25072009114, originally uploaded by DanKerins.
Took a few pictures from the second Dublin show from the U2 360° at Croke Park last Saturday.
All of the pictures can be found here as well as some shots (which I am very proud of!) from the 2005 Cardiff show on the Vertigo tour, which are here.
I don’t think Saints will be scoring a goal like that again, any time soon.
The dust has settled, more dust has been kicked up and us Saints fans no longer have the Sword of Damocles – more commonly known as liquidation – hanging over us. Instead, we have the far more familiar upheaval of searching for a new manager to be getting on with. Being a Southampton fan is never dull.
To be fair, we haven’t had a proper speculation season on a new manager since Burley took his baffling substitutions to Hampden Park.
So while supporters come up with fanciful, terrifying and downright odd suggestions (Ivan Golac is my personal favourite) for the man who will be pinning the team sheet to the St Mary’s wall next year, the men entrusted by new owner Markus Liebherr go about the serious work of trying to find someone competent yet foolhardy enough to take the job on.
The problem I have is that we simply have no idea of what Liebherr (or rather, Nicola Cortese and Andy Oldknow) are after. Discipline? Continental flair? A big name?
Not. A. Scooby.
An interview with Cortese certainly provided something of an insight, but as with anything like this, it is easy to read far too much in to it. After all, he had barely got his feet under the desk so you’d imagine that by now he’s got a firmer grasp of exactly what is wanted – and needed.
Still, I do love the ‘in the know’ rumours – which of course, almost without fail are so wide of the mark they make the Sunday Sport look on the money – flying around. Between the comments on the Echo’s stories and SaintsWeb:
- Strachan has already supposed to have been unveiled three times,
- Tony Adams has single handedly engineered his odds with subtle betting patterns, and
- Darren Ferguson would love the chance to drop down a division and leave upwardly mobile Peterborough for the chance to work with the talents of Anthony Pulis.
It keeps those few quiet moments at work interesting, at least.
The statement today by the Football League chairman Lord Mawhinney paints the possibility of a fairer, more harmonious world for football fans across the nation.
In fact, it’s almost like going back to 1990, before a little thing called the Premier League was born. Money was shared between the four divisions of the Football League, players could move clubs at almost anytime in the season, and footballers weren’t completely out of touch with the fans in the terraces.
Mawhinney’s proposal for the Premier League to negotiate combined deals for both it and the Football League will never get off the ground, as it is the main reason the the 22-clubs broke away in the first place. Why would they suddenly turn around now and decide they want to give their vast wealth back to the clubs that were cut adrift by the schism of 1992?
Allowing players to move domestically at any time of the season seems like an okay idea, although personally I don’t mind the transfer window, it does limit the ability of clubs in the lower leagues to raise cash when they need to by selling players. The likelyhood of FIFA allowing their rule to be flouted though must surely be slim at best.
One of his proposals that I see no problem with is the suggestion that clubs who have fallen behind with tax payments to be banned from transfers. As far as HMRC are concerned, it probably isn’t going far enough, but from a purely footballing perspective it has to be a good move.
Of course, it would seem that Mawhinney is simply doing this at the behest of culture secretary Andy Burnham who has demanded that football clean up its act, and while Burnham’s timing also suggests this is being done for political rather than purely for the ‘good of the game’, at least it’s nice to know something is at least being talked about being done.
Having spent the day at a wedding, followed by an evening getting drunk whilst watching the Eurovision Song Contest, what better way is there to look ahead other than getting excited in the way that only a nerd can by the new Terminator Salvation movie.
I’ve always loved the Terminator films (even T3 is okay, if taken in small doses) but this looks immense. Spoilers ahoy, and all that…
Okay, it’s not due until November but the trailer for Modern Warfare 2 (note the lack of the Call of Duty moniker) has got me excited in a childlike manner. Yes, I’m 26-years-old but I want this. I don’t want to grow up, I want to play my PlayStation.
