The9

Which is a pic of him with no allocated number, albeit placed between 5 and 7 in the list! According to that list, Harrison Reed is still here too.

Which pretty much supports my argument that the other numbers aren't significant at the moment. Stephens wore 24 at Brentford with Bednarek wearing 6.

Any decent keeper who was stood on his goal-line for no apparent reason and would have been incredibly slow at getting to any through ball, maybe. Personally I think the Atkinson, Beckham and Yeboah goals are all better than Le Tiss's, but I voted for him anyway.

To answer the "what will Swansea wear at St Mary's?" question posed earlier in the thread (white home, red away), here's the answer:

I'm guessing they haven't announced the numbers because they might be planning on giving Van Dijk 6. Bednarek getting 6 is only a side-effect of their pre-season policy of filling up the spare numbers with young players. No-one's suggesting Callum Slattery will be number 9, and he wore it in Austria.

I'm fairly sure we're just demostrating quite nicely what happens when you're not completely knackered from playing matches all the time.

I happen to know an exalted member of the forum was there, so I'm expecting stevegrant's match report at some point in the next, say, year or so.

We'll see...

VERY harsh to blame the first on Forster - Bednarek got run to the byeline and Yoshida failed to cut out the quick low ball at the near post, and also left it at the last minute, which wouldn't have given Forster any time to react. Had he gone to the near post to cut out where the cross actually went he'd have left the entire goal open for any cut back towards the centre of the box, he had to retain his position to cover off all the alternatives and rely on his CB to cut out the near post. The second one, just awful.

We signed the alternative over a year ago, it's Alex McCarthy, who spent much of last season injured.

The problem you have then is the lack of pace on the counter - Redmond is an excellent outlet to stretch the opposition from a quick outlet ball (as is Long). Getting someone up for them to pass to so they're not shooting from daft positions or just running out of options is also part of the problem (Long to Sims was the most obvious success last season, not likely to be a regular occurrence).

Tbh I don't think there's much between Austin and Gabbiadini in terms of pure finishing ability, they're both excellent at it - but I think Gabbiadini's general workrate makes him much more suitable overall, so I'd pick Gabbiadini if it was a straight choice between him and Austin for one spot. Austin clearly doesn't enjoy working back and isn't particularly good at it, whilst Gabbiadini happily chases around and presses without looking uncomfortable and without raising questions whether he'll be able to get in the box at the end of it. Austin needs to be absolutely at the top of his game to appear ok with that requirement, and he was growing into it during last season. I'd love to be able to say Gabbiadini is less injury prone too, but so far that's not the evidence we've had, as his layoff wasn't a contact injury. But if both of them are asked to work back as well as score goals, Austin also looks more likely to get injured doing that than Gabbiadini does. All this means that if it comes to trying to fit both of them into a team, you'd stick Austin in the middle where his running is more likely to be 5 yard sprints to find room to stick the ball in the net, and Gabbiadini somewhere else in the final third making a nuisance of himself.

Tbf Birkdale is one of numerous areas outside Liverpool where football players choose to live rather than in the city itself. I seem to recall Hansen and Dalglish have both lived there. I have a few friends in the Southport area and one of them went to school with Kelly (nee Dalglish) Cates.

Nah, just like Spurs didn't in the early 2000s. Then again, with Newport not playing them this season they'll go back to being a total irrelevance rather than somewhere I can pitch up to laugh at them again.

I've seen him play centre back a few times in previous seasons, but Brentford was the first time I've seen him in defensive midfield. Did ok, showed the kind of enthusiasm all younger players should have for getting a go in the first team, but did make one error on the edge of the box that could have been a problem. Still, Bednarek got nowhere near his man for their first and looked like he'd been caught for pace (though Yoshida should have intercepted the cross near post as well), so it's not like Wood was on his own with the mistakes. There was another defensive mistake that caused a goal too, but I'm sure we've done that one to death by now. Awful, even given the wet conditions.

Must be boycotting...

They're only happening because all Prem clubs are £100m a season better off from the new tv deal, so "two £50m players a summer" seems about the limit (not including wages).

Seems a fairly well-worn road, we produce young homegrown players and re-sign them and loan them out until they either make an impact or we sell them to whoever we loaned them to most successfully if they're not good enough for us.

Looks a bit moot now, though it will depend what the club decides to do with Van Dijk. Tbf he's got 5 years on his deal remaining, we could basically ruin his career if we wanted to. It'll cost us though...

I think Sunderland's new shirt is bloody awful - didn't like the Saints UEFA Cup shirt much either tbh.

I'm in that. Somewhere. Filmed on May 9th, FWIW.

Just keeping the developing players along with the established ones *is* progress.

Excellent, rational, reasonable, sensible post. Good use of the right "there/their/they're", too.

We created as many chances as Arsenal last season. The quality of those chances (same number of chances but in more difficult positions to score), and taking them (add to that that we were worst in the league for goals from chances created after 5 months of the season) were the problems. For instance, Redmond took lots of shots from positions he wasn't likely to score from, whilst Long took lots of shots from positions he should have scored from and didn't.

I think you might have to explain it to him...