The9

Have to say, the four of us walking around Shepherd's Bush in Saints stuff yesterday night were congratulated by a LOT of passers-by. Walked into The Green pub as the only 4 Saints fans in there, and a chorus of "Oh When the Saints..." broke out with a load of QPR fans hugging us and shaking hands and everything. Absolutely tremendous.

Yesterday's was probably the best, Man U away 1-0 was good but they weren't Champions and were in a slump, Man City win at home and Arsenal win on NYD this year were also both at home and whilst impressive not AS impressive - this Chelsea side had only lost once at home in the Prem under Mourinho at the start of the season. Sticking 8 on Sunderland was remarkable but mainly because they were bad, and beating a crappy Villa side 4-1 isn't even in the same hemisphere.

I still think he's fantastic, distracted by Falcao being in an offside position yesterday (and an all but unsavable free-kick) but he's still better than Forster and we should sign him permanently.

Yep, I didn't get to vote on that decision for some reason. Confused. Apparently John Sheridan is next in line - the recently-appointed CEO was at Plymouth with him last season. I'm still trying to work out who was responsible for Terry bloody Butcher coming in in the first place, but it clearly wasn't anyone on the NC Supporters' Trust Board. Oh, also, democratic elections for the Trust Board come January 2016 (one member one vote), have the Skates got that in place or is it all HNW stitch up?

Also, "British" as in British Isles, always good for an argument with an Irishman. We're GB and GBR for some reason, UK is never really used as an abbreviation, even with car stickers.

I got very emotional when Newport won the Conference Promotion Playoff at Wembley just like I did when Saints won the JPT, played in the FA Cup Final (local at the time!) and both promotions, though my actual match attendance for both teams has fluctuated across the past 40 years between being a ST holder and not going at all, depending on where I was living at the time, if I was still playing matches on Saturdays, and whether the other team was playing. If they played each other I honestly wouldn't know what to do with myself. On the bright side, I've seen my home town team beat the Skates at Fratton two years on the trot, and the team where I've been living for the past 10 years stuff Cardiff in Cardiff fairly recently, so that works both ways. It's a completely different thing that "looking out for Granada CF's scores" because I went to see them once and they're near my aunt's house, or "liking RC Lens because the place is tiny compared to the stadium", they could get relegated and I wouldn't give it a second thought.

50.0000000000000000000000000000001% would be enough for me, they do not have that.

Meanwhile, the Newport County Supporters Trust have today announced they've achieved their fundraising target and will take over the club subject to the formality of FL approval, holding more than 50% of shares in the club having bought out the top two shareholders. Way better than a poxy 48.48% and an agreed plan to pay off creditors without needing to go into adminstration, never mind 3 relegations. Amazing what can be achieved with a little foresight. Newport County also now has £236k more than they did have for this season's running costs.

I was amused by the comment that said "It's true, I've seen both Bournemouth fans and they're fit". FWIW when I was single and on a national software roll out in 1999 I used to have my lunch outside the place I was working to people watch, and for the entire time I was sat on the wall outside Bournemouth Register Office there wasn't a single second where I couldn't see at least one attractive girl. So I'd take second to that... and obviously as I stand next to the Mrs at Saints games now I have a similar experience.

Is I may have mentioned before, Newport County only got themselves back in the league after 25 years to make me look bad.

I played there for a bit too. Turkish loves it when I mention it...

Two things. One, if I learned "to read what is read" I'd have superpowers, and secondly, I was responding to the comment above, which suggests you haven't learned to read what is... written. Crystal?

There is this too:

My third team is Afan Lido.

People saying "who do we want in our group" isn't the same as "we have a 64% chance of making CL"...

I'm a Newport County Trust member and as of today have purchased Community Shares (Skate-style) to try and prevent them going to the wall (again, which is also how I became a Saints fan in the first place). Also liked about half of the teams in Div 1 (but not Saints) at various points when I was a kid going to Newport matches, usually dependent on FA Cup Final results. I mean like, Forest, Spurs, Liverpool, Everton and Watford, all for incredibly spurious plastic fan in South Wales reasons.

Wait til Gaston leaves...

I'm fairly sure this didn't happen. If I did, I not only wasn't involved in it, I didn't even see it. And I was posting ALL that kind of stuff when we were in the Championship and when the bed-wetters were saying we'd get relegated in 2012/13 despite being upwards of 40 points in April... Cue a Turkish search to find me doing exactly that last season.

We certainly weren't in the last 2 months of last season.

This wasn't about the end of last season, this was about the run of games in February. We were actively underachieving (especially in terms of effort) in some of the away games from Stoke (18 April) onwards and it was obvious - but you'd have to have access to some detailed stats to see how that came about - does an indicator show itself in distances travelled, is there some kind of miracle metric for slower reactions to on field actions or chances prevented?

Well, here's the "luck" element of why we dropped off last winter/spring: "Southampton, who have dropped to sixth in the table after sitting in third as recently as last month. Four points from five games, including losses to West Bromwich Albion and Swansea and a draw against West Ham, will do that to a team.": "Southampton have certainly benefited from converting more than their fair share of chances. Before the current five-game skid, 13.2 percent of their shots turned into goals — third behind Chelsea and Manchester United. For comparison, league average is a flat 10 percent.1 And while it’d be natural for Southampton to slide back toward that 10 percent rate, over the last five games it’s been a total free fall: The Saints have finished 1.3 percent of their chances, one goal from 77 shots and by far the worst rate in the league, during that span. Anemic Aston Villa are second-worst at 4.5 percent: two goals from 44 shots. What’s astounding, though, isn’t just the number of shots that haven’t gone in, but how many on-target shots have been turned away. Southampton’s one goal is a result of 23 shots on frame, a 4.3 percent rate. Again, Aston Villa are second-worst with two goals from 12 shots on frame, which, at 16.7 percent, is almost four times better than Southampton." As I've said before, the "luck" element of football is significant, but a lot of that is because everything that analytics hasn't grabbed hold of and turned inside out is part of the nebulous mass of "luck" - a high shot conversion rate becoming a low shot conversion rate could be anything, but calling it just "luck" is a little disingenous. It also doesn't say anything about our general crapness in April/May's away matches which was the ultimate issue.

I like THIS paragraph - even though I haven't read the "luck" article yet. "By multiple expected-goals models, they should’ve been in the Champions League. Instead, thanks to a second-half stretch of really horrible luck, they finished the season in seventh. There’s always an upstart that falls off in the second half, sure, and Southampton fit within that broad description, but not because of their performance: They played well enough to be in the riches of the top four."

One thing I noticed last weekend, Gomis pulling off to the far post at Swansea's first attack more than vindicated leaving Cedric out in certain matches already. Lucky for us Swansea rarely threatened after that and Gomis didn't get the chance to do it again, but had Swansea managed to get a cross in, it was an absolute no contest. At least Clyne had more height and presence in that situation. I think Cedric needs to watch some video of Evra to work out how to manage this situation - just not Evra's first match for Man U where he got taken to pieces in the air at the back post.

Seeing as Chelsea away is the only time we've actually dropped him before (and the MK Dons goals showed we could score without him, albeit against a weak Championship side), I can see why the idea's out there for this one. Mane is the key and Romeu is almost certainly getting a game against his former club as he's got a point to prove and it would be silly not to try and harness that drive, especially when it meets our usual 2 DMs away to top 6 model.

Relative to other Prem clubs, but not relative to every other club in the world - we're now able to pay more money than lots of top European teams, it's now about selling our position to players who aren't getting signed by the top 6. It's an incremental thing, but we could probably compete in wages to sign players from any Europa League sides except Spurs and Liverpool now, and are probably able to pay more than most Champions League sides.