brummie

If anything it should piss you off more knowing you would have played Pompey had you actually won. To be honest, mate, I wouldn't back us to beat Portsmouth and District Paper Boys XI at the moment, we're knackered, the manager keeps picking the exact same 11 knackered players every time, and whilst we might have a plan B, we never seem to see both Plan A and Plan B in the same season. Yesterday was just a good old fashioned, English footballing dose of schadenfreude to take the edge of my own disappointment. I could barely speak when I came out of Wembley on Saturday. I woke up yesterday and couldn't get out of bed, I was so gutted. When I turned on your game just before the end and saw the score, knowing someone else was feeling just as bad (and probably worse) perked me up no end. I'd have felt the same for any other team in our mini league (you know what I mean) going through that, it wasn't just about it being Spurs.

I was at our semi final on Saturday, and whilst the pitch itsn't an excuse for losing, I have to say, Harry has a point. Halfway through the first half of our game, you could see it was cutting up terribly (just as it did during the CC Final), and players were falling over all over the shop. I said at the time that I wouldn't fancy playing on it less than 24 hours after we'd finished our game. Having spent almost a billion pounds on that stadium, and polluted the mystique of the FA Cup by having semi finals at Wembley, the least they could do is provide a usable playing surface. That pitch is a disgrace.

5,000 yesterday - there were a lot of empty seats in Club Wembley and in the FA seats.

When i left the stadium yesterday (after the second goal, close to tears, and choked to the point of being unable to fucking speak), I had mentally written off the next seven days, and decided nothing at all would lift the gloom. Wrong.

Only one team got fucked over by the ref at wembley this weekend, and it didn't happen today. Delighted for Pompey.

This was very noticeable on TV. I was sat in pretty much exactly the same place i was for the CCF, and the difference was off the scale, people seemed far more up for it today. Probably with it being a late-ish kick off on a Saturday. I know I warmed up with 5 hours of steady, sustained drinking, I imagine others were at it for longer.

Another day of disappointment. Much better atmosphere today than the CCF though, much louder from us, and we heard quite literally not a peep from the Chelsea end until they scored. We still fecking lost, though.

Thick people who think they're actually quite bright are a bigger menace to society than that Baby Bio plant food shit the kids are all snorting.

Getting to London in most cases is fairly easy, most (if not all cities) have a direct train route, a major road route, and a lot have direct flights. However for all of the public transport London offers it can be rather difficult to actually travel in London once you arrive. Also the question has to be asked is, why should London beneift from all of these games, after England games are national games, so surely every corner of the nation should have a chance of benefitting from hosting national games, and why should London gain from games that could be played between two clubs (for example the FA Cup games, and the play off's) that arn't from London all the time? Not really. I left the CCF 5 mins after the final whistle (as, staggeringly, did lots and lots of Man U fans who couldnt be arsed to wait around for the final whistle, let alone the trophy presentation. I guess that's how it is when you're so successful), walked down Wembley Way, got on the tube and was back in Harrow to get in the car with the absolute minimum of fuss. And that was with 90,000 people there.

Really? Christ, I didn't. It was a dump which should have been rebuilt at the very least 30 years before it was.

I agree with that, but it is becoming less and less special, and one of the main reasons is the playing of FA Cup semi finals there.

I find David James's stance on this whole situation to be a bit fucking nauseating, to be honest. It's hard to take him seriously when he pontificates on the situation, given the fact he's happily taken his 80k a week over the whole period. I get similarly fucked off when i read his Observer column, where he speaks at length of how he drives some energy efficient Euro bubble car, as if he doesn't also have a range of supercars to use when he's doing something other than posing for the press. And for all his hand-wringing and "we feel your pain" and "we want the kitman there so he can unblock the bogs" shite over the redundancies at Portsmouth, he's still there kerchinging it all the way to the bank with a weekly salary which would pay 5 or 6 of them for a year.

Our FA trampled all over our Wembley tradition when they started holding Cup semi finals there. it totally devalues the mystique of Wembley if you get to go there for the semi final too. seconded brummie. Agreed. Problem now is they'd never pay for the new stadium without doing so. pretty sure they could have afforded a better, cheaper stadium if it didn't HAVE to be in london. massivly overpriced and in a crap part of the country. especially when the majority of folk would rather the majority of england games were played in the regions. Agree with all that too. Should have been somewhere in the Midlands IMO. Disagree. The site they were talking about in the Midlands was near the NEC, purely because it is near the motorway, and has a decent sized airport and a train station on site. The issue with that is it's close enough to London to make it worth actually building it in London. There was never any real prospect of it leaving London. I don't have a problem with that. Personally, I don't think we really need a national stadium at all, but if we are going to have one, it can't be anywhere in the provinces - no provincial city has anything like the extra attractions London has. no provincial city has those attractions because........................... of that sort of thinking. anyway would you be put off going to an england game because you couldn't squeeze in an hour at the whitechapel art gallery beforehand ? most england supporters from outside the south east go and get out as sharp as possible. No, no provincial city has the attractions London does purely because London is one of a handful of global mega cities, there's no way Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Leeds etc can compete with that, and unfortunately, if you're going to have a national stadium, it is going to have to be near to "the action". I'm not saying it is right, I'm saying that that's the reason and there is a certain amount of logic behind it. For all the talk, there was never really any chance they were going to take it out of London.

I went to see us play at Athletic Bilbao in the UEFA cup 12 years ago, and it is without a doubt the best place I've ever seen us play football. Fantastic people, unbelievably welcoming, and we made a lot of friendships that day. That's a great place to play football. (Unlike Atletico Madrid, where we mostly got beaten up by riot police).

Whilst Wembley was being redeveloped England played their games at various grounds up and down the country, and it was pretty successful.

Our FA trampled all over our Wembley tradition when they started holding Cup semi finals there. it totally devalues the mystique of Wembley if you get to go there for the semi final too. seconded brummie. Agreed. Problem now is they'd never pay for the new stadium without doing so. pretty sure they could have afforded a better, cheaper stadium if it didn't HAVE to be in london. massivly overpriced and in a crap part of the country. especially when the majority of folk would rather the majority of england games were played in the regions. Agree with all that too. Should have been somewhere in the Midlands IMO. yip, they could probably have afforded the transport links to go with it aswell. The transport links are there at the site they were considering (see above).

Our FA trampled all over our Wembley tradition when they started holding Cup semi finals there. it totally devalues the mystique of Wembley if you get to go there for the semi final too. seconded brummie. Agreed. Problem now is they'd never pay for the new stadium without doing so. pretty sure they could have afforded a better, cheaper stadium if it didn't HAVE to be in london. massivly overpriced and in a crap part of the country. especially when the majority of folk would rather the majority of england games were played in the regions. Agree with all that too. Should have been somewhere in the Midlands IMO. Disagree. The site they were talking about in the Midlands was near the NEC, purely because it is near the motorway, and has a decent sized airport and a train station on site. The issue with that is it's close enough to London to make it worth actually building it in London. There was never any real prospect of it leaving London. I don't have a problem with that. Personally, I don't think we really need a national stadium at all, but if we are going to have one, it can't be anywhere in the provinces - no provincial city has anything like the extra attractions London has.

Our FA trampled all over our Wembley tradition when they started holding Cup semi finals there. it totally devalues the mystique of Wembley if you get to go there for the semi final too. seconded brummie. Agreed. Problem now is they'd never pay for the new stadium without doing so. pretty sure they could have afforded a better, cheaper stadium if it didn't HAVE to be in london. massivly overpriced and in a crap part of the country. especially when the majority of folk would rather the majority of england games were played in the regions. Dave is right, that's why we're playing semi finals there. As for the stadium, i was there in February for the CC final, and to be honest, it was underwhelming. When you're in the seat, it is very large scale, but it is the least atmospheric stadium I've ever been in. You think somewhere like the Emirates has its atmosphere killed by the corporate tier, Wembley is 10 times worse. Plus the concourses are horribly dark and dank - almost like they ran out of money at that point and just said "fuck it, pour a load of concrete down and stick some pictures of Geoff Hurst up". I do think the national stadium could only have been in London, though. Politically and financially, it had to be that way.

Our FA trampled all over our Wembley tradition when they started holding Cup semi finals there. it totally devalues the mystique of Wembley if you get to go there for the semi final too. seconded brummie. Rather go to Wembley than shitty Villa Park Hint: If you're going to fish, don't back your Vauxhall Nova up to the river bank, gigantic boot speaker exposed and blaring out cacky RnB bilge at top volume whilst you hammer away with a pneumatic drill.

Our FA trampled all over our Wembley tradition when they started holding Cup semi finals there. it totally devalues the mystique of Wembley if you get to go there for the semi final too.

Anything can happen in a one-off game. I wouldn't write Portsmouth off at all (although I'd rather play them than Chelsea, obv). There's also that romantic aspect of them winning it again which kind of sounds insane and unlikely to happen, but it makes you wonder a little ... Are you going, KD?

The only thing I can think he possibly means is to work hard to get the ball when we don't have it (he can't possibly mean anything else, mind). I was hugely impressed with that in your matches against Arsenal. It wasn't just about what you did when you had the ball, you worked unbelievably hard to get it back - and not just one man, two or three closing down the player with the ball. I read this week - and this is probaby not true, but it is still interesting - that in training at Barca, players are told that in practice matches, when they lose the ball they have five seconds to get it back. to be honest, the only similarity we'll have with Barcelona is the colours we wear.

I'm actually going to watch that one with some friends as a warmup to the Real Madrid - Barça game. Good luck there, brummie. Cheers. mate. I'm not one for watching matches that don't involve us, but having watched Barcelona over the two legs of the Arsenal tie and found myself with hairs standing up on the back of my neck several times, I'm recording your match to watch when I get home. I hope you do 'em good and proper.

Wembley again tomorrow. I've been telling myself since the draw that we won't get anything, that I should expect nothing, and that it'll be just another decent day on the piss. That seems to have gone out of the window today and I've spent the entire day thinking about it, and the fact we've actually - 7-1 excluded - got a more than decent record against Chelsea. *shakes fist at sky*

Can i just say, if we're depending on a few core players like Harper, Nolan and Carroll then we're f**ked. That article isn't informative in the least. Actually, i might doing it a disservice, he's writing for the broader public not diehard Newcastle fans who know the realities. Not going to go into the merits or not of the players you mention - I don't see them as often as you lot do - but surely, for any team which is newly promoted, you have to do precisely that - pick a core group of players, and rely on them. The alternative is assembling an entirely new nucleus to your squad, which is just infeasbile - both in terms of the time you have got to do it (especially with a World Cup in the summer distracting the usual business of football transfers) but also in terms of how much it would cost (unless you're Man City). Surely the clever thing to do is pick one or two areas where you can improve, at a decent price, and do that? No point throwing the baby out with the bath water.