The9

I wanted to see if there was any obvious reason we lost. We were just insipid, got sucked into their play-breaking and time-wasting, and didn't have any better ideas than using our worst crosser to sling the ball into the box for the best part of an hour. Plus long ball in the rain is a mug's game, half the passes just skid off the pitch.

Different eras - there were a lot fewer competitive matches in those days - the World Cup qualifiers barely even got established and were still small groups until the 60s (plus England didn't need to qualify for '66 or '70), and the Euros were only the SF and Final until well after Charlton retired with barely any qualifiers - plus the bad teams (though there were fewer of them) were far worse, so Charlton was always going to have scored a load in matches against rubbish sides. A comparison between Rooney and Lineker would be slightly more valid, but even then the World Cup and Euros had fewer teams so fewer opportunities to score and there were fewer minnows (but the ones there were were still comparatively much worse). Worth noting that both Lineker and Charlton played in World Cup semi-finals as well.

FWIW I thought Mings was toss against us for Ipswich, seemed like a nice bloke though so shame for him.

Not sure if serious or brilliant.

We'll loan out enough players to make naming a decent 25 viable.

Cool, that would have been my first stop had my copy not migrated to the garage - nice to know my half-baked "could have been worn after 85" theory had legs too.

I watched it back yesterday (mainly to see if I was on the telly). We were so uninspired and uncreative it was incredible - though I can at least understand the long balls now, as it worked in the first leg. Having also rewatched the Norwich match, it was like night and day. Just shows the fine margins when players might not be totally committed to getting themselves into an extra 6 or more matches.

I remain unconvinced that Rodriguez's middle name is "Enriqus" not his father's name "Enrique", no matter how many times the Premier League reprints it wrongly in their player squad documents. I do miss Jack Cork from our list though. Nothing to do with his ability.

Aside from Virgil - which is completely unnecessary and mildly narks me too, most of our "culprits" have a multi-name Spanish or Portuguese naming convention, for which nicknames are often more effective ways of identifying people than one of their four or so names.

Even when he was with us Lallana was more about retaining possession high up the pitch than directly creating or scoring, he was a safe pair of feet to hold the ball and create space for others to do things in. Always seemed to be the pass before the assist, which makes sense if you consider his trickiness draws defenders to him and creates space elsewhere. Strangely after over a year with Saints and a couple of high profile performances I'm still not sure what Tadic is actually good at.

I'm fairly sure I saw him wandering around Winchester on Tuesday afternoon - he also had a black guy in a brand new Saints shirt following him around - I had my headphones in but the Saints shirt bloke was definitely saying something about Virgil as I walked past him. Was difficult to tell if he was a really weird mate or a really weird stalker.

There's also this from 87/88, who knows how much longer afterwards they still had those shirts, looking for a reason to use them... http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Bournemouth-v-Southampton-1987-88-John-Kirk-Testimonial-/201408117907?hash=item2ee4dbfc93

Trying to find obscure fixtures from '85/'86. Think this one is a bit early as end of '84/'85 so most likely they didn't even have that shirt made yet. https://uk.storeslider.com/bob-cummings-testimonial-programme-grimsby-town-v-181761866864e.html

Do you mean the light blue one with the navy flashes on the shoulders?

I think you're doing him a disservice there, Martina's looked solid but unspectacular in all his competitive games so far. He's definitely back-up though.

Salmonella?

You can statistically prove that something that doesn't have an impact isn't having an impact, at that point any opinion about whether there's an impact or not becomes moot. The impact of immigrants on the UK is a tiny percentage of cost or expenditure and far more issues have far more tangible effect on people's actual lives. Immigrants are only significant as they're easy scapegoats, just like various other media-driven folk demons of various previous periods. It's a sociological construct, people who aren't doing well always find someone else to blame, and people who are doing well often use them to deflect the blame.

There's plenty of room in plenty of places at the moment, the overpopulation of the planet isn't an immigration problem, it's a birth control problem. We can probably manage for another 30 or so years before the bits we want to live in get a bit too busy. Arbitrary figure btw.

You wonder on what desperate grounds people are making that decision whatever their status is.

It's a pretty straightforward, popularly held, statistically proven to be utterly wrong, view. For morons.

Except he hasn't, and he's been excellent other than against Midtjylland at home, even excelling in some games to the point where fans started a new song about him being mighty. He was absolutely bloody superb against Arnhem at home for a start.

I think at a time when Koeman is already forced into making numerous unwanted changes he'll be that much less likely to make more in areas he doesn't have to, or use players he doesn't yet know that well in a competitive environment for Saints. He's already picking newcomers Cedric/Martina because we sold Clyne, Romeu as we sold Schneiderlin, and Stekelenburg as Forster is injured - plus there are other changes with Targett/Yoshida/JWP for Bertrand/Alderweireld/Wanyama (hopefully temporarily). Even Rodriguez is a little bit of a gamble with the injury comeback and lay-off, but at least Koeman knows his ability in the Prem, so adding another new player into that mix at this point probably isn't a priority in a position where we have lots of options.

I think we're in the process of developing him into Mane's replacement, and it's nice that we don't have to do that by chucking him in the deep end. I think he'll gradually get more game time in home matches as the season goes on.

I've been surprised by the proliferation of the images, and shocked into realising what's actually going on out there, so in the sense that the ends justify the means, I think the use of the photos has been successful. There's no need for that to continue now, however, the shock quickly goes and I really don't want to become inert to images of dead kids. It has been a particular pleasure to see all the "anti-immigration" amoebas squirming as a simple counter argument which operates on their thicko level stares them right in their stupid faces, some of them have even worked out there's a difference between refugees and (im)migrants, albeit only so they can separate their base arguments from the images.