The9

Except Mane always plays all over the park when he's in the side and most people only put him in the line up out wide to make it fit a convention, and we usually pick him alongside the central midfielder. As for Long as a left midfielder, well, it worked all of last season and led to him scoring at Newcastle. Here's his heatmap against Villa from the 6-1 playing this way --------> http://www.whoscored.com/Matches/829751/Live/England-Premier-League-2014-2015-Southampton-Aston-Villa And here it is against Everton in the 0-3: If anything he's playing more centrally against Everton. http://www.whoscored.com/Matches/958476/Live

We basically played the entire of last season (and the season before) with 4 attacking midfielders/strikers, the only reason it's an issue at the moment is because we don't have such a strong defensive unit, which we addressed bringing Romeu on. Had it been 0-0 when Romeu started we might still have lost the half (and game) 1-0 but no-one would be talking about disasters, because there weren't any in the second half. Cedric does know how to defend, and I'm still not sure what people have seen to suggest otherwise. Lukaku being much bigger and quicker than him isn't really a criticism of his defending, especially when he's being asked to attack down the wing as well and is bound to get caught wrong side. The centre back who always gets wrong side and can't recover (I'm fed up of saying his name, but he did it on the halfway line for no reason and recovered with a sliding tackle in the box and backpass which got him credit, ironically) is much more appropriate for that kind of criticism. That's positional naivety and making mistakes, as opposed to doing what you've been told to and not being able to defend as well as a result. Also, for the last goal, he was the only defender left after 3 of them went to the ball, not sure what he's meant to do with that other than stand up and try and force Barkley to go somewhere where someone else might get back - which he did, and Yoshida's recovering lunge nearly blocked the shot as a result. The problem with playing 3 at the back is that it exposes the flanks and forces the CBs wide, and you get even more of the kind of running around recovering we've seen in the Prem games, rather than the structured bank of 4 with 2 in front and the wide midfielders tucking in that you are basically guaranteed with 4+2 sitting defenders/midfielders. To be honest I'd rather we at least tried Romeu/Wanyama for a whole match in the Prem before throwing out an entire system that's served us so well in the past 12-18 months.

We want lower teams to drop in so we're ranked higher (we're almost certainly going to be in Pot 3 anyway but being in Pot 2 would make things much easier), and the lowest ranked team in our group to be Rapid Vienna (though due to the proximity to our coeffecient it's unlikely we'll be in different pots). I'd also like the really silly furthest east sides like Astana and BATE to stay in the CL so we don't get them. I could do without needing to go to the awkward to get to bits of the Balkans too. Not so worried about Albania for some reason, that would be quite amusing.

And FWIW I think we'll win 2-0.

The lesson I learned on the weekend was that if we play with 2 DMs we don't get sprung on the break or up the wings as much and we look much more defensively sound. I'd say that team (except Martina at left back and lack of Davis until Clasie is fit) was pretty much spot on. Though Caulker may still be injured. So if the lesson you're talking about is that we need a more defensive AM (which we had) I'd say that's a fair point but isn't the issue, and if you're saying we learned something other than "Romeu and Wanyama seems to work well", I'd have to disagree.

Can't believe my comment saying exactly this didn't post.

With the exception of Feyenoord, Red Bull Leipzig, Red Bull Salzburg, Groningen and Vitesse at home. Plus he set up our first goal against Newcastle.

Terrible up front. Even Billy Sharp can get in that side.

I don't think Targett's quite good enough, but I'm not going to blame him with the lack of help he had, he's second choice and that's what we get. He's got every chance of improving anyway. Fonte had a couple of shaky moments at Newcastle along with the rest of the defence, but he's also spent half of pre-season yelling at the left side of the defence and covering for them, so it's not entirely surprising. Thought his composure, positioning and decision-making was personally fine on Saturday, considering the situation around him and the lack of support in front. It's way too easy to blame defenders when they've got players running at them or playing passes through the lines with no pressure on the ball.

And the one of us there..?

5 ex-Saints on the pitch, 2 of them playing for Bournemouth.

They've clarified the bit about players distracting defenders from offside positions without actually playing the ball, but in this situation it doesn't make any difference, because he was attempting to play the ball and that's been "interfering" for ages anyway.

He was absolute toss last year against us in April and December. He only humps us when he's got Yoshida marking him, and in December 2014 even that didn't help.

Awful decision. I could see why their header was disallowed but absolutely diabolical offside decision for the Liverpool goal, he would have been offside LAST year, never mind this.

Oh, and can someone dig out that picture of the JJB/DW Stadium?

"1500 to Arnham is pathetic". Though it was also more than our allocation and about half the number of Saints fans actually in the ground.

I cheered the goal and cheered it being disallowed, so confused.

I thought he was one of our better players as it happens, everything directly problematic came from someone going straight through or past Yoshida or up the wings.

No, there's only a place for the winner.

I know, I mean Jesus, I was a Newport County season ticket holder in the Beazer Homes Midland Division in 1995 but I'm most going to spend 2 seconds trying to somehow prove that they're a bigger club than Cardiff City, even if County did finish above them for a brief time in the mid 80s when they achieved some of their highest ever league finishes and Cardiff were a terrible 4th tier side. I also saw County beat them in Division three in 1982/3 and in the Welsh Premier Cup once - even so, poky bottom division side not bigger than currently much more successful recent FA Cup Final losing rivals.

Nope, Cedric's a great player when he's got a midfield in front of him. I was a lot more bothered watching Lukaku run past Yoshida where he gave him a 2 yard head start than Cedric where he overpowered him - and again, with a midfield we mostly stopped that happening.

10th on 40 points in March, rest the first team for every Prem game before and after the Europa knockout games, 5 point gap to relegation places with one match left, I'd be fine with that.

We can't beat them twice (well, home and away, but not in the 6th Round AND the Final)...

He could, I just forgot he existed for a moment.

So, from my bit of investigative work, we'd sold about 280-ish* to the people who had 12 or more aways plus Vitesse (the top priority), and we'd sold 340-ish to people with 11 or more aways plus Vitesse by first thing Thursday. That also of course means that we sold 60 to people with exactly 11 aways plus Vitesse on the Wednesday. Taking that estimate as an indicator, we'd have about 400 sold on Thursday night (10+) , 460 on Friday night (9+) and, assuming the numbers increase slightly as more people become eligible the fewer you have to have attended, they're probably expecting us to sell out to those with 8+, which is today. Failing that they'll definitely go tomorrow. Interestingly they are also now offering •Tuesday 18th August (9am) 2015/16 Season Ticket holders who attended the away game against Vitesse and at least three domestic away games from the 2014/15 and 2015/16 seasons I imagine this includes every single person who went with the official travel club and jumped the qualification requirement, because surely otherwise we don't HAVE anyone who got a ticket for Arnhem and went to only 3 domestic aways at the time the Arnhem tickets were on sale? *I know exactly how many, but let's deal in estimates...