Catch22

Since I live/work near by & fancied streching my legs, I just wandered up there for you. 145-157 is indeed a modern office block,just a bit futher North & on the opposite side to Cicada. There are legitimate accountancy & architect businesses in there but absolutely no sign of BMD. It may just be using it is a shell address but the signs are not promising, as suggested. NN's firebombs can also be redirected... unless of course you or he have something against accountants/architects in which case try & keep it to that side of the road as i quite like Cicada.

There is a decent bar opposite the location of that alledged office called Cicada The outside area catchs the sun so if they did in fact exist, any fit female members of staff could well provide Tit monday viewing in a few weeks Doubt that eases your pain though....

It wouldn't be a growth strategy but it would be a financial option. In order to reduce the commercial loss,they would sugar coat it with some bollocks about "not wanting to sell, the player wants a new challenge"- Given how naive part of our fanbase was when Xabi left for £50m & spouted similar shite, I am sure they have discussed how to PR it.... "Anyone got Bascombe's phone number?" I am not sure wht will happen but i am certain they will have discussed the option.

"The Doc's up Mary Brown......"

Haha, i just googled "Gunderthumping" to read the Urban Dictionary/Profanasarus entry on it as i had never heard it before This thread was the 2nd link!

I hope you are right. The Chavs are defintely aging fast & Roman seems less interested & therefore inclined to spend for the overhaul.

City have changed the nature of the game though. Arse were always 3rd highest payers which means that top 4 is vastly more likely than not. We are now 5th which means the opposite.

That is a possibility but an optimistic one Equally, they could solve the £100m problem by selling Torres & Gerrard. That automatically takes £18m off the wage bill, which roughly balances the revenue dip. The club then arses around for years as they milk the fans earlier success attracted. LBO's are often done on "dying" cash-flow positive companies (obvious example cigarettes) as they don't have to invest. (the industary is dying so why bother?) The LBO'ers borrow to buy & then use declining profits to pay back the loan. At some point however, it is all just profit until the industry finally dies. (In the meantime the LBO'ers crucially get the tax advantage that loan repayments are favourably taxed relative to dividends) That model wasn't why they bought us, but it is a (still remote) possibility that they would perfectly understand.

Yes, i did manage to contradict myself somewhat in the same post! I think you are overestimating golf versus tennis though as it often (not in all the world) requires a middle class upbringing. In some ways, that is why the greatest f***baller is the greatest sportsman as every single male on the planet has kicked a ball at some point as a kid.

Pompey are just going thru the motions in the PL now as they have a chance for a bit of glory in a dreadful season if they win the Cup. Plus, goals change games. We got 2 very quickly & visibly relaxed. Whereas at Wigan, our normally exceptional striker missed sitter after sitter. He gets every one (which would be amazing, but then he regularly is amazing) & we win that game 4-1; not only would that have been a good result, our play would have relaxed once ahead.

Hermes thinks that the country in the world which spends the most on the military is Belgium as he doesn't count dollars,Yuan or pounds nor aircraft carriers,tanks,soldiers or planes. They do however have the capacity to do as the political HQ of the world's largest economic grouping is located there. Plus, it says so on Red Cafe.

Yes, it is silly, but that is why it is absurd for anyone to write that ANY manager, indeed any human being who was not a clinical moron, could not win the PL with "infinite" money. As i wrote earlier, to answer "no" implies that people haven't read the question precisely or don't know what "infinity" means. I agree that it isn't particularly enlightening but then that is what the question asked. As an aside though, the fact that some people (not you) still claim that that we have outspent the Mancs since '06 on the thread suggests that they should start with learning basic arithmetic that a 7-year old child should be able to do before moving onto the concepts of infinity.

Spending is not revenue. However you use the revenue list there. That lists us as clear 4th in the UK, & a long way behind the Arse, who you absurdly claim spend less than us. Why, if you use that list for Italy, do you ignore it in the UK?

Ever...Don Bradman noone else in anyother sport comes close to his degree of dominance Between those 2, it is worth remembering that it is a lot easier to play tennis in the world because of the cost differences (probably 2nd only to f*******) & it is played in a lot more places. Which pushes me towards Federer, but it is v close. There is an interesting argument that the greatest sportsman should default towards the greatest f******* simply because everybody plays it in the world, so even those who succeed in another field would have tried f******* as well. Whereas Pele may well have been an even better golfer or cricketer or baseball palyer or whatever but never played the game as a kid

Great article. David Conn is easily the best football writer on the current main dailies (ie/ not including the FT or the Racing Post) That is a terrible thing given that he mainly writes about off-field financial matters. Unfortunately,however, until the terrible mess that football is in, in those areas, is more widely covered, it won't be addressed.

With "infinite" money any manager could buy every single professional footballer presently employed anywhere in the world. Who plays in the other teams now? And that is only extending the concept which the Chavs used with SWP where they bought him purely to stop Arse having him. Specifically with Rafa we were the top scorers in the PL last year even with "the likes of Lucas and Kuyt" which given how shit you think they are, must mean we were exceptionally attacking. 75 teams (5 completed years, 15 teams spent less than us every year) have gone up against Rafa in the PL with less money & only once (BS in '05) have they come above us. He would piss it on the Chav's resources, which is a far more stringent test than "infinite"

Whether or not you think Rafa is a good or a bad manager, anyone who votes "no" has absolutely no idea what "infinite" means.

This is a standard HollyWood romcom 2 people meet & like eachother, then they don't get on & have a big falling out. Act 3 they realise that it was because of the feelings they had for eachother & then they finally get together. You are starting Act2!

The other game is a huge dilemma for Red Nick: the capital of his adopted home or the capital of his favourite supplier of whores.....

"Doctor, Doctor, how long does it take for coke to leave the bloodstream?" "24-72 hours" "How about my piss?" "Same" "Oh, I'd better go shopping instead then" "Don't let them touch your hair Rio, that's 3 months" "Don't worry about that- Noone wants to touch my hair"

So how come he didn't roll up his sleeves & win the title at Carlise,Grimbsy or Huddersfield? Because they didn't have the fans & therefore the money to win the title after the war (despite H'Field winning it as recently then as we have now) Shankly was an intelligent man who could therefore do basic maths & if approx. 90% of the League rank is determined by an exogeneous variable then over- or under- achievement is based upon how you perform against that benchmark. However people choose to wear their sleeves, that is the modern reality. Mourinho is a pantomine villian who understands that which is why he always picks the highest payers to manage. Clever,extremely well-paid man because of that insight, yes. Especially noteworthy in a footballing sense, no.

Pretty much every single person on this forum, & definetely any manager working in the top 2 divisions would deliver the title on infinite money. Messi Ronaldo 1-0 Ronaldo Messi 2-0 etc,etc There is not much significant disagreement about the best XI in the world (which is what "infinite" money would deliver) & it would piss our League Whether you have Fergie ("the best manager of all time " copyright Sky) or 24 managers on a rotating door delivers the same number of CL/titles if you are #1 payers over 25 years as the Mancs or RM are, which shows exactly how relatively unimportant a manager is compared to being the top payer.

Given who our next game is, it is almost certain that he will. Unlucky,mistimed tackle by Scholes though.

FA to work out who we are playing in our next PL game & ban Gerrard for it?

You are undoubtedly right about his genius but did you see my earlier post about the comparison between the Mancs & RM's trophy haul over his tenure? I don't think it takes away from Fergie being a great manager but it certainly suggests that the manager's influence on the outcome is infinetely lower than the British press claim as despite identical #1 financial positions in their respective countries the best of his generation can't beat their almost identical trophy count when they have seemingly employed 24(!) blokes randomly off the streets It also directs us as to the true difference between the Mancs & other teams.