Nordic Saint

I've always found Lawrenson particularly depressing. He's miserable and charmless and seems to have a chip on his shoulder about Saints, from his playing days in the 70s and 80s, when we were a bogey team for Brighton and Liverpool.

It has to be more than that. He has developed into a great all-round player. He looked a class above Grealish yesterday and how much is Grealish worth?

It's hard to believe that Gao took over back in the summer of 2017. There have been 5 more transfer windows since then.

Yes, if only those 2 small groups hidden away in the corners of the away end, where they are easily drowned out by the away fans and where the acoustics are worst, would join together in one big group, like they do at away games, behind the goal at the home end, we would have much improved home support.

Let's get this straight, once and for all, The Northam is THE AWAY END. The fact that there are home fans in the corners, gawking at the away fans behind the goal is almost irrelevant: their only function is to stoke up the noise from away fans when they look like flagging: the few hundred fans in the Itchen North are especially good at this and so serve away teams even better than their own fans. #

I remember when a poor Millwall team, backed by fans on a mission, built the longest unbeaten home run in the history of English football, by scaring away fans from coming to their ground and scaring officials into making sure they didn't lose.

There weren't away fans behind the goal in the Northam in those days. Basically, there were hardly any away fans at all. If we could replicate that now, we'd probably win a lot more home games. The truth is, if we had A REAL HOME END, with thousands of noisy fans behind the goal, intimidating the hell out of the officials, we'd win most of our home games.

I used to enjoy watching Fonte and van Dijk in the pre-match warmups, passing the ball to each other from opposite sides of the pitch. Their accuracy was phenomenal. Not one pass ever went astray. It was almost as good as when Le Tissier stood on the halfway line and bounced the ball back to himself off the crossbar.

In reality, these factors are irrelevant. Research shows that when teams share a stadium, there is exactly the same advantage for the home team as when the 2 teams play at different stadiums, because they are allocated most of the tickets and so have the controlling influence on the officials.

"Official: bias is the most significant contributor to home field advantage” It sounds simple, but it’s true. Vocal fans make a difference, but not by getting into the head of their opponents–by getting into the head of the referees. Consider a few of the findings from Moskowitz and Wertheim: In examining 750 matches from Spain’s premier league, they found that in close matches with the home team ahead, referees shortened the game and when the home team was behind they abnormally lengthened the game. There was significant official bias in the allotment of discretionary time. And strikingly, in games that were not close, there was no bias at all. Referees also award more penalties in favor of the home team. To be clear, Moskowitz and Wertheim are not alleging any conspiracy against the visiting team. No one is instructing the referees to favor the home team. In fact, they are most likely unaware they are doing so. But it seems that the human inclination to please others and the propensity to conform, takes a toll on fallible officials. In fact, the evidence demonstrates that official bias increases with the size of the home crowd. The larger and more intense the crowd, the more advantage there is for the home team, especially in sports and in settings which allow for a lot of anxiety and a lot of discretion in decision making (e.g., extra time, yellow cards, personal fouls, end of game situations)."

There has been a lot of research into this. They found that the main factor was that the home crowd influenced referees to give more key decisions in favour of the home team. Obviously, a bank of noisy fans strategically located behind the goal will help gain penalties and free-kicks for their team as well as cards for the opposition. I've often seen referees react to noisy away fans in he Northam demanding a free-kick or a card for one of our players but you don't get the same effect from the quiet fans behind the goal in the Chapel "There is overwhelming evidence that referees decisions are biased towards the home team. Moskowitz and Wertheim (2012) found that the referee was the most influential factor on home advantage. They did make it clear that this is not done consciously, instead, the referees were affected subconsciously by the emotion of a home crowd. A study by Harvard Research Assistant Ryan Boyko on 5,000 Premier League games from 1992 to 2006 found for every 10,000 home team fans, home advantage increased by 0.1 goals." https://help.smarkets.com/hc/en-gb/articles/115000647291-Why-you-should-consider-home-advantage-for-football-trading

Pompey's traditional kit was pink, which is why they were nicknamed the Shrimps. You can understand why they changed it.

Where I sit, I haven't noticed any fans turning against the team. In fact, it amazes me how our fans just accept defeat with equanimity and walk towards the exit with just a shrug of the shoulders, whereas fans at many other grounds would be turning viciously against their players and manager. Newcastle fans, for example, would be up in arms after a 9-0 home defeat and would have hounded out their manager by now.

Our fans don't really have much impact on home games as we don't have a large bank of vocal fans behind a goal where they'd be noticed by the players and officials. That's why we don't get the 50/50 refereeing decisions going our way like other teams do when they play at home. At least at away games, our vocal fans are united in one large group.

That's why so many of us find it disappointing that now we have an opportunity for one at St Mary's, our fans have failed miserably to take it and instead our potentially most vocal fans have hidden themselves in the corners of the away end, where the players. officials and rest of the stadium will hardly notice them.

Imagine is fans of other Premier League teams had been subjected to the home form that we have, including a 0-9 defeat to Leicester. They'd have hounded out the manager, there would have been protests against the owners and the players would have taken some real stick. Our fans are a pretty easy-going bunch who really don't expect a great deal for their team.

That should have read "he may have"

I think he have a mild case of the condition that Richard Kiel had: acromegaly. This would help explain some of the problems he has when trying to play football.

+1. Yellow is the next worst colour to pink. Gold wouldn't be so bad.

He's not injured.

If the report is true and Spurs and Arsenal also want him, I don't think he will choose Leicester.

I was thinking the same. Apparently he was cut so deeply that you could see bone. When compared to the possible brush that Son suffered to win a penalty, you'd think that would be a red card offence.

Although they are not super-rich. Delia Smith & her partner are fans of the team they own, which is not something that could be said of Kat & Gao, who merely see it as a business.

In spite of the injury to Ward-Prowse, I don't think Arsenal will show us any sympathy and let us have him back again.

We've conceded 30 goals in the 11 games Cedric hasn't played in this season, and we've only won 1 of them.