8 December 2004: Redknapp

Harry it is.

From the sounds of things, Harry was about to go on holiday when Woopert called him with an offer he couldn't refuse. Woops then chatted to Steve Wigley at the Under-18s game last night, presumably telling him he was going to be resigning (because Woops, of course, never sacks managers). Latest rumours are more about the time of the press conference (3.00pm sounds favourite) rather than whether or not Harry's coming. He's already here. Sans Jim, as predicted yesterday, as Kevin Bond will be his number two.

An insightful piece by John May on the BBC site clearly states the situation:
"Redknapp and chairman Rupert Lowe are not so much chalk and cheese as strawberries and strychnine."

It's up to you to decide which is which. Personally, I'd give Harry less than a year in the job.

Which begs the question, what now for Wigley? Also, what now for Denis Rofe? And what now for the Damiano guy whom we signed as assistant coach a couple of months ago, apparently, but nobody has seen him since, except for Marian Pahars who got the address of a French doctor from him. Are they all going to stay on? Even if Wigley departs (new Portsmouth manager, perhaps?) that still leaves four high-profile staff at Saints. Maybe we could call them the Teletubbies and be done with it.

Back in the real world, Paul Sturrock won Manager Of The Month for November with Sheffield Wednesday. What a shockingly bad manager he must be.

Footnote: By the way, if you're unsure, I do actually think this is a good thing. It's just hard not to be cynical about anything Woopert does.

7 December 2004: Counter-Rumour

William Hill have stopped taking bets on whether Steve Wigley will still be Saints manager at Christmas. Apparently they've taken a rush of bets from a sufficient number of people to figure "hmm, something's up here" and they've closed the book.

The applicable SaintsForever thread states just as clearly that Harry Redknapp (possibly sans Jim Smith) will be appointed, possibly as soon as tomorrow.

Me, I still think Woopert wants the job himself.

7 December 2004: Rumour

So the rumour was false, Glenn Hoddle has taken over as manager of Wolves instead of Saints.

Which means a number of things.

1. St Nick from The Ugly Inside has to eat some humble pie as he said he had inside info that Hoddle would be appointed at St Mary's today.
2. The fans on SaintsForever are now extremely worried that there'll either be no management appointment or, worse, that it will be a man named Houllier. Frankly, I'd take Houllier right now.
3. Harry Redknapp rumours continue to roll on, rather like Andrex toilet paper.
4. Steve Wigley is still Saints 'Head Coach', meaning the team have in charge of them a man with no motivational or tactical abilities, and who himself admits he never wanted to do this for a living. Presumably he... wanted to be... a LUMBERJACK!
5. Saints remain firmly entrenched in the relegation zone and could well be playing Hull City next season.

As much as Rupert never makes public statements these days (which is extremely out of character), you get the impression he is trying to say "there's no pressure on Wigley, we're not looking at any other managerial options."

If, Woops, it is true that you are not looking at other managerial options, can I ask just one question? Why on earth not?

Final point: looking back to August, I remember pointing out Paul Sturrock's record in his first thirteen matches, which got him the sack: Won 5, Drawn 2, Lost 6. Points 17.

Steve Wigley's first fourteen games: Won 1, Drawn 6, Lost 7. Points 9.

But of course that doesn't include our magnificent Coca-Cola Cup run, where we scrambled our way past Northampton and a come-from-behind struggle against Colchester, only to be humiliated - utterly humiliated - by the Mighty Hornets of Watford.

Time to sort it out Rupert - if, in fact, you actually care. Which I suspect you don't.

4 December 2004: Chair

Well, it's supposed to be embargoed until Monday, but the ECS website is already reporting it and I even heard it on Wave 105 yesterday: Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web and the daddy of HTML, HTTP and no doubt other things beginning with HT, is to join Southampton University as Chair of Computer Science in January. This is in addition to his ongoing work with the W3C and MIT, so he won't be here all the time, but apparently he wants to do a bit of work with us on the whole Semantic Web thing. I do have one fear: I'm concerned as to whether he will get a real chair as part of this appointment, one he can actually sit on. At last Monday's meeting Wendy had to search around to find one, because our group has got rather large now. And she's the Head of School.

But back to the Semantic Web, and I'm pleased to note I actually got some decent work done this week, which partly explains the shortage of blogs. A working WUN AKTive Space demo was handed to Nigel on Wednesday evening, along with the prospect of being able to add data to it in the usual Triplestore way - make a relevant RDF file, chuck it in 3Store, and AKTive Space picks it up and strings it all together. A good demo of what the Semantic Web is about would probably show how easy it is to add information to AKTive Space: just chuck the data in there, and the application does the rest. It was a bit of a pain moving the whole thing across to a new server and getting the different pieces all working together, but I got there in the end, and on Wednesday evening I went to sleep, which made a nice change.

Finally, it's good to see BBC TV are making the most of the live football they're able to show these days: tomorrow's 'Match Of The Day Live' features the big clash of the weekend: Hinckley United verses Brentford. Who says the best sport is all on Sky?

*Sigh*

Only seventeen weeks until the baseball season starts. Roll on the steroid boys and the wonderful MLB.TV, which is quite easily the best current use of Professor Chair Sir Tim's World Wide Web. Maybe I should start making 'Semantic MLB.TV'?