ipaul

Fitness/health related - a week without a cigarette now! Woo! Be interesting to see how this affects my gym sessions when I get back to Southampton.

6ft 1 and 12stone 1lb, or 169lbs or 77kg. I think my weight is more or less bang on what it should be to be honest. Yay healthiness! Shame about the state of my nutrition mind...

From what I can see the players seem bothered, just not for the full 90 minutes. We seriously need to learn how to keep a clean sheet and shut the opposition out. Hopefully this transfer window can turn things around. I don't think we'll get relegated and I'm still optimistic for a top 10 finish. Besides, we're clearly gonna win the Europa League

Match Report in summary: Sigh.

Update: Everything going well so far. It'll be 96 hours by the end of tonight without one and the cravings have been less frequent and less intense since the first 48 hours. New Years Eve was fine, although coming in from the night out and arriving home I desperately wanted one - thankfully it was 5.30am and I fell asleep without thinking about it too much. My sense of smell has started to come back! The world smells.

Well as long as we sign another striker like Remy, Ba can leave. If Cisse starts scoring again we may not need him anyway, especially with Cabaye and Ben Arfa coming back. A good player for us no doubt, but I don't think Ba is as important as his share of the team goals would suggest. Also, I'm going to the match tonight! Would love to beat Everton, though I'll settle for a draw. A loss would be a disaster. Though honestly I might just be happy if we concede only 3 goals at this point.

On balance my year was friggin' awesome. Up until about Valentines day things were pretty dam miserable and then after that, everything's been great. I made loads of new friends, improved my grades at university and finally learnt how to function as a singleton. Technically I also quit smoking right at the end there too. 2013 should be the year I graduate and as such is fucking terrifying It'll be interesting to see where I am a year from now.

Yeah they look shit. I dislike them.

NYE shouldn't be too much of a problem in that I won't be around any smoker friends anyway/don't usually smoke in the places we're likely to spend NYE. I might well give the E cigarette a try if going cold turkey proves to be a bit of a fail. Are there any health risks still involved with using those things?

I JUST RAAAAAAN, I RAN SO FAR AWAAAYYYYYY.

My new year's resolution is to stop smoking but since I find that so nauseatingly cliché it makes me want to throw up, I've started today instead. 19 Hours without a cigarette so far. Longest I've ever gone is 6 days since January 2011 so I'll see how I do.

Happy late birthday guyzzz!

Arsenal, Liverpool and Spurs are in for him apparently. Think out of those Liverpool probably need him the most, but I have no idea where he'll go if he does leave.

1-0 against QPR, first time we've beaten eleven men in friggin' ages. Desperately needed that, lovely goal from Shola to win it. Apparently it looks quite likely we're gonna sign Loic Remy and sell Ba. I think I'd be alright with this really, replacing one quality striker with another who would apparently fit in the team better. Makes sense. Think we could also do with a winger and a centre back in January.

@Emma Reading that blog: = I'm not really sure what I put my own lack of a relationship down to (3 years and counting now, woo!), but it certainly isn't being too nice. I'm not particularly 'nice', at least in the sense that I imagine most people using it really mean. I'm perfectly pleasant and courteous, but 'nice' often seems to really mean saccharine, nauseating, a walkover with a lack of individuality. Now obviously this is a generalisation but that's the image a 'nice guy/person' conjures up if they are describing themselves as nice. I think mainly my lack of effort in the area means I stay single. I never really bother myself to try and find someone because when it comes down to it, I'm quite happy and comfortable just being single. Apart from anything I'm just quite particular. That's not to say I'm one of these guys who say 'Oh my standards are very high' - this strikes me as code for 'I don't get laid much and this bothers me, so here's a lame excuse I use to console myself with'. Rather, I'm quite a peculiar guy when it comes down to it and it takes something/someone very particular to really captivate my attention much. Also, I'm very happy with who I am but my personality isn't as immediate as would be ideal for the whole dating lark. I'm usually fairly laid back and quiet on first meeting, you might say I play my cards close to my chest if you want to bandy around clichés. A little while ago one of my closest friends said he thinks people probably think I'm quite stuck up when they first meet me and far from being offended, I agreed. It makes sense, at least in my social circles back home - I'd be majorly surprised if anyone thought I was stuck up at university. tl;dr Single, content with it, don't see any reason girls should be falling at my feet, feeling good.

I watched that game with an Arsenal fan. Speaking as a Newcastle fan who has watched Arsenal beat Newcastle 2-1 and 4-1 at different points with Arsenal fans down south, I enjoyed that.

Thought I'd post this in here, makes me laugh anyways.

He is? Explain this (generally curious).

Great derby match there, shame about the ugliness from some idiot fans at the end. I predicted to my friend on Twitter it would finish 2-2, so glad RVP scored the winner at the end there as I hadn't put any money on it. I actually quite like this Manchester United side "Yeah our defence is rubbish but it doesn't matter because we'll just score more goals than you!".

So has anyone been keeping up with this much? I'm doing shite this season, my fall from grace has been worse than that of NUFC.

I haven't bought any presents yet, I'm skint.

Consider Newcastle! In all seriousness it's a pretty great place to live, especially Tynemouth on the coast. Don't consider Southampton

Convincing 3-0 win.....at home against 10 man Wigan. Still, great result and 3 desperately needed points in the bag. Hopefully this will stop the rot. Lovely first goal from Bigirimana as well.

Yeah I'm not too worried yet. Europa has absolutely hammered our pitifully small squad, so once we're out of that competition, sign players (hopefully) in January and get rid of our injury woes, we should be back to winning ways. The performance was much improved over the one against Southampton and really we were pretty unlucky to come away with nothing. Howay laaaaads.