LFC Montana

Another goal for Paul Anderson tonight in their 1:1 result against Gillingham. Starting to get himself a reputation as a goal-scoring right midfielder. Can never have too many of those 7 goals now for the youngster. ****** Paul Anderson fired Swansea City back to the top of League One with a late equaliser at the Liberty Stadium after Warren Feeney had been sent off for the Swans after just 23 minutes. Delroy Facey put the Gills ahead after 23 minutes only for Anderson to level the scores 11 minutes from time. But it was the least 10-man Swansea deserved after dominating a pulsating game which referee Stuart Attwell did the best to ruin with a display which infuriated everyone at a passionate Liberty. Swansea even missed an injury time penalty when Andy Robinson's spot kick was saved by Simon Royce. Swansea: De Vries, Rangel, Lawrence, Monk, Painter, Butler, Britton, Pratley, Anderson, Scotland, Feeney. Subs: Austin, O'Leary, Robinson, Duffy, Allen. Gillingham: Royce, Southall, Cox, King, Graham, Bentley, Brown, Facey, Sodje, Mulligan, Crofts. Subs: Stillie, Lomas, Cogan, Clohessey, Dickson. Att: 13,452 Ref: S B Attwell Asst-refs: P J Grove, A Matthews 4th official: S C Knapp Second-placed Swansea were forced into one change from the side that picked up their fifth straight win at Yeovil last Saturday with Ferrie Bodde ruled out with a hip injury. His place in the middle of midfield was taken by Leon Britton who was making his first start since recovering from a hamstring injury. Gillingham, without a win from their opening six league games on the road, saw new manager Mark Stimpson take charge of his first game since signing a three-and-a-half year contract on Thursday. Before the game started there was a heart-warming minute's applause in respect of Welsh rugby and broadcasting legend Ray Gravell who passed away yesterday. When the game got underway, Swansea made a positive start as they looked for the win that would take them top of League One. Tom Butler created the first opening after eight minutes when his long-range shot was spilled by Simon Royce, but Gills managed to clear their lines as Warren Feeney pounced on the loose ball. But two minutes later, Swansea were rocked back on their heels when Gillingham took the lead. Dennis Lawrence's clearance fell straight to Delroy Facey 25 yards out and the striker fired an unbelievable strike beyond Dorus de Vries and into the top corner. Manager Roberto Martinez was then forced into an early change as Marcos Painter limped off to be replaced by Kevin Austin at left-back. Swansea kept their heads up and Darren Pratley and Paul Anderson fired just over the bar. But things took another turn for the worst in the 23rd minute when Swansea were reduced to 10 men when Warren Feeney was shown a straight red card for a challenge on Simon King which the referee deemed two-footed and dangerous. Feeney, the Swansea players, management and the crowd were furious as Feeney made his way down the tunnel. Referee Stuart Attwell continued to receive a lot of stick from the crowd with some strange decisions as Swansea finished the half with Jason Scotland playing a lone role up front. Half-time: Swans 0 Gills 1 Swansea made a bright start to the second half as Scotland drilled a low cross across the face of goal that the Gillingham defence just managed to clear. And they thought they had equalised in the 53rd minute when Paul Anderson's in-swinging corner was deflected in off Efe Sodje. But the young referee, in his first season in the Football League, disallowed the goal for a foul on the 'keeper. Then Scotland had a penalty appeal turned down before Leon Britton's effort from the edge of the area was tipped over by Royce as Swansea stepped it up a gear. Swansea were piling on the pressure now as Anderson's shot hit the unsuspecting Scotland in front of goal before Roberto sent on Andy Robinson for defender Lawrence with an hour gone. Great work from Robinson saw his deflected shot hit the roof of the net. The referee, true to form, gave a goal kick. Garry Monk was eventually booked for his protests before Robinson unleashed another fierce effort which Royce did well to beat out. Roberto played his last card with 16 minutes left as he sent on Darryl Duffy for Butler who had had a good game. And just as the game looked to be slipping away from the Swans, the equaliser duly arrived in the 79th minute. Great work from Pratley down the right saw the midfielder drive a low cross across the face of goal for Paul Anderson to arrive late and fire home his seventh of the season. Then deep in injury time, Swansea had the chance to grab the winner when Britton was brought down in the box. The referee pointed to the spot, but Andy Robinson saw his penalty and follow up saved by Royce.

Getting off at 9th and walk - as long as the weather is ok, the walk at that time of the morning is my favorite way of seeing the city. Its a pleasant mile and a half hike. There should be a good crowd there but there is no danger of it being packed to the rafters if you arrive around kick-off - they usually open about 15-20 mins before the game. As for the glorified rounders. The game can go on for 3 hours or more. 3 and a half is a good bet, but it can go on until after midnight if there are extra innings. As far as safety is concerned, it will be as safe as any other major city. Your train out of Shea will be packed and Exchange Place is a safe station in one of the more pleasant parts of Jersey City.

So, now that Kuyt has got his first goal and Benitez seems to have settled on Bellamy and the Dutchman for his first choice front two, how many games do you expect Fowler to get this season? Although I still think that Fowler has the best vision of the front 4 it was noticable that he looked completely f***ed when needing to play a higher tempo pressing game when we were chasing the game at the Blueschite.... Benitez likes his grafters up front but also likes to change things up for particular opposition. What type of opposition teams do you think will suit Robbie's game?

Can't remember who they were but that co-commentator was as biased as the come. They must have dragged one of those no-shirt fat geordie w*****s off the Away end he was that 'impartial'.

Have a look at www.soccertv.com for stations and times.

Don't think that FIOS would make any difference - I was seeing some buffering as well - I suspect that the problem was on on the backend - probably the number of people coming on for that game. Looks like the picture was pretty jumpy for all of us at times.... As long as you are doing your port forwarding, I don't think that there is a lot else you can do. Hopefully its not a persistent issue - we'll see with the barcodes - AMAZING how many of our games are on Setanta now - FSC is an LFC free zone it seems.

The best place to watch to the Gala game (if shown) in SanFran is at the Mad Dog in the Fog pub - on 530 Haight (at Fillmore). Don't know about LA I'm afraid.

The problem with the Barca model is that it is also the model used to run Real Madrid ~ the biggest gobs***e with the loudest mouth (we are going to buy so and so) is usually the one elected. This takes the process of planning player acquisition out of the hands of the manager and into the hands of the President/Sporting Director (at least every 4 years it does). With that sort of model in place 2 years ago, it would be very unlikely that we could have hired Rafa, since he bridled at the interference from the Valencia board and wanted to control all the team related matters. It sounds utopian, but lets face it, football fans by and large are a fairly fickle bunch. A President looking for re-election in a popularity contest is going to be firing managers every season if things don't go well, just as Real have been doing the last few years. Its hard to build foundations at a club with those kind of constraints.

No worries - if all else fails, their tech support is really good and should have you up and running in no time.

You are going to have to find a bar with a satellite carrying Setanta Sport, at least for the bluenose game. Have a look at Setanta's site to see if they have any locations carrying it....

Just backing up NHEs experience - West Ham game worked well for me - saw some flickering 5 mins before the end of the game, but otherwise was pretty good. Some of the late night egg-chaser crapola they show occasionally runs into server feed stalls (on their end, not your box) but haven't seen that on the footy. I've also tested the various input feeds from the ITVN box in parallel (I've got a bunch of Composite, Component, S-Video etc interfaces on my telly) - Was switching between Composite and Component feeds and didn't really see much of a difference in quality - so you should be ok with the leads that come with the box. You can purchase it at https://secure.itvn.com/order.html

The announcement that FSC had sold the more attractive components of their premiership coverage to Setanta was a real disappointment to me ~ the news that the PPV package was also gone was even more of a blow. Although a member of the New York Supporters club, I live a good hundred miles north of the city, and rarely get down to watch games - so watching the games at home is often my only option. The attractiveness of the Dish package, my godsend in the 5 years I have lived outside of NYC, was certainly tarnished. Looking at the agreement more closely, it was clear as day that the majority of the Liverpool games would now be on Setanta. Setanta would get the Saturday morning games - where we had regularly featured over the last few seasons - as well as the first pick of the saturday and sunday 3pm games. There didn't seem to be many options available - I wasn't going to go to DirectTV just to get Setanta - the cost and hassle of installing a new satellite dish just wasn't acceptable ~ especially since I'd have to buy a Sports package on top of that in order to get the Setanta channel. My thoughts on Setanta sports were also fairly ambivelent. Years of forking over cash to get to see live games in various pubs in New York, including the 11th street pub, have given me a poor opinion of their whole business model. It looked like a pretty gloomy situation. The Tuesday before the first Saturday of the season, I checked the US TV coverage thread on the YNWA forum where IPTV (a dedicated streaming video service offered by a company called ITVN) was mentioned. There weren't any flashy announcements - all the info on the service appeared to come from a US based EPL blog. I had a look at the ITVN website - which seemed pretty sparse, but by the evening, after seeing that they could ship out the ITVN box before the opening game of the season, decided to take the plunge. By Wednesday afternoon I was starting to regret my decision, I hadn't seen an email confirmation of my purchase with a tracking number and the more and more I was reading up on the Setanta site, the more nervous about the purchase I was becoming - especially as some confusion was drifting into my mind on whether the package carried the Setanta Broadband package, which didn't have the Premiership rights, or the Setanta Sports package, which did. Listening to the Interviews with the Setanta and ITVN Veeps on the EPLTalk site calmed me down on the identification of the supported channel. It did seem that Setanta Sports was being streamed. On the delivery issue, now only 3 days before the Sheffield United game I was a little more nervous. I was soon calling their customer support line to enquire about the delivery - Their customer support people were friendly and helpful and there was little or no wait to speak to their Tier 1 support staff - who are definitely casual and Californian rather than the terse script monkeys that I'm more used to dealing with these days when calling a customer support number. They quickly found my tracking number and asked me who my ISP was, pointing out that it was highly likely that the email might be in my spam folder. And there it was! Checking on the FedEx tracker, I could see that the box was due to be delivered by Friday at 4.30pm. First thing on Friday morning, it arrived. The package was surprisingly light - weighing in at less than 3 poounds. Inside the package was the main set top control box, an Ethernet cable, a remote (with a rather amusing big red Panic button?) with two AAA batteries, a power adapter and a 6' Composite Video cable. The Composite Video cable was a surprise - particularly as the ITVN web site clearly indicated that of the three supported methods of interfacing with the box (Composite Cable, S-Video or Component) it was identified as the poorest quality option. The User Manual was a slim 13 pages - the only page with images being the last one, showing the remote and a guide to the back of the Set Top Box. After quickly flicking through the User Guide and looking at the components, I very quickly decided that the Ethernet cable had to be changed. I'd moved my web router up to the attic (our TV room) but it was still a good 12-15 ft away from the television - Placing the set-top-box to the left of the TV (a huge 65" HD monster - surrounded by DVD cabinets and the surround sound system, I'd need a 25' Ethernet cable or a wireless game adapter (a solution another member of the YNWA forum, NHE, was looking at. Taking advantage of my lunch-time, I drove out to Best Buy and picked up the cable. As soon as my meetings were over for the day, I was setting up the box at home. Installation couldn't be simpler - plug your modem or router into the set top box and plug the composite cable into the back of the telly. When you switch the box on you are treated with three options: Launch ITVN Network Settings Update ITVN The system prompts you to select 'Update ITVN' as soon as it loads which when selected goes and downloads a software update. It takes a couple of minutes to do that - and loads in the background - with an update bar slowly updating on the bottom of the screen. As soon as it finishes, the system reloads again and presents the same three options. Network settings just presents a single screen where you can choose a static IP and DNS - for the vast majority of users, the dynamic IP defaults should be sufficient. I didn't have to change mine at all. Clicking on the Launch ITVN link takes you to the category/channel selection screen, which is a pretty sparse affair - buttons are on the screen for products that haven't launched yet, and the whole thing has a distinctly 'Coming soon' feel about it, with Setanta only have a Lacrosse Channel, an Adult channel and an Indie Film channel (pay per view for some reason) for company. There is a channel which comes with the package (MavTv channel) which looks like a infommercial dominated version of Spike Tv. So, not much to attract the non-footy viewer. You won't be trading in your Dish or Cable account for ITVNs offering very soon. I clicked through the options and selected the Setanta Sports channel. The selection was delayed for a second while the channel was buffered, and then I was taken into a Championship game - Wolves I think - first thing that surprised me was the quality of the picture - after spending a couple of years watching the horrible live coverage on the LFC eSeason package, I was pleasantly surprised. The picture is more pixilated that watching a comparible channel on Satellite, but the color quality and depth was really good, as was the audio. My second surprise was less pleasant - after about 6 secs of video, the image started to buffer again. 6 seconds after that the same thing - and on and on until I got a cannot connect to channel error a couple of minutes later. Not a good start, especially as I had upgraded to the 3000/768 DSL package with Verizon on the Wednesday morning - so I knew that I should have more than enough bandwidth. Looking at the manual didn't really offer any suggestions, apart from advising you if you have a firewall, to ensure that it allows for RTSPT streaming on port 554, whatever that means. So, I had to log into my Linksys Router to try a few things. The first thing I was to forward the 554 port to the IP that the ITVN box was using. I went to the Applications and Gaming section of my Router console and tried some of the stuff I usually have to do for other applications. First, I went to the Port Range Forward section of the router software and forwarded the 554 port (TCP) to the dynamic IP that the ITVN box was using. I also tried a QoS on the MAC of the box (the ID of the hardware comes on a sticker on the packaging) and priortizing the ethernet port on the Router that the box was connected to. Still no luck. The Support website provided little additional assistance - mostly repeating stuff in the User manual - the clearest information tends to be focused on setup rather than troubleshooting - some parts of the single page support info guide on the web only having bullet-points for sections, with no info associated with them. - which seems a little amateurish. Again, not comforting - giving you as a consumer the feel that you are dealing with a pretty thread-bare internet start-up. In desperatation, after trying everything, including switching off VoIP devices and some of the other computers on my network, I gave ITVN another call. Again they were friendly, and the support rep escalated the issue and asked to call me back. Less than an hour later, as I continued to watch jerkyvision rueing my lack of research in purchasing a product that wasn't ready for prime time, their customer support called back and very quickly pointed me in the direction of the port triggering section of my Linksys router software. Adding port 554 as the forwarded/triggered port solved the issue. With the display button on the remote pressed, I could see the bandwidth by second number reaching the point where it started exceeding the video bits per second rate. Problem Solved. So, for the rest of most of the early evening, I got to play with the product and started feeling much better about my purchase. The pretty generic remote comes with up and down buttons which controls the clarity of the image (and the bandwidth streamed to the box). The website references the fact that the image comes in at 300, 500 or 700 kbps, but by playing around with the Display button again, I reckon that 500, 650 and 1000 are closer to the three levels, although the video numbers tend to bounce around - as a result, I wouldn't recommend the product if you have a DSL service offering less that a 1500kbps download, given that you'll only get a portion of that 'potential' bandwidth - you'll find the high bandwidth/clarity option pretty difficult to watch, and see plenty of buffering. to be honest, I didn't see a huge difference between each of the frame rate offerings, the image was watchable whatever the resolution, even on a 65" screen, if not the quality of a Satellite picture for the most part, although the warping of a players outline against the green field due to the image compression technology was a litle less noticable on the higher bandwidth displays. I left the device on for the evening before going out with my wife, in order to check whether I would see any more excessive buffering / can't find server errors on my return. NZ Rugby was on by the time I returned - no problems by the look of it. Watched the Rugby and the Aussie Rules stuff that followed it, playing with each resolution. I was seeing buffering every 10 or so minutes (for a second or 2) on the highest resolution, but the two lower resolutions didn't see any issues at all. Saturday morning came around, and my optimisim about the quality of the package was challenged a bit by a little bit of buffering two minutes into the game. After that, the presentation was slick, fast and fluid, certainly better than the action on the pitch, with the picture quality varying a little bit over the course of the game, but being a world away from the 'quality' I've had to deal with watching this sort of stuff on the web in the past. Overall, I'm really happy with the package - it costs 14.95 a month and the hardware comes free - its about half the cost of my PPV package last year and looking through the fixture list already published, I reckon I'll see at least double the games, especially when the Champions League coverage is factored in. ESPN may have the pick of the games, but with their ManYoo/Real Madrid fetish, I can see a lof of our games being shown on Setanta. Recommendation: Got Cable? Can't/Won't get DirecTV? Then its a must buy. You'll probably feel like EchoStar customers back in the late 80s - being a pioneer with a new type of technology (and probably having a customer number in the 000s rather than the millions.) which is exciting or nerve-wracking depending on your disposition. But it is a good product, ready for prime time and a godsend for reds fans. +ves: Real easy to set up. Decent picture even on the biggest of tellys. Excellent and friendly Customer Support team. Cheap and with plenty room for expansion as the technology matures. Can't see a reason ever to hit that big red panic button on the remote. -ves: Written (paper and web) support leaves a lot to desire. Picture not quite the quality of Satellite/Cable, but close. Firmware needs updating - Sometimes see 'cannot connect' errors when adjusting the quality of the display - only takes a second to get back in though. Without the footy, the breadth of programming on the network is slim indeed. That 554 port setting will confuse the technophobes amongst you who have been brave enough to set up a home network, but their tech support will set you straight quickly. Finally, keep in mind, the more bandwidth you use, that less is available to the rest of your network connection - that might piss off the missus when you are watching the match and she is downstairs on the laptop in a heated last minute eBay bidding war for some god-awful furniture

Nice one JonShar, Resolved my issues with the ITVN box - just need to do Port Triggering in your router (for those of you with Wireless routers, DSL etc) - and enter RTSPT with port 554 for the port trigger port forward thresholds. Consistent bandwith of around 1000 kbps coming into the IPTV box now - rather than the 200-400 I was getting... Get to keep Dish - and watch Setanta Sports for an extra 14.95 a month across t'internet..... sweet!!! Picture is better than I expected, even on a monster telly.... I'll report back after the game if I notice any problems - but for now, those with cable or Dish wanting Setanta Sports - its a great option!....

upgraded it to 3000/768 on Wednesday night.... Still having a few problems with the buffering - I'll let you know what works as far as router - connection configuration....

When are you expecting yours to arrive NHE? You should have got a tracking number from them - didn't get mine originally as my mailbox identified it as spam.... Some network tweaking may be necessary - maybe in my case switching off the wireless and the other resource hogs VoIP etc, when the game is on. I'm going to try implementing QoS on the router first before I start switching stuff off.... There is precious little advice in the ITVN manual unfortunately.... Let me know how it works for you.

They'll be around 50 bucks - went for the 25' of Ethernet instead. Well, mine is setup and running - had the Wolves game on a few minutes ago - the picture was buffering pretty often, even at low res - but that might be because there are a couple of laptops, VPN, VoIP phone running at the moment - I'm going to try tweaking my router to prioritize by MAC address/IP and see if that does the trick. Other than the buffering - the setup is easy and the picture not too bad - even on a 65' HD screen....

Cool - the ITVN box arrived a couple of hours ago - unfortunately, the ethernet cable that came with it is no more than 4ft long - impossible to get that around the back of my monster telly given the router is another 12ft away. Off to Best Buy to get myself the cheaper of a 20ft Ethernet cable or a wireless game adapter...

Phew! Confirmed that the channel they have is Setanta Sports, Not Setanta Broadband which doesn't have the premiership rights - so things should be good there.... What sort of Wireless network do you have? - Wireless-G is only 54 mbps - even Wireless-N at 300 mbps is at the low end of their 300-800mbps transmit range. I'd be interested in knowing how you'll get that to work - don't fancy lugging my modem/router and all the other crap upstairs into the TV room....

Well, I took the plunge and ordered it direct from the itvn.com site - turnaround for delivery is supposedly 2 days - so I should be up and running by Thursday night - looks like the feed is variable between 300mbs and 800mbs - and I'm on a crappy 1500mbps/128mbps ADSL connection - so I'll let those of you on the fence about it know how it works out. Roll on Saturday morning!

No it wouldn't be foolish - there is no brains to go with the physique - hes fast - but his runs across the oppositions defensive lines are typically badly timed - he almost stopped his run today, convinced that he was offside once again. Poor team player as well - I've never seen anyone so frustrating to watch play, partly because of his obvious gifts. Barring his Indian summer over the last few games - usually from the bench - He has rarely made the difference in important games ~ unfortunately it is that quality to turn it on against the best that will determine if we make a further step up next season. I'd be shocked to see him in red by the start of pre-season training.