The9

Interesting, that's twice the allocation we'd be required to be given under the current rules. Though as I say, I went to Guimaraes for Euro 2004 and there's no way the local town is getting 30,000 for a match. Wiki says "The city proper has a population of 52,181 inhabitants" "The population of the municipality in 2011 was 158,124,". So basically they're never going to fill the place and the away allocation there is almost always going to be bigger than the 5%. We can't draw them for comparison as they lost in the 3rd Qualifying Round.

Just a fact or two about Portsmouth's Europa League attendances 08/09 in case there are any myths flying around... Home crowd for Vitoria Guimaraes qualifier (R1) 19612. Away crowd - there don't actually appear to be any records of this... 30,000 capacity so they'd have had at least 1500 tickets and having been there I can confirm there aren't 30000 in Guimaraes... Braga away, a massive 12,000 total attendance in a ground which holds at least 30,000 (I've been there too) AC Milan home 20,403 (can you imagine the ruckus if we only got that many for that game?) Wolfsburg away 21,015 Heerenveen home 19,612 Thanks to the weird nature of the competition you didn't get to play everyone home and away, we should probably be grateful they didn't get the chance to fill 2/3rds of the San Siro or something.

I want to know who they know on the fixtures committee to get Crawley away last night, when Newport were away at Hartlepool, Carlisle were away to Plymouth and York played Yeovil. Funny to see them not even in the promotion places, anyway.

Yes then.

The point about that is no-one should be bothered that he can't muscle Lukaku off the ball, the problem is him having to chase back after him - either because his positioning was poor, or, as in this case, because much of his job is to overlap and get crosses into the box so he's up the field - or because he's providing a short option pass at a corner. The fact that Targett, the opposite full back, was the covering defender and neither of the centre backs tells you a lot about the shape of our team at that specific moment.

Caught in possession for their second goal on the halfway line leaving us completely open, outpaced throughout to a ridiculous degree by Lukaku which isn't so much of an issue if positioning isn't poor in the first place and you're not constantly recovering, plus ran straight past the ball on the halfway line creating the opportunity for the near-chance when he made a last-ditch slide tackle from behind to get it back to Stekelenburg. There was some collective "drawn to the ball" responsibility for the 3rd goal but that was about the only time I'd say Fonte was remotely culpable.

Is Caulker actually fit? How long did Koeman say he was out for at last week's press conference?

It'll put off at least a few hundred if not thousands, a Prem survey from when we were in the Prem first time around indicated Saints had one of the most widely-distributed fanbases, lots of people from outside the city.

Sarcasm assumed.

I find people saying things are embarrassing embarrassing.

You're talking to the bloke who posted the heat maps of Mane's positions earlier. I'm merely pointing out that it's not the straight lines of "do we play Davis or is the side solid enough to support a more creative/attacking player at ACM" because we did both.

Which at least makes sense.

Usually the reason is that people are on holiday, I'm not really at a loss to work out why people (many of whom don't live in the area) and especially people with kids, struggle to attend a Thursday night game that is an additional cost. Few people are going to be taking their kids to a midweek match holidays or not, and lots of others will struggle to arrive in time for kick off. Plus we're currently selling tickets to ALL of Norwich, Man U, Swansea and Midtjylland home and West Brom and Midtjylland away, that's a lot of expense for people who don't have STs or do and have paid for Vitesse or Midtjylland already this month. We'd also have Watford away if it hadn't already sold out.

Yeah, I happened upon that "SD" picture on Virgin for the Liverpool match last night, it was almost as bad as the block-pixellated cack ITV Sport used to have for pre-HD, post-analogue, broadcasts in 2005.

The answer is that we currently need to pick DMs because Bertrand is missing and we don't have anyone as good as Alderweireld to partner Fonte. Plus we're conceding lots of goals by not doing that and we've shown we're capable of scoring goals with either Davis or anyone else in the CAM role. It is also bloody obvious that sometimes, if we're too defensive and the opposition isn't threatening (eg the West Brom 0-0 last season), that we should become less cautious - but that's not an option at the moment because we can't afford to risk under-defending as it's been shown to produce worse results. Also, despite your protestations that it's simple, we actually picked Davis AND Mane in the same team 21 times last season, and they didn't both play CAM in those matches, so there's a lot of nuance.

The composition of the four is 3 AMs and a striker, minimum. Always. Even when Davis is an AM.

Just for the record, I've now moved the 3 I had in the home end on, and ain't nobody having my away. Just a week and a bit to look forward to it now... and 2 other Saints matches in the meantime to distract me. Still not sure how anyone with 3 aways could have got a Vitesse ticket unless they sold tickets for the travel club to those without the necessary entitlement - you'd HAVE to have had people with fewer than 3 aways for that category to exist (and people who didn't go to Newcastle as well).

For God's sake let's not add Clasie into this discussion.

Rodriguez started but so did Davis - that's not a replacement! I agree that there's a slight difference between Mane/Davis in that ACM position, but I'm still saying that's whoever is the ACM there's a front 4 and also that it's not the main issue, which is not having 2 DMs. Davis moving to a more defensive role really doesn't count, because he's not a DM in the sense that Romeu (or Schneiderlin, or Wanyama for that matter) is. Or if you like, it definitely does count, because he's not good enough at it to make anyone think it's actually 2 DMs. So basically: -----Pelle-------- X-----Davis------Y Romeu-Wanyama is slightly different to -----Pelle-------- X----Mane-----Y Romeu-Wanyama But is very very different to -----Pelle-------- X----Mane------Y Davis-Wanyama Because Davis tends not to sit (not enough DMs to protect the back 4) AND is very different to -----Pelle-------- X----Mane Davis------Y -----Wanyama-------- because not enough DMs to protect the back 4 - and depending on who X and Y are, potentially not enough defensively minded players to protect the full backs either.

As long as no-one calls it 4-3-3 I'm fine with it.

Ha ha, me too.

Fair enough, but Davis has been on the pitch this season for Vitesse away, Newcastle away and Everton home, a win, draw and defeat. So how is not having him supposed to be so detrimental? Surely it's the lack of 2 DMs rather than who sits in the CAM role that's the key determinant here?

I appreciate there's a big difference in playing a more defensive-minded Davis in the AM as opposed the more-attack minded Mane (and Long/Rodriguez for that matter) and it would also impact on the shield in front of the 2 DMs, but that's irrelevant when so far this season we've barely played with 2 DMs (Clasie/Wanyama at Feyenoord was one obvious exception, and the second half against Everton with Romeu/Wanyama). When we HAVE played the 4-2-3-1 with sitting DMs we've looked nearly as solid as last season. I'm more than happy to play whatever back 4 plus keeper we can get out there with Wanyama/Romeu sitting in front, the rest of it should be able to take care of itself whether it's Mane/Davis/Long/Rodriguez or what. Cedric reminds me a little of Evra in his first few Man U games, he's been overpowered when exposed by the players around him, but clearly knows what he's doing.

Looking at your comparisons, everyone else is in both, so basically you're saying the difference is Davis being replaced by Rodriguez. Which would make a big difference, if only it had actually happened.

When Schneiderlin and Wanyama played alongside each other Davis (if playing) ALWAYS played further forward than them and that with the wide midfielders was the "3" behind Pelle. Sometimes Schneiderlin pushed further forward too, which is when our nominal 4-2-3-1 became a 4-1-4-1 (or a 4-1-2-2-1 depending on how advanced the wide men were in relation to Schneiderlin and Davis). Even so, there was never fewer than 1 striker (Pelle), 2 wide attacking midfielders and one attacking central midfielder (usually Davis or Mane), hence 4 attacking players - and sometimes an advanced Schneiderlin operating basically as a conventional box to box CM.