Matt

I will greet him with complete apathy. It's only appropriate.

I paid £5.50 for a Vodka and Coke last week at a hotel/training centre. However I was plastered at the time. The last day of training is not one I'd like to remember.

Good call. If it's absolutely heaving the UR could prove a decent alternative.

Well, seeing as Cath's not posted...... Anyways, can we start to get a consensus on times and places everyone?

This is a game we have to win. How can anyone justify accepting the kind of flak we'd get if we were beaten. Is 1999 and 2000 really that long ago? If people want some kind of sacrificial defeat- there are games against Birmingham and WBA for all that. Sunday isn't even about the three points.

Toontastic only. Not the right game for mass meet-ups.

What I'd be doing is getting in touch with Hitzfeld's agent now. Offer him the job on the quiet. Buy him a pad somewhere in England but not round here, get him used to the culture and get him scouting some players he might like. Obviously the plan would be to bring him in next season instead of plunging him into a new country straight away, but if things got even worse with Souness, we'd have the option of bringing him earlier than planned. Alternatively, we could sit on our hands and panic when we realise we have no choice but to fire Souness and scrap around for anyone who'll take the job.

My confidence diminishes with each passing hour.

Hard Fi- Tied up Too Tight. They seem popular these days!

So did you get the job at the paint place then?

Did NUFC.com not report that Messrs Dyer and Bramble stayed back and were spotted catching a film on the friday night?

I'm still stunned we offered Dyer a new deal. Yes we might lose him on a free, but surely that's better than shelling out a fortune for another four years. If the reports of £80k are true (they sound a little high for me) then that's a commitment of £16m over the duration of the contract. Suddenly that Bosman doesn't seem so bad, does it?

On the Sky Sports interview he didn't look too chuffed. He said he was relatively pleased with a point but his body language suggests that he thought we should have gone out and got all three.

I don't understand his views on injuries. Injuries are the norm- especially when some of those players are injury prone. Managers have to build a squad taking into account the liklihood that a few players will be injured. While we do have a long list at the moment and it's a bit unlucky, the argument that he can only be judged when we have a fully-fit squad is futile- having a 100% clean bill of health will only happen a couple of times a season at best.

I think we'll see a switch towards the end of the season, and let whoever it is comnig in get his feet under the table as official manager. Unless of course we are chasing something in which case he'll last the season, but I can't help the feeling that we'll be drifting somewhere in the middle come March time.

On a market stall in Turkey. "Genuine Fakes"

Oh, yeah work. I had actually forgot I'd be working the day after.

What kit do you use?

It's the politically-correct idealists who get on my tits. "You can't say that, someoneorother may take offence" We had this one girl who had a campaign to stop 'slave auctions' (charity events where people auction themselves off as skivvies for the night) and rename them 'helper auctions'. She succeeded. Still, she was easy to wind up. The whole idea of Uni is surely to get some kind of grip of reality yet some emerge even further away than ever.

One less sponger, It's a start. You'll be using soap before you know it 40495[/snapback] One student sterotype I never fitted into!

Looking back, I think i was probably 'fake crazy' in Fresher's Week, but then it's all a myth peddled by those in charge of colleges or halls (the sort of person who over time at Uni you come to despise). They whip everyone up into a frenzy and not knowing any better at that age, everyone follows. It's annoying as hell for everyone else, but I don't mind. It's when they've been to uni for two years and still haven't done any growing up, that's when it gets annoying. I went on a Fresher's Week bar crawl in my final (4th) year and hated every minute of it (except for all the ladies of course). I'm going back down at the end of next week to see some mates and I dread to see what the antics are like now I'm officially a workperson for the first time ever.

Sitting in my drawer (and not used in years) is my Creative DAP Jukebox (aka Nomad outside the UK). It was the first (or near enough) Hard0drive based MP3 player, along with the first Archos. With a 6GB HDD and requiring 6 AA batteries for operation, it was as portable as a fridgefreezer. Battery life was about 2 hours at best. Cost me a full £269 an' all! So you lot stop moaning. At least you can use yours without risking a hernia.

We're going to have to think carefully about venues and timing, as most places will be heaving. I think we need to drink more and start earlier, any thoughts?

I can't remember where I read it, but there were legal issues with the way they discriminate on motor insurance and the whole system could get a major shake up soon. I'm 22, male and always get asked those questions, but I'm also white and of no great religious conviction but with a Catholic background. Oddly, no-one's ever asked me that on an insurance form, but they're demographic variables all the same. </canofworms>

Seeing as age and gender are permissable discriminants in our wonderful society, I am bracing myself for impact when attempting to get insurance for whatever pokey runaround I get myself. Bastards.