The9

It's after Man City A (thankfully a Sat 3pm ko on Nov 28th) and before Villa (H), which is also 3pm on Dec 5th.

Fairly sure everyone thinks we have a stronger squad. The argument to be had is whether we have a stronger team. Which I feel we don't, as no matter where you sit on the Alderweireld/Van Dijk scale, there's no comparison whatsoever between Schneiderlin and the three players we've tried to replace him with so far (Clasie/Ward-Prowse and Romeu), and we're weaker as a result. Over time that may improve, and we may even do better this season over the course of the 38 games despite it, as we have greater depth of quality which means our challenge may not drop off so much when key starters are injured. At the moment, however, that gap hasn't been filled and we're trying to find ways around it rather than the impossible task of resolving it without spending a fortune.

There's an unequivocal "Cortese is not interested in Leeds" story in the Mail today. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3309553/Former-Southampton-chief-Nicola-Cortese-won-t-buy-Leeds-Swiss-banker-waits-right-option-returning-football.html "However, the Swiss banker has already declined several offers to run or buy clubs since his departure from St Mary’s and will only consider realistic options." i.e. Not just lazy journo stories where they've just gone Cellini = Italian, Cortese = Italian, Cortese = ex-football chairman, and written any old crap.

Quite.

It was definitely a dive by Bertrand, he waited for the challenge, moved the ball enough so M'Vila didn't get it and made damn sure he fell over. The only contact with M'Vila was on M'Vila's left thigh when Bertrand is already halfway down. However... ...the point is when the defender is sliding in and missing the ball like that the attacker is ALWAYS going to ensure he gets clattered just enough to get the foul without getting injured, and the only way to guarantee that is being in the air when you get hit. Bertrand drew the foul, but M'Vila was out of control and it was definitely a penalty (as I've said before, just like Targett sliding in at West Brom was a pen even though the player dived and there was no contact, and just as Butland on Remy was a penalty on the weekend too).

I am aware of that, but that's what they said on Solent Koeman said, and they said it before that happened. It's not like Koeman's allowed to bring Cedric on when Mane swaps wings for a bit, is it? The chosen solution removed the identified problem area in all situations, at the expense of some Cedric overlapping - and a quick look at the action areas (happily provided on the stream I was watching) showed we did almost all our attacking down the left side - whether that was design or necessity I don't know.

You may well be right.

I'd be disappointed with any less than 9, happy enough with 9-11, pleased with 12 and delighted with any more than that. Palace away will be as difficult as Arsenal or Spurs home in its own way, they're all better than they were last season. But I'd be disappointed if we didn't manage at least one win in that lot. As usual I expect nothing from Man City away, and to misquote Jamie Carragher for a moment, with the greatest respect to them, we should be beating the likes of Stoke and Villa at home... I can see us winning 5 of them, but I can also see us losing 4 of them!

Depends whether you think we'll be the destruction machine we were of bottom half teams for the first half of last season. I think we're struggling to win some of the kinds of games that we cruised last season. But last season we were useless for most of the last two months. So basically if we can avoid a massive fall-off in form at any point (we had 2 last year) we might do better than last year, but we're probably going to have more close games which we don't win compared to last year. That feels in line with "better squad, but not better team" to me.

Just realised I put that we had "8 more than last season", we actually had "8 more last season". i.e. we're doing nowhere near as well. Which isn't a surprise as we won 5 straight on a couple of occasions after the dodgy first two games.

Does a Rangers fan refusing to talk to me on a stag do, because I told him my nan was Catholic but I wasn't, count as a hate crime? Just asking, because I'm not sure what the chances are of the majority of the population being someone who isn't in any of the minority categories of hate crime, and therefore impossible of having a hate crime against them. Because obviously that weakens the impact of the comparison - "lots of people who can't have hate crimes against them have none, but people who we have defined as being the victims of hate crimes have hate crimes against them". Isn't this actually about how many people, gay or straight, feel at risk of physical attack, irrespective of whether it's for reasons of homosexuality, race or whatever? Because there's every possibility a straight person could be a victim of a gay-bashing if they were displaying the wrong "characteristics", and let's face it, the thugs involved aren't usually keen on nuance or thinking things through. i.e. Raw figures on "people getting attacked in the UK", and raw figures on "homosexuals getting attacking in the UK" are your comparators.

"Official" estimates from an LGBT group whose very existence is predicated on there needing to be a problem for them to resolve - I can't imagine why they might want to hugely over-estimate the extent of the problem.

Your desperate attempts to drag every argument back to "them foreigners is bad and there's loads of them and aaargh terrorists innit" makes you look like an absolute moron, just for the record.

Anyone who's seen the post about the libel laws on the main board? I'm just surprised it's not getting locked for the outing of someone based on half-heard pub whispers.

I always thought of Steve Rider as more of a Sportsnight type. The rest of it seems pretty much spot on. "Tell me where we were talking about 2015?" Er, when we started discussing current attitudes to homosexuality.

Exactly, all the crap said about him needing to go down to get a penalty, when it was a foul whether he fell over or not. This is precisely my argument about diving - if refs give penalties for actual fouls WITHOUT players needing to fall over, then it reduces the number of dives to begin with and removes any "legitimate" incentive to do so.

Forster is a worse keeper based on Saints appearances in the past year and a half. Flaps more, less accurate kicking, less confident on crosses, stays on his line too much and less quick decision-making on through balls. Stekelenburg is assure and confident and that comes across from the defence. Forster can work on all that though and may become better than Stekelenburg by his age. He has more physical presence, but needs to use it more, probably better reflexes as he's younger and longer kicking range but not as good with short passing or general distribution. Not much in it with shot-stopping though, but Stekelenburg has made far fewer mistakes than Forster in a similar time frame comparing the starts of the last two seasons.

Yeah, hit him on the back, so definitely a penalty.

Remy stays on his feet, it's still a penalty.

To be fair it was only a penalty and he's not even the usual penalty taker, Mahrez let him have it - so I can see them struggling to score if they spend all next week trying to set him specifically up to score for a 10th game in a row.

Said on the radio earlier we had 8 points more last season, before kick off. So the answer will be in the 5-8 range depending on how we did in the equivalent match last season.

Stekelenburg's strength is being an excellent goalkeeper. When you've got as good a keeper as we have, teams will think twice before trying to beat him with long shots, so the quality of chances he's facing could be more difficult to save to begin with - I'd also point out that they're only the shots on target, there's no indication of shots off target, which can be caused by players trying to pick out the corner against better keepers or being rushed into a decision by a rapid decision-making keeper in front of him. His presence is probably responsible for quite a few of those. Need more data about location of shots etc to draw any firm conclusions.

As I heard the first 5 mins on Solent, I can confirm that one of the commentators had spoken to Koeman about this and been told that he picks Yoshida for more defensive ability when Mane is played at right midfield. i.e. he doesn't think Mane/Cedric is strong enough defensively down that side.

Because there was contact, and Bertrand waited until the tackle before shifting the ball away and taking the hit. I'd say it was more like Targett's foul on McClean which should also have been a penalty - and the foul on Remy today which also should have been. You chuck yourself into a tackle which impedes a striker you shouldn't even need to make contact if the player has to take evasive action. Then players wouldn't HAVE to fall over to get penalties for fouls committed on them.

"Dominant". I had Bertrand down as MoM, excellent overlapping today and involved in lots of our play as everything went down the left for most of the game, didn't have many problems defensively either. Van Dijk was good too, until that stupid run in injury time which could have cost us. Equally annoyed at Pelle for his lack of corner-flagging in injury time, how often do players have to be coached on game management when we're one up in injury time FFS, Ward-Prowse did the right thing, straight off to the flag.