after a throw in, he gave a drop ball (thus losing us possession in a threatening area) instead of just retaking the throw. And he didn't seem to want to challenge the blatant time wasting. But I agree he got most decisions right.

The only booing I heard (I was there) was at the ref and time-wasting Blackpool players.

I thought we were the better team in the first half. When they got their penalty I was confident we'd come back and win in the second. But we were poor with aimless passing and poor defending. Killer won most balls in the air but was often beaten by pace. Thank God for Kelvin for keeping the score respectable. That simply wasn't the same team that I watched last Tuesday against Brum. The composure and swift passing disappeared and we were quite often were hoofing and hoping. I'm very disappointed but while I wasn't getting carried away with our previous performances, I'm not going to get too downhearted over this poor display. Although I expect certain posters who've been absent for the last few days to be back on here saying "I told you so".

Whoosh.

Don't care about his singing - this isn't X-factor. Of course, in our present state, we are very likely to buy for the sake of it - it's that Lowe being profligate with cash again.

Can't the other four work out that "the new style of play and the passion of the nippers" is entirely due to Lowe appointing Poortvliet and getting rid/trying to get rid of our less passionate older players? You can't blame Lowe for all the club's ills and yet find anything good that happens to be in spite of him. That's just not logical.

Firstly, whether you go to SMS or not is entirely your own affair and as you live so far away I'm amazed you ever came at all. But I'm having real trouble following your logic. You talk about all the fine things you saw at the Derby game but how do you think they came about? It didn't just happen. It was the board who appointed JP and the board who dictated that the youngsters must be given a chance while they tried to get rid of the highly paid older players. Now this was in itself a mixture of necessity to stop us going bankrupt but also because Lowe has long had this vision that we should develop our own home grown players as much as possible. The aims are two-fold: to give us a team and to provide an income when they eventually want to better themselves at a bigger club. Lowe has been quite open about this, there's no hidden agenda. It seems to me to be a sensible business model for a club without rich backers. And we're beginning to see problems among clubs who thought they had rich backers (eg Man City, Pompey). The bubble hasn't burst yet but it's showing signs of wear. I'd rather we lived within our means and if that means selling players (as we and every other club has always done) then that's just a fact of life; though obviously I'd prefer to hang on to our good ones for as long as possible. And , of course, the more income generated from fans or customers (what's in a name?) means that we can afford to pay a little more and keep our talent for a little longer.

Unless it's the bottom of the Premier League of course.

Is there a boycott? I hadn't noticed.

Apparently he was wearing a ginger wig but it may just have been WGS on a visit home.

Do you know, unless Paul Allen renews his interest;-), I'm inclined to agree with this.

Why are you so confident he's rubbish? Have you personally seen him play? Remember how wrong the Derby fans were about Lee Holmes. I don't know that he's any good but I am going on the track record of our managers - so far all of their signings have been pretty good. Why not give him a chance without rushing to condemn him before he's kicked a ball for us?

This applies to all young players for any club outside the top 3.

Well said. I've never understood why some of our fans choose to welcome a new player by telling the world how poor he is. I've never seen Pulis Jr play (and I doubt most of his detractors have) but I'm willing to give him the chance. I'm assuming that our management team and scouts know rather more about him than I do.

Bit premature, as has been said, to be gloating over the nay-sayers. What I've seen (sadly only last night and the Celtic game) gives me huge grounds for optimism. But it's very early in a long season to be gloating or despairing. Looking forward to Saturday though.