The9

That was evident.

Not true, Man City already won the League Cup and could still come 7th, which would leave 6th without a place if Man U won the FA Cup and finished 8th. Apart from that, you just said exactly what I did.

Ah, THAT holiday. I'm sure Ess has a version of the match report uploaded to iCloud or on one of his 3 million iDevices. I know he had the pic of Phil our goalie on the Saints Fun front page for MONTHS afterwards.

Don't even remind me about our keeper on the 3rd goal we conceded...

Here's Hamster going in knee-high on me in the first 20 seconds... [video=youtube;JFgPoiQ-skg] Other videos are available on the same subscription account.

And... booooooo... now elite-level marathon runner and general running lunatic Stu who was PrideoftheSouth at some point in the distant past scores... [video=youtube;lpE-L3uVFmQ]

Plus the "sending off"...

Ooh, look what I found: I AM NOT GRIFFO! Here's the thread about the following Forum match which got cancelled... http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/archive/index.php/t-29053.html?

Jesus, SaintsForever v Essruu's Saints Fun flashback. Giordano's girly scream and Bjorn bouncing Rabbit into the chainlink fence around the astropitch at Fleming Park via a "robust" challenge and 10 yard knee-skid... I can't even remember how many we won by now, I probably scored though. Did you play?

City having already won the League Cup have guaranteed at least a Europa place so them winning the CL just converts that EL place into a 5th CL one as described above, for 5+2. If Liverpool win the EL and take a CL place too the CL 5 are the top 3 plus the CL and EL winners, Liverpool in that situation would add a EL place as long as they didn't qualify for EL in their league position (for 5+3). If they finished in an EL position it would remain 5+2. Man U winning the FA Cup would just get an EL place of the 3, unless they qualified for the CL already, in which case that slot would become the second-highest Prem place for a non-CL qualifier behind the team that came 4th. "The only time an association can gain an additional place in the subsequent season's club competitions will be if one of their clubs wins either the UEFA Champions League or the UEFA Europa League and, at the same time, does not finish in a place in their domestic league or domestic cup which automatically grants a place in a UEFA club competition... "If that club has already qualified for the UEFA Champions League via their domestic league, then the association remains with four places in the UEFA Champions League. If that club has already qualified for the UEFA Europa League via their domestic league, it results in five clubs participating in the UEFA Champions League, and two – not three – participating in the UEFA Europa League." I'm going to try and stick it into a spreadsheet to make sense of it but there are a lot of permutations.

The thing I like is that with Accrington, Plymouth and Bristol Rovers all playing for 2 automatic places none of them are likely to be caught by a side 8 points off the automatic places (and 5 points ahead of the team outside the playoffs) with 4 matches left. Finished 3-1 to York. And Newport 1-1 so York not down yet and Newport still need a point for safety.

Just goes to show what I know about L2... York are dismal, but I guess the motivational factor of not being relegated at home if at all possible is greater than "maybe making the playoffs". I do wonder what effect a Newport goal at home (to top 3 Oxford ffs) might have on the "then-relegated anyway" York side. I'm happy for County to lose if it means York delay their relegation for another few days...

First game? Yeah I think so, along with my "wrongly labelled as someone else" goals. Come to think of it, he won MoM as well... waitaminute...?

Still not convinced there's a 5 CL and 3 EL version of this based on the wording from UEFA.

To me this says "the only circumstance on which there can be more than 7 qualifiers is if City and Liverpool win the Euro Cups AND Liverpool come outside the EL positions" - in which case we will probably have finished above Liverpool and qualified anyway (Stoke aside). Even then I'm not completely convinced of what would happen...

This MIGHT have coloured your opinion... just like I'd have enjoyed the first game less if I'd been taken out by Hamster's mad hack in the first 10 seconds and hadn't scored under a minute later. As for 12st 5, REALLY? Not even when you were smuggling that beer barrel up your top a while back? That's like, my completely unrealistic target weight.

Cheers, had forgotten him.

I can't see how them not having that useless fat knacker available is helping us to be honest. He was the size of a house at St Mary's and was clearly on his holidays in October, never mind now.

Having read a book which talked about his detailed planning at Everton, I'm not surprised that he wasn't a success at United - he didn't have time to put his structures in place which at Everton led to him with endless charts plotting contracts, development and player age regression arcs and expected players to fill vacancies 3 years down the line. There was no way he could have delivered the instant results they expected when the corporates were also in a state of flux and not particularly competent at recruiting new players. Though he also didn't do himself any favours by not quite grasping that Man U fans expect their manager to talk utter cobblers about how massive they are at every opportunity and to have no humility whatsoever - Van Gaal's got that bit sussed anyway.

FWIW the BBC site is very clear that if City win CL and Liverpool win EL, there are only 3 CL places apart from that, so in Dan Johnson's scenario, Arsenal in 4th go into the Europa League along with Man U (FA Cup Winners) and West Ham (7th and taking Man City's League Cup winning EL place because they've made the CL).

What he said. Either that or my suggestion that they get rid of all officials on the pitch and have tv run the whole thing using technology and the big screen to communicate decisions. Difficult to argue with a remotely voiced big brother app with no physical on-pitch presence, and checking offside is a couple of seconds rewinding the tape and uploading the free-frame to the screen to explain it. I'm aware it's entirely ridiculous, but where exactly are the tv companies and confederations planning on stopping with this stuff?

Funnily enough one of the biggest problems with rugby refereeing is the entirely inconsistent application of their rules from referee to referee. In a contest which can be entirely down to who team is the biggest, who the ref is and how they interpret things like rucking and mauling makes a huge difference and in numerous cases completely prejudices the result depending on how the referee is known to arbitrate. Of course there's a cult of personality around refs which makes me able to name a rugby ref but none of the players. It's possibly the worst example of consistency I can think of, and it certainly isn't a "great refereeing system". In fact the only thing they have nailed is respect for referees, which always stops when you have draconian punishments for dissent, which for some reason football doesn't want to encourage.

No-one will care about that until Leicester balls up in 2016/17 and they'll get the blame when it happens.

He'd have been awesome 20 years ago.

Scheiderlin played in our first competitive game of the season at Anfield, I saw the team news when outside the stadium and for once the cliche was true - it genuinely felt like a new signing after all the players who'd gone, and with the statement Ralph had made about he and Rodriguez staying. He was a bit off the pace in that match due to not having played in a couple of pre-season games, but his commitment wasn't questioned. Wanyama played in Arnhem but his entirely avoidable absence was a big factor in us going out in Denmark, and his actual performances and proliferation of red cards in the first half of the season were entirely unprofessional.