The9

Literally the definition of getting their pricing perfectly right.

Fair enough re: timings, went from memory. It still made no difference, we were garbage all the way through, initially clearly due to tactics, and then clearly due to lack of effort as well as still due to tactics.

Funnily enough Liverpool's success last night was also due to the lack of effort from their opponents' better players.

It had everything to do with our formation, Bournemouth gave the ball to their left back who repeatedly attacked alongside Gradel 2 on 1 against Cedric, and no-one other than Cedric ever got near enough to challenge for the ball. The tactical change still left that space and Bournemouth continued to use it to attack us and send people forward for the set pieces they were winning. Having the ball that far up the pitch so easily meant our entire team was on the edge of our box when we did get the ball, and we very rarely saw Cedric getting the chance to go forward or play the ball into attacking positions to counter them. The play being so compressed so high also meant it was easy for Bournemouth to get close enough to stop us playing out from the back, and often when a CB had the ball the only option was a hoof. Sometimes we got a second ball and the play was further up the pitch and there was a wing-switching pass on, but the players making those passes weren't the right players so they weren't effective and we mostly tried to play Mane/Cedric stuff down the right and swing it in the box where Bournemouth's defence headed clear. Basically the tactics nullified our wide threat and the lack of effort (and Bournemouth's hard work in marking and closing down off the ball) meant that we didn't create anything significant.

Nothing he can do if they go out there and just don't do what they're asked, Koeman said on Solent when we were sat in the queue away from the ground that they'd discussed the need to match Bournemouth's attitude. They didn't even get close.

Yet having taken him off on 25 minutes we proceeded to play far worse and concede two goals without creating anything. Yoshida's usual level of ball-playing was the level of our passing all night - too slow, and mostly backwards. That was mainly due to Bournemouth closing down very well. When they had the ball, it absolutely was our narrow midfield that was the problem - they were at the edge of our box with the ball before anyone even closed it down, and that didn't change with the substitution, nothing went through the middle all match and it didn't have to for them to get into attacking positions.

Absolutely no idea why Forster is getting criticised, he's better than he was before he got injured and the clean sheet record in no way has anything to do with him not having to make more than 2 saves in 4 of those matches.

There were a bunch of absolute morons in a row in front of us who turned up absolutely caned off their faces, spent the entire match talking utter nonsense to each other and not watching the game, started off by banging on about the fight they'd just been involved in, then had one of them on the phone trying to arrange somewhere to meet for another a fight, were already known to the police from earlier and only let in because they were less risk in the ground than outside it, and spent much of the second half taking it in turns to try and intimidate a big bloke who had the front to have an opinion they didn't like. At least one of them posts on here. Someone near us said "it's all kicking off" when they came back from the concourse and one of the blokes in front got very excited about this and desperately tried to find out from them what was happening and where. Turned out it the "kicking off" was just their mate throwing up in the loo for some reason. We absolutely do have our share of utter helmets.

Van Dijk by miles I should think.

Which is absolutely not an issue when we don't concede any.

I agree with the general principle, but I can also see the argument that there's absolutely no reason for the referee to have ignored the linesman in that situation so it was reasonable to expect that a foul was going to be given.

If we're not using the one we do have, that's exactly what happens. The problem yesterday wasn't creativity as much as never getting the ball into positions to be creative from quickly enough.

I was wondering that, it just ends up pitching up all over the rest of the threads.

Charlie Agree with you re comparison with TV revenue but not too shabby I read somewhere (not sure which club - Everton perhaps?) that gate revenue equated to 25% of their income If you look at theoretical figure from St Marys potential revenue could possibly be; 20,000 season tickets at average £500 = £10.0m 10,000 day tickets x £30 x 19 games = £5.7m 47 boxes x £50k = £2.45m Add food/programmes etc = £1.71m based on 30k x £3 x 19 games Say +/- £20m So well below TV revenue but nonetheless not insignificant Becoming far less significant as the tv money goes up this year. There's a strong argument that a bigger ground means you can also sell more merchandise to the higher numbers of occasional customers you get than the stuff around filling seats for every match. We could get more money by selling our shirts abroad via impulse buy, rather than assuming mail order will meet the demand too, but the long and short of it is that we'll have to be more successful to drive revenue up in most of these areas.

I'd say that the demand for London-based Premier League football is significant and there are a lot of tourists (a small percentage, but still a lot of people) who will go to any Prem game they can get into just to have done that. Southampton doesn't have that urban tourist base, and the same tourist demand isn't there for Championship football, so Championship comparisons might be moot.

Literally not true.

Haha. there's a queue. Yeah, I don't want a large, which is why I didn't chase up the one they offered me the other week. Go ahead.

Agree that we tend to swing crosses in more often than not, but I don't necessarily agree that we need a number 10 unless we actually try to attack like that. We didn't try and do that at any point despite the fact that Mane is perfectly capable of taking the ball and running at people down the middle. Yesterday his touch was dubious and he never had the time or space to make anything happen, but the ball was rarely in the central midfield area under control by either side at all last night.

For those saying "we lost it in midfield", the problem was that the ball basically went nowhere near our midfield as they were sat narrow in the middle and it went down the wing, mostly from the left back. Then they ran out of ideas and played for set pieces (hence all the diving), but that's by the by. They didn't create much at all despite having a load of attacking possession AND despite us allowing them to the edge of the box unchallenged over and over, and still they only scored from two set pieces. Every time Bournemouth had the ball their players were in the holes where our players weren't - which is all about tactics. Then when we got the ball from them we always got the ball in an ultra defensive position, rarely played a short forward pass and even more rarely then got the ball forward again to an attacking wide player (and when we did created nothing from it). They overloaded us by pushing their full back(s) forward which created a 2 on 1 for (mostly) Cedric as the right sided DM stayed too narrow, and Cedric then couldn't get out to attack. We very rarely switched the ball to the opposing wing which was where all of our space was if we did win it back, and the couple of times we tried it, we had defenders booting it off the pitch. The narrow midfield defended the centre pretty well (I only remember them going through the middle once) but we gave up far too much territory and never looked likely to counter, and their players busting a gut to close down space meant we couldn't create anything anyway. Frustrating as hell.

You have to have the ball to be creative, we barely had it yesterday and Bournemouth worked very hard to close down everyone off the ball so there were no "easy" passes except the one back to our defenders (which we use far too often anyway). Last night's issue wasn't creativity, it was getting done over tactically, not working hard enough to make things happen and just not doing the basics. Even with Long and Austin on the pitch up top as a pair, the number of times they moved enough to open up a pass to them could be counted on one hand. We conceded way too much territory down the side before and even after the tactical change, and because there was a need for a striker to track back it either meant they weren't up front to win a ball when we hoofed it away, or Bournemouth created a chance and we reset with a goal kick. Cedric was left completely exposed all night and on a few occasions we looked for an outlet to the wing in midfield and there simply was no player there. The few times we did get the ball on the floor wide the quality of pass in behind the defence was either not good enough (and often went off the pitch), it was a low-success cross which only found defenders, or (later on), our strikers were offside from having to wait and wait for the ball to come forward.

What size is it?

I'm fairly sure that as there used to be so much less written about football and so much less media, that the "original" definition probably came from maybe one source (Charles Buchanan or Brian Glanville, maybe even as late as being promoted by Brian Moore or Jimmy Hill on 3-channel terrestrial tv with no live matches except the FA Cup Final) and the term rapidly became used for wider local rivalries in media. There's definitely something out there somewhere which said "only within the same city/town", but modern usage is "we found a thing in common so it's a derby". Somewhere in between is the wider definition of "area", eg the Tyne/Wear derby, the East Anglian derby and so on, which are all regional extra-city rivalries. Little point in worrying about it in a society that literally thinks literally means figuratively.

Fairly sure Koeman's comments are intended to show Pelle what he expects of him all of the time and how he can get back in the team, as opposed to specifically anything he did on Saturday. Flicks have been part of his game since he got here and don't come off that often, but when they do they usually create chances.

Re: Pelle, he's not played much recently and seems a bit off the pace, can't say I thought he was particularly wasteful and he's always been quite flicky, and anyone saying he doesn't hold the ball up well usually is living in cloud-cuckoo land, his hold-up play is usually excellent. But at that point in the match Chelsea had been all over us for ages, our defensive midfield (especially Romeu) looked tired and weren't getting to the ball quickly enough, and no-one was getting up to support the strikers on the rare occasions we got the ball back and played it up the pitch, which wasn't very often anyway. We lost the game because our wide men got pinned back and Chelsea played well enough to wear us down. I'd have got Romeu off at least 5-10 minutes before he conceded the corner we let the second one in from (and though Koeman had JWP on the touchline when the 2nd goal went in, he didn't take Romeu off even then, he replaced Targett). Pelle had practically nothing to do with it and had Cahill and Ivanovic all over him whenever the ball went near him.

Anyone would think the long-standing criticism of him being a bit slow off his line due to his size was relevant or something. Fair dos to Forster, Hazard running in definitely distracted him, just like Stekelenburg was distracted by Falcao running in for Willian's free-kick in the Stamford Bridge game, which had a lot more pace on it and was much tougher to stop. I was more bothered by his weird flap at the Ivanovic header, which was only a yard to one side of him but which he tried to swat away. Stekelenburg would have got down much quicker as that's one of his strengths over Forster, and probably held it as his handling of low shots is much better.