The9

Options in the wide positions, but no actual wide players. Neither Rodriguez nor Long are "wingers" and though he has wing play in his repertoire, Mane has proved he's more valuable in the middle. Elia is more of a touchline hugger as would give us something different for the matches where we don't have an overlapping left back (read: any match within 6 weeks of Bertrand's surgery).

Kick him in the head!

I've mentioned it a number of times on here already. I'm also reading a number of analytics blogs, printing out Saints job descriptions to identify which software they use, and have the Opta season data from 2011/12 on my laptop. Saints are CLEARLY abiding by almost all of the principles of that book, and it is interesting to see the way in which analytics is being used in England compared to the whole moneyball thing. It looks to me like there are a few main areas of research to identify: - how to find out which things work and the most effective way of doing things on a football pitch by analysing the current data, (eg running predictive models, seeing the best action in specific circumstances, gathering intel about whether a backpass to the GK or hoofing the ball off the pitch is more beneficial, like by seeing who has possession and where on the pitch 5 seconds later, how many points a clean sheet is worth in England compared to Italy, etc.) - how to use the information available to support detailed scouting of players based on certain key skills I'm currently halfway through Opta's definition of actions on a football pitch, and trying to work out how to decode the additional tagging around each of those antics when recorded in XML (as well as trying to teach myself how to record actions myself, even the stuff like pitch co-ordinates is interesting [recorded against an index scale so the pitch dimensions aren't problematic for comparisons]).

Says a lot about the relative merits of defenders compared to strikers, and the relative merits of the different leagues' weakest sides too.

By most accounts on here, STH had their seats allocated into their basket for them. Unless someone else on your Friends list had already got them for you, in which case it tried to line you up in a random seat. Not much point logging on at peak times when you already have a seat allocated until Thursday.

Gazzaniga looked excellent in the U21 Cup Final, showed a huge improvement in most of his game at Leicester (completely exposed for the goals, one shanked kick with 6 defenders goalside shouldn't have been the problem it was) and looked confident against Villa. He's by no means the finished article but it was night and day compared to even his best first team display prior to that, at Cardiff, when he made the only saves of his entire first team run of 2013/14, albeit mostly from deflections and backpasses!

Conflicting signs - played in Salzburg, but didn't travel to Groningen and was seen in Gunwharf on the weekend. I'd say he was comfortably in the category of "could be useful" but I thought that last season. This season however we have the possibility of matches which may be more suited to his type of play. I do vaguely recall comments saying he'll get a chance from either Koeman or Reed.

Nineteen matches to win it (or lose in the Final). Minimum of 10 before Xmas if we make the group stages. Two if we lose to Vitesse, four if we lose in the Playoff round. I think the problem with using the League Cup for example, is that by the time we even enter, we're likely to be playing Prem sides. It also seems to be a bit of a waste of an opportunity when we're already in the last 32 due to the byes from being in Europe. 6 League Cup matches and 6 FA Cup matches, max. to get to the Finals. 19 max in EL. It's not really the same. Even getting to both the League Cup and FA Cup Final would only equate to losing in the last 32 of the Europa League in terms of numbers of matches.

Do we have a poster who would use the phrase ""Yoshida Gardos and shows why we have to buy a central defender with certain value. A couple awful. ""? Yoda?

Hmm, so turns out my mate, for convenience, allocated everyone to their ST seats for both matches - except they retyped the wife's seat number wrongly when re-allocating and she's now 17 seats away - which is why when I saw only I was allocated to my ST seat I assumed everyone else was allocated to the group area, but they weren't. Interesting to know that if someone buys your ticket before you log on that you may get offered a random seat in the Itchen for Vitesse home though!

They announced the prices before the draw was made, when there was still a decent chance of us drawing so no-marks from Albania or Armenia. Personally I thought we'd sell a pile even at £30 for the first European match in 12 years, but we won't know now.

That is bloody funny.

Strange, as I logged in at the same time as you claimed and there was a 4 minute wait. It's down to 2 now. I had all kinds of weirdness with my basket though, it offered me a random seat in the Itchen, probably because my mate had already bought mine for me.

Mine was quite random, a mate went in to buy Vitesse and Espanyol for a load of us this morning, a group Itchen booking for Espanyol and our Northam ST seats for Vitesse. It was already paid for and in my purchase history (not my basket) when I logged in - except after I'd been logged in for a few minutes the group seat showed up for Vitesse in my basket. I cancelled it - as both tickets were already booked and I'd seen them in my purchase history when I initially logged in, and now it's showing I've got my ST seat for Espanyol (which is a bit of a sod given that all my mates are in the Itchen). Most confusing.

The one thing worth considering for Saints is that if we have a big Europa run, nearly all our matches after EL games (Inc through knockout stages) are against other European qualifiers, ie the top 6. If we get out of Europe early we'll have an advantage over all of them, if we stay in Europe longer we'll at least be playing teams we'd usually expect to lose to anyway. We could still maintain a challenge just like last season by beating all the bottom half at home and away and picking up a few points against the top sides (at least until the last couple of months). You can forget all of this if we can't get an excellent CB in though. Neither Yoshida nor Gardos can play more than 15 League games this season and us expect to be in the top half.

Hardly a surprise is it, I remember Plymouth v Saints when we scored the first goal to get out of L1 (nearly) and the bloke in the home section to the right of the away fans got bundled down the stairs. It's just silly to expect that it won't cause a heap of problems.

That's a useful link I didn't know about, does it also work on the Belgian b-europe site? Seems to be the same engine running the site. Might come in handy for Euro 2016...

I can see there being all kinds of problems if they don't do something to resolve it. Most logical would be to reserve the whole away end for Saints fans, and have early checks outside and unallocated seating for Saints fans with block 122 etc tickets on the day, also reallocating any Vitesse fans into 120-122. Frankly they've already made a huge arse up of it though, and I wouldn't be surprised if they just refused to honour any tickets to be sent to English addresses.

Having not seen the seating plan before I am bewildered why everyone has gone for the half way line rather than as near to the away section as possible. Amazing what people will do when a ticket is cheap. In other news, good to know Vitesse are only going to charge us £10 in the away section too (based on the UEFA regulations, as opposed to nothing anyone has actually posted). I recall getting a refund of sorts via Lowe when UEFA found out Steaua had charged their fans £2 and us £25.

Brilliant stuff, thanks for sharing that. Bus from the station before the match and then back from "A" afterwards then!

We've already signed Martina, and what he actually said was that we wouldn't be bloating the squad. I'd say loan signings which might be dependent on our progression in the EL are precisely the kind of flexibility we need. Elia is well suited for that. We don't necessarily need a loan to buy either, as he's out of contract next summer. Gives us flexibility and him motivation. I wonder if there were conversations between representatives of all sides in Salzburg when we were all in the same place last weekend?

Nothing major for us to worry about, they have a bit turnover of players every season and they usually take time to gel. Some of their loanees might not even pitch up until later in August if Mourinho decides it's better for Chelsea that we stay in Europe...

2.8km, half hour walk. Number 7 or 331 bus will do it in about 4 minutes with a few minutes walking either end, but there's only one every half hour (apart from 7-8pm on the day of the match, cunningly).

He's on the shortlist.

As it stands at the moment, Man U for the title, then Chelsea, City and Arsenal. Bournemouth going down with Villa and Sunderland. Watford to stay up having signed half of Granada and Udinese's best players in January (if not before). I think we'll come 9th, lose in the last 16 of the Europa League, the 4th round of the League Cup and the FA Cup semi-finals. Though there is another 6 weeks of transfer window activity yet.