The9

Precisely one person on this thread so far has offered that opinion, and they already qualified it with it being in vain hope that being dismal will cause things to change for the better. Not to mention that not all Saints fans are English, and nor are they everyone's local team, nor that your argument that someone wanting us to do badly for the only reason given for not liking England actually ended up with us getting bought by Markus Liebherr and Saints doing better in the Prem than they have ever done before as a result, which completely supports that line of thinking.

Ha, that was your best bet of answering this question, too...

Well, it would be rather unexpected if we went the remaining 12 games without conceding, the all time world record (and Premier League record) for successive league clean sheets is 14 matches by Man U in 2008/9, and we've "only" done 6 so far. So stating the obvious a little there. Hoping for a Man City League Cup win in a week's time, which will make a EL place a little easier by moving the EL qualification positions down to 6th assuming City finish in the top 5*. NB If City come outside the top 4 and win the League Cup they take a EL space for Cup winners, but assuming they come 5th it pushes the first EL qualification position to 6th. If they come 6th you'd still have to finish 5th to make the EL (unless the FA Cup winner is also in the top 6, in which case 7th becomes a EL qualifier as well).

Did anyone get one? I emailed but when they said they only had large (aka medium in normal sizes) I decided to stick with the signed Fonte one I've got, which I'd have probably sold if the unworn ones were a decent size.

I'm on the fence with JWP, but I'd say Romeu and Clasie have both overtaken him in the pecking order this season despite his improvement in overall effectiveness and seeming to find a position that works for him.

Januzaj at least fits the "big club reject" model that constitutes part of our transfer policy. Plus as he's young his wages might not be at megastar levels yet. He's shown ability at the top level and probably just needs more time to develop. Andros Townsend is way further down that road, is as developed as he's getting, and would have been an absolute waste of money.

Interesting that you use Turkish illustrating that Everton have done it as a way of suggesting he thought we never could. I'm not sure that logic follows. If anything it supports the point that he was saying we could make it but we'd have to spend loads, which is being disproven by Leicester (but only due to a hell of a lot of circumstances aligning). Step away from the stadium debate. We're consistently proving that 32,000 is about right for us at the moment and anyone wanting a cheaper game or definitely to get in can go to cup games where there are usually plenty of tickets. The reason MK Dons have a huge stadium is because Asda and IKEA wanted to develop the area for retail and the only way either of the developments could go ahead was if they built a stadium too - one of the nice planning tricks councils often use to leverage community facilities they don't want to pay for. As MK were also trying to attract a top-level side to make the stadium viable and whilst the planning was being considered there was the chance of getting the 2006 FIFA World Cup and having MK as a venue for that, they committed to building a 40,000 stadium in order to get the site developed. Obviously it's cheaper to build something big when new as expansion is a lot cheaper if the infrastructure is already there, which is why they had a completely empty top tier for the first 5 or so years there. Not an option for Saints, who were upgrading from a 15,000 fanbase and trying to keep costs viable. Even in the Championship the cost of stewarding the corners was sufficient to close them when money was tight, remember? Ditto with West Ham converting the Olympic Stadium - due to the nature of the deal, they were stuck with more seats than they needed so they've been flexible with pricing because they already have the seats they don't need so they may as well try and get people to use them. That's also something Saints don't have as an option. We have to fork out massive amounts of money to extend, and there's little evidence to show we'd fill it for more than 4 games a season - provided they were on Saturday at 3pm. The record attendance at MK is still only 28,127 for football, and 30,043 for the rugby world cup, which suggests MK really don't need that extra space. In Darlington's case building a daft-sized stadium they didn't need and the maintenance costs of doing that was a contributory factor in bankrupting them.

He's 100% correct because everyone has known that matches could move due to Europa games since whenever the Europa League started playing matches on Thursdays, which was years ago. Your question about "how is it complicated to see" is also completely valid, but not in any way related to the accuracy of MLG's automaton response and doesn't affect how accurate he is. Now if you want to argue whether the comments aimed at him are "unjustified", that's a different point again.

The problem with international football is how difficult it is to get footballers to play a different system to the one they usually use for their clubs - with a major tournament Hodgson should have time to do some coaching and plan his options. The other problem is that fans see the club systems and think "why don't England do that"? When it's often the case with midweek get togethers that there just isn't time. Of course on the flipside Hodgson's always been a fan of 4-4-2, and Leicester are tearing up the Premier League playing pretty much like that, so maybe he sees an opportunity to spring his favourite formation on international football where if the evidence of the Prem is anything to go on, centre backs will have forgotten how to defend against two strikers. More likely though he'll stick to a 4-2-3-1, which makes a bit of sense if there's a core of Spurs players like Dier, Alli and Kane in the team, but not much sense if he sticks with the old guard. Dunno why I'm bothered, I'll be being from Monmouthshire for the tournament (or at least the first two weeks of it) and may as well wax lyrical about Wales' 8-2-0 formation.

Funnily enough when you look at the results with and without him he's only started losing games since we beat them at Old Trafford. I wonder if that knocked his self-belief? Hardly to blame tonight, they were gash for an hour without him.

That'll be the point where the "player who was bombed out of a big club won't want to do that again" theory gets tested...

Annoyingly I went for a correct score of 1-0.

They went out to around 17/2 on Betfair Exchange before kick off.

Yeah, looks like a natural replacement for Mane...

Hoping we'll make an offer for Sisto, he looked good against us in August and looks a natural replacement for Mane.

And if they'd announced it as a Sunday no matter what, people would be moaning that they'd "moved it for no reason".

Aw, love them, and Skate Ian Darke just couldn't believe tiny Midtjylland could think they could beat mighty Man U, despite them beating Saints, despite Saints beating Man U etc. So much cobblers being talked about how they wouldn't have expected to beat Man U. They beat us. We're a point behind Man U.

Stekelenburg has already got himself back in the Dutch squad based on his performances for Saints. However Netherlands have not qualified. I think it's remarkably coincidental that Rooney disappears off the face of the earth literally days after Hodgson says on national tv that Rooney is his captain and is going to the Euros. With Man U not really playing for anything and Van Gaal probably looking for a reason to leave him out he's probably getting knee surgery so he's ready for the summer. He was pretty effective on the wing against Saints last season. I'm still waiting to see if UEFA take any money out of my account. Got hotels booked in Lille and Paris for the first week of the tournament, we're flying back the morning of the England v Wales match, unless we get tickets for it.

Bloody hell. Shame.

I can't even tell you if Leicester are going to finish in the top 4 this season for sure. But nor can anyone else, and there is a ton of evidence that the sides who pay the most money finish the highest. Leicester's performance is an outlier compared to all the wage vs league position data of the past 20 years. Turkish definitely didn't say Saints couldn't finish top 4 at any point, I don't think anyone else has either. So anyway, could you clarify the strategy that you think has flung Leicester to the top of the Premier League which Saints should have followed?

I think you'll find that Dean Hammond is under contract to the Premier League leaders...

I've got an idea, how about something to the tune of "The Animals Went in Two By Two"? Anything that doesn't say he's taller than 6 foot 2 would be fine.

Along with Andreas Jakobsson. Jesus didn't sign until we were in the Championship.

Le Saux played 44 games for us from 2003 to relegation and did pretty well for us when he was fit. Redknapp junior of course just pitched up for the last 5 months and couldn't play twice in the same week...

I completely agree about how tedious it is, I haven't really given a toss about Gaston one way or another since Pochettino took over and it became obvious he didn't fit. He was a professional, worked harder than he got credit for, but it became obvious within 6 months that his skills weren't suited to the League we played in and soon weren't suited to the way we played either. He's also lucky we had Osvaldo showing just how bad terrible buys actually can be.