Nordic Saint

But, how on earth are we going to get rid of him? No other club would pay a fee for him, would they? I guess the best hope is that we can persuade another club to take him on loan if we agree to pay part of his wages. It really makes you wonder why we spent so much money in transfer fees and wages on players like Hoedt, Elyounoussi, Carrillo, Boufal and Vestergaard.

He worked with Puel at Nice and seems to have made a lot of money from players sales. Nice are a relatively small club, who've been mid-table in Ligue 1 for a few years. They've changed managers a few times under Fournier. Some interesting player sales there including Nampalys Mendy, Neal Maupay, Jean Michaël Seri, Maxime Le Marchand, Saïd Benrahma, Alassane Plea,Jordan Amavi, Dalbert. The current Nice squad cost very little in transfer fees. It includes players like Balotelli and Wesley Sneijder brought in on free transfers as well as goalkeeper Mouez Hassen who was here on loan under Puel. For a club in the business of selling players, he looks like a good choice. He could help ensure our hold on the net spend trophy for years to come. https://www.transfermarkt.com/ogc-nizza/alletransfers/verein/417

On the bright side, you might say: no other club would want to buy most of them.

If you look at Brighton's accounts, for example, you can see their annual revenue includes "owner's contributions". He also paid for their new stadium out of his own pocket whereas our club had to go into debt to pay for a new training ground.

It certainly has! That's why they replaced him. They had one of the worst defences in the Bundesliga when Vestergaard was there; now they have one of the best.

Excellent draw. There will be very few Premier League teams left in the 5th round after that draw so IF we beat Derby, we might get an easy passage to the final.

People who say Saints have never had one of the most intimidating home atmospheres obviously weren't around in the late 70s, when we did. To be honest, atmosphere is boosted enormously by winning a trophy and when we won our only major one it resulted in us having one of the best home atmospheres in the country for several years afterwards. 1977 was the peak, when there was deafening singing on all four sides of the Dell and away teams used to fear coming here. There was a similar effect at Leicester when they won the league, although in this all-seater era it's never going to be quite as intense as it was. It's difficult to judge the atmosphere at other grounds based solely on when they play us. It has to be assessed over the whole season. One thing is for sure, Liverpool historically have the best home record in English football and their kop has been a major factor in that since the 1960s, whether we like it or not. https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/9927450/do-not-publish-historys-top-home-team-is

It seems we caught on a bit late: BABY SHARK FOR MATTY CLARKE By Staff Reporter Friday 21 Sep 2018 08:15:00 Browse all News Stories articles A terrace chant has finally been bestowed upon Matthew Clarke. Witty blues on the road to Peterborough took to social media and local pubs to share their topical chant before kick-off. Baby Shark is a child's nursery rhyme which has gone viral around the world this September. Originating in Indonesia, the video has had over 1.6 billion views worldwide on Youtube, with celebrities fuelling the #babysharkchallenge on Twitter. And Pompey fans have pounced on the chant to fit it perfectly to Clarke's name. "It was ridiculous, there must have been a hundred or so of us singing Baby Shark at a football match. It was silly, the Peterborough lads were joining in. Great away day", said Liam Wells, 33, from Baffins. "It's not quite on par with the Kabamba song, but it tickled me, I have a new version to sing to my daughter now!" added Chris Sutton, 29, from Milton. "It's simple and effective, every player should get a song before kick-off, it's the way it was in the past", added Trevor Deacon on Facebook. https://www.otib.co.uk/index.php?/topic/196798-baby-shark/

They have been playing against 10-man teams. 7 teams have been given red cards against them so far this season.

As we're finding with several players, other clubs will take our players on loan until the end of the season, send them back to us to pay their wages through the summer months, then take them on a free when their contracts finally end. They can do this because we have so many overpaid players in our squad, like Carrillo and Clasie, that no other club would pay a transfer fee for. But, how are we going to get rid of players like Hoedt and Elyounoussie who are so bad that other clubs don't even want to take them on loan? Old Les really has left a very expensive mess behind him.

Several of our players looked outclassed by an under strength, average Championship team. the way they played today, Long, Vestergaard and Targett would not be good enough to get into a top Championship side. What saved us was an outstanding individual performance from one of the few top class players we have left in our squad, Redmond. He was one of the best 3 players on the pitch. The other two were Derby players, Holmes and Lawrence. The second half reminded me of when we were outclassed by Wolves Reserves in the League Cup last season. Old Les really has left us with the weakest, most overpriced squad we've ever had in the top flight. The only saving grace is that 3 other teams, Huddersfield, Cardiff and Fulham, also have weak squads. I'm not sure that any of them would be good enough to get promoted from the Championship this season. We have a tiny nucleus of good top flight players: Gunn, Bertrand, Hojbjerg, Redmond and Ings, and Valery looks like he might reach that level too. Most of the rest need to be replaced. The problem is no other clubs would pay good money for them and some of them we couldn't even loan out as they are so bad. At least we have a good manager now and a few players like Hojbjerg and Redmond he can build a team around. I look forward to some much needed strengthening of our squad in the next few transfer windows.

or Targett.

Derby are fielding a strong team. All of their regular first teamers are either in the starting 11 or on the subs bench.

Agree with all of that.

Sadly, it seems that Bournemouth noticed before we did.

Trent Alexander-Arnold. Clyne is still only 27. What a great player for Bournemouth to get.

Yes, totally agree: he comes off his line quickly, makes himself big and narrows the angles, making life much more difficult for opposition strikers. McCarthy is an OK goalkeeper but doesn't do those things anywhere near as well as Gunn did tonight. Whether Gunn will succumb to Watsonitis after a few months remains to be seen.

He is a very good player, he's getting better with every game and he's played in our three best performances this season v Arsenal, Huddersfield and Chelsea. He has a great future ahead of him.

Great performance. There were 10/10 performances from Yoshida and Gunn but the whole team played well together and have clearly been very well drilled by Ralph in training. Yoshida has played in our 3 best performances under Ralph: the wins v Arsenal and Huddersfield and the draw tonight. We miss him badly when he doesn't play.

Good luck to him. He deserves all the success he gets. He did a fantastic job for us. His win rate of 54% still stands as the best of any Saints manager since the 1890s. I thought at the time that he was going to do for us what Revie did for Leeds and Clough did for Forest. We were all gutted when he was sacked in January 2013 after a very good 2-2 away draw at Chelsea and here we are 6 years later going into another game at Stamford Bridge with our sixth different manager since then. There isn't much job security in football management.

And, of course, he will be able to link up with our other Moroccan Norwegian, giving us a monopoly on Moroccan Norwegians in the Premier League. They'll all want to join us after they hear that.

He played a few games for Hull in 2017 but was dropped for a few months after their 4-0 defeat to Everton so he didn't play in the 0-0 draw at St Mary's. He was then brought back for their final Premier League game before they were relegated, a 7-1 home defeat to Spurs. They didn't extend his loan deal after that. At least he has previous experience of relegation.

Not where it mattered they didn't as there were City fans directly behind that goal at the Northam end. If Saints fans had been there, they might well have made the ref's mind up for him, the way that the City fans did for Hojbjerg's red card.

We saw once again today, why this needs to happen. The away fans behind the goal have such an influence on the referee. As soon as the City fans reacted the way they did, you knew the ref was going to give a red card, and the lack of reaction from behind the goal when Ward-Prowse went down ensured no penalty would be given. Research into why in sport there are more home wins than away wins found that the key factor was the home crowd's influence on referees meant that most marginal decisions went the way of the home team. Most of the play is in the central strip of the pitch and obviously penalties are awarded there, so having a noisy bank of home fans directly behind the goal is critical. We don't have one so our team misses out on crucial home support. If the fans in the Kingsland/Northam corner really believe that by being there they are drowning out the away fans, they are sadly deluded. They should be directly behind the goal, where they can make themselves heard and influence the ref.

You must have been to a different game to the one I was at. He looked slow and weak so the game largely passed him by and every one of his free-kicks and corners went straight to a Man City player except for one corner right at the end which amazingly found Shane Long's head. I suppose you could say that at long last he showed he knows where the back of the net is even if it was at the wrong end. When he plays, we surrender control of midfield: simple as that. He might make an average Championship player but at this level he is a liability. I'm really looking forward to Ralph clearing our some of the dead wood we have accumulated and strategically strengthening our squad in January.