The9

I enjoyed myself today, I even enjoyed the thicko County fans secretly smoking in the loos... whilst about 20 of their peers lit up on the steps next to the away end outside in full view of the stewards without a word being spoken, because, well, it's basically outside already isn't it? Daft sods.

The wife said she could hear the bell, I was too busy yelling to notice. They were at the other end if they were there. There was a "ding dong" song from the County fans but they started that in Jena a couple of years ago and it hasn't got anything to do with Westwood - unlike the "Where's your old man with the bell?" song.

Lolage, just seen the highlights on 5. Absolutely nothing wrong with the goal, the County goalscorer just stands there and the ball goes in off his back, the keeper jumps into him and falls on the floor. The yellow card for the hilariously obvious dive was spot on too - and as I mentioned, for a player who didn't get a yellow for pulling someone back before his first yellow (which should have already been his second). From watching a slow-mo of the first goal, not a single Skate appealed for the foul, but a couple put their heads in their hands as the ball went in. Also hilarious, the Newport fans who decided to celebrate Scott Boden's unmarked header for the second goal before he'd even headed it, it was so obvious he was going to score.

You'd hope so, but as the second-best fan-owned club in the ground today maybe they're a bit touchy.

They should probably consider that Newport completely outplayed them 11v11 as well, that they never managed to create anything, and that at no point before injury time did Portsmouth trouble Joe Day in the County goal with anything other than grasscutters straight at him. Basically they have an attack and midfield full of direct runners and either none of them have the finesse to play a decent through ball or their striker(s) didn't have the nous to make runs to trouble the defence. As I mentioned earlier the most worrying things the County defence had to deal with were from their own misplaced passes when Portsmouth were already in behind the central midfielders, they didn't really threaten the goal other than that. Newport also completely carved Portsmouth open a couple of times and I have no idea how Wilkinson couldn't finish from 6 yards out with an open goal at 3 up. Oh, and the crowd was non-existent in terms of atmosphere to the point that County fans were taking the rise out of two specific people in the home seats for standing up and getting annoyed in amongst the hordes of no-one else being bothered. And of course half of them left when the third went in on 87 minutes - so the photo above was from about the 88 or 89th minute once I'd finished madly hugging anyone within a 3 yard radius.

I'd have to see it all again because pretty much everything of note happened at the other end, but the red card was inevitable after they conceded so many midfield fouls early on. The fact it came for a dive when they were already 1 down just added to the enjoyment. Only their number 8 didn't get a card, I think. Newport were nothing special, they just didn't make any mistakes, whilst the first goal was entirely the Skate keeper just assuming he'd get a free kick for an aerial challenge and getting outjumped. Their fans were entirely comical in both appealing for everything and getting very furious about not getting stuff that clearly weren't fouls.

Having seen the pitched battles in the street for 10 minutes with the County fans outside the Brewers Arms exchanging punches with the Skates from the Milton Arms last year, we didn't see any trouble today - possibly because we went in the Milton Arms. There were a load of mounted police outside the station. The bus we got on towards Gunwharf took nearly as long to get between the ground and the station along Goldsmith Avenue as Saints fans did in 2003/4 (when the Skates had overturned a car in the petrol station and there were 2000 of them outside the ground to meet us 20 minutes after kick off with the match live on tv), so I accept we might have missed the silliness. Personally I haven't enjoyed myself so much since Arnhem. (I also missed the trouble by a couple of minutes whilst sh11tfaced there).

Ok, so this is Fratton at around 85 minutes. There were 16,000-ish there at kick off.

Ok, who wants a match report? Biggest news of the day: they have refurbed the toilets halfway up the steps to the away end. Properly actually reasonably decent as well, though still too small and obviously inadequate for the number of people Newport County's mighty away following (of about 600) took. Besides that, whoever said Portsmouth can't break a team down and can only play on the break was absolutely right. Newport's biggest risk to themselves was trying to play crossfield passes and leaving themselves exposed to the break, though it didn't happen often. Also, best refereeing performance I've seen in years, their crowd shouted for absolutely everything all match long including some frankly preposterous claims, and if anything he was too lenient on their midfield. He could have sent their number 11 off for 2 yellows long before he hilariously sent him off for actually getting the second yellow for a dive near the box at the Fratton End. Their entire midfield seemed to be operating a Brazilian-style kicking rota, but they ran out of players to get yellow carded. Football-wise, Newport didn't have to do much, took their chances to begin with, and then missed an absolute sitter to make it 4 with the Skates pushing up. Away from the football, we took a nice pic of my wife on Fratton station holding up her Saints t-shirt, had a few pics with me and some Saints ST mates who came along for a laugh in the ground, which have gone around the Australian and United States of Southampton FC Facebook sites, and had a good laugh at some of the Skate responses on there. Anyway, it was bloody hilarious, absolutely can't believe that Newport have now won three successive matches at Fratton without conceding a goal, and after I nipped to Gunwharf to buy a t-shirt to wear out, following a pleasant few hours getting ripped off for food and drink in various pubs and restaurants, we are now home. I shall leave you with the image my wife took of Fratton at 0-3 to help you decide how bestest their fans are... (in a moment)...

Hi. I'm a LITTLE bit drunk.

Seems like a lot of money for players we got for under £12m nevertheless.

You forgot Leicester in that group.

They're on 35 already, beating Swansea and West Brom at home and Villa away will probably see them safe without even having to consider how they do against Spurs, Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Man U... and Everton away. They're only in trouble if they mess up in those three winnable games. Meanwhile, Palace who are two points below them have managed not to win a Prem match since 19th December in 12 attempts against such mercurial talents as Sunderland, Swansea, Bournemouth and Watford home, and West Brom, Sunderland, Bournemouth and Villa away, and even they have an 9 point cushion to the relegation zone at the moment.

Whoever goes down is going to get further improved parachute payments which were already more than enough to ensure no-one's had to get rid of players in the first year after relegation for wage reasons this decade. I do think players will want to leave, but that's more because they have an excuse to get a pay rise. Current experiences suggest Newcastle's players are the last ones we'd want to sign - and we're better off getting cheaper players of equal ability from pretty much anywhere else in the world anyway.

Oh, and in all that, I feel sorry for these poor buggers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid_Rhondda_F.C. And on that note, I'm off to Fratton tomorrow to see two inaugural members of the Third Division (and Third Division South). Long live the Football League expansion of 1920/21.

If we're ret-conning history for once, it is vaguely annoying that the early Southern League titles don't count as being on a par with the Football League title, given that at the time the FL was almost entirely northern clubs and the southern league was on a par with it in the period Saints won their titles. There's a reason Saints and Spurs both made FA Cup Finals around 1900 when supposedly "non-League" clubs - it's because the SL was a similar standard to the FL. Saints won their 6 Southern League titles in 1897, 1898, 1899, 1901, 1903 and 1904. When Saints won their first title, no club geographically below Birmingham had played in the Football League apart from Arsenal (in Div 2 until 1904). After 1901 Bristol City also left for the FL. Had the Southern League called itself something more grand, like the "Football Championship" we'd almost certainly have a timeline in which FL titles from pre-1904 when Saints won their titles could have counted as championships on a par with the FL titles. The timeline of the "Southern League success" coincidentally aligns with this: Arsenal took the decision to play in Div 2 of the FL competition in order to turn professional, and because the Southern League chose to carry on being amateur after all their top teams left in 1920, the championships aren't given equal billing. Of course it didn't help that when the bulk of the southern clubs joined the FL in 1920 it was in Division Three, and the SL carried on as a non-league shell. The 1920/21 Football League Third Division introduced Crystal Palace, Southampton, QPR, Swindon, Swansea, Watford, Millwall, Merthyr, (Luton), Bristol Rovers, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Northampton, Newport, Norwich, Southend, Brighton, Exeter, Reading, Brentford and Gillingham to the Football League. Grimsby somehow ended up in with that lot too. Cardiff City got placed in Div 2 in 1920 and nearly won it, and then came runners up in Div 1 within 4 years, which suggests that many of those Div 3 clubs could have competed in Div 2 or even Div 1 from the start. With nearly 30 clubs leaving by 1920 it easily explains why the Southern League ended up as a non-league competition - but the FA Cup results around 1900 show the actual level of the League.

Did Garth Crooks have anything to do with this?

I quite like having the football downtime at the same time as it's sunny. I can do other stuff, which is underrated. Like, er, go to Euro 2016 (or last year go and see Saints pre-season).

You were far more succinct. The thing with Leicester, is they have a system which works for them, players who are totally committed to it at all times, and Ranieri is shrewd enough to tweak it slightly all the time, so they aren't getting "found out", as we seem to be for swathes of matches at a time. Their first XI is proving it's as good as anyone in the league at this moment in time, but there's a reason the big clubs have two starters for every position, and there's still no escaping that they've been incredibly lucky with injuries and suspensions. Without that there'd be a few more games for the likes of Wasilewski, King, Dyer and whoever the hell their reserve keeper is (admittedly as well as Inler, who can't even get in the team despite actually being good), and they'd be down with the rest of the upper midtable sides, which I think they'd have been happy with at the start of the season. They do now look like making the top 4 at least, even if the wheels completely come off.

Not even "since", really. IIRC there was an interim report which made the all-seater recommendation, and the Taylor Report itself was very clear that the issues were crowd control and measuring the number of people in certain areas - Taylor even said something about all-seaters (and all-ticket games) being the easiest way to manage crowd numbers but that it wasn't essential. The government finally had something it could enforce on football fans to "solve hooliganism" and with the following wind of England in Italia '90, the clubs saw an opportunity to get some central funding to improve their facilities and didn't complain about it. The whole of the 1989/1990 season was played in front of lower-capacity terraces with numbers being counted and more ticketing restrictions, and there were no incidents whatsoever. By the time the timeframe for the all-seater rule kicked in around 1992-ish (from memory) it was obvious that was successfully managing the problem and all-seaters weren't needed. But the dictat had been issued by then and the clubs had started hiking seat prices (which were already more expensive than standing) to make up for the shortfall in revenue from the lower numbers allowed in.

Cool stat. They'd be the draws with Newcastle, Liverpool, Leicester and Villa then.

No particular reason we can't beat Stoke up there. Last season we were the better side and somehow contrived to lose it. Bit weird how we've got both Stoke and Leicester away at the same kind of time of year again, not to mention Everton, Spurs, Man City and Villa all in the last 3 months again. Suppose there are only 19 teams we could be playing though (but apart from Palace and Newcastle we played everyone from our last 10 matches at the tail end of last season too).

Timely, given my comment about Spurs. They've taken our model (and manager, and analytics lead) and instead of endlessly throwing money around haphazardly have instead recruited young talented players with a specific goal in mind, and they've got that much more prestige, that bit much more money, and a more well-known location which has helped them take it to a higher level and MOSTLY (but not last night) have a strong enough squad to rotate and keep players from getting fatigued. Just chucking money at new players doesn't necessarily improve a team. Doing that removes some of the benefits of players having built up understandings of each other's movements, and the team's system, which can be critical in making split-second decisions which matches at the top level can hinge on. Often just buying players who should be better papers over deficiencies. Look at Man U at the moment, look at City! Pleased to say we're not usually one of those kind of teams, but with that much more money we do have to give serious consideration to how we improve - I'd say the general principle of signing players who are better than the ones we have obviously still applies, but we need to keep most of the ones who've established themselves and drip-feed the new players in gradually, rather than the wholesale replacements we've had to go for in the past 2 seasons. Continuous gradual improvement seems to be our chosen path, and that's a lot more stable in terms of success than scatterbombing big money players - we should address the obvious weaknesses in squad depth, and we can do that as long as we're quick to move in the summer before the money gets out of hand.

Having stat-dumped above, you are mostly right about Saints, and probably Leicester too. The key as always is signing the RIGHT players, everyone is going to have wodges of cash and there will be some daft deals. Can't wait to see some of the moron Spurs fans getting all "we're being left behind" when the club most likely sticks to the only philosophy that's actually worked for them in 50 years.