The9

Without a few hours' worth of video reviewing how players usually go for blocks it's impossible to know what their "natural position" is anyway. I will keep mentioning that the clearance before it was stopped from going into Newcastle's half by Colback's elbow.

I'm just glad those who thought we couldn't have success without obnoxious fan-unfriendly policies and the leadership being utterly d1ckish have been proven wrong.

Karren Brady did all this stuff at Birmingham in the 1990s too.

When my home town club went bankrupt I chose a university which had a Div 1 team which was far enough away from home that I would have my independence and near enough home that I could get there in case of emergencies. And then I went to see the Skates a couple of times to check I didn't like them more. I didn't. I could have ended up in Leeds/USA if my grades were awesome, or Hull had I not decided it was way too far. Plus the Southampton University Open Day was re-arranged after being cancelled for snow, and really badly organised, which was the kind of thing I was after. Nearly 25 years on, and the glory hunting has paid off with me now supporting a top 3 Premier League side AND thanks to Newport's 21-year scramble back to the Football League, a top 5 League 2 team who've done the double over Portsmouth already this season.

Including the fact that the clearance loading to the shot Fonte blocked with his arm was blocked by a Newcastle player (Colback?)'s elbow.

There is no "major Forster issue", he's doing well. One crap kick on Saturday and maybe he should have yelled at Gardos to leave the clearance (which he was right there for) but as Carragher said, once you're committed to it, it's very difficult to just "not" do it.

Hopefully it will be, but none of us know if he'll be back as he was yet.

Oh, and bit of random info, Granty says there are only 100 in existence. One of them is in the possession of the kid Steven Davis hit with his shot at St James' Park. If he'd like to elaborate on that "100" figure, I'd be fine with it.

What about the 2006 Saints Apparel Flybe sponsored yellow away shirt with blue stripe down the sleeve that was only sold in the end of season concourse jumble sale from players' stock? Or are you counting the crappy 1976 FA Cup embroidered limited edition as that one?

No, they're so awful and so poorly sized that most of the people who bought them want to get replacements so they're out of stock. Also, if I could get a yellow one, it would be staying in the shrinkwrap/hanging in the wardrobe so it wouldn't be able to bobble all to hell like the one I actually wear has. Now would be a good time for me to apologise to the people on the kit thread who I said were being oversensitive about the bobbling, pulling etc. my long sleeved home shirt has about 30 pulls on it, the stitching has pulled and come off near my jeans pocket, and the "Saints Teamwear" pebble on the front disappeared months ago. Plus I'm not a bloody 2XL no matter what the label says, and they also don't have any long-sleeved shirts to replace it with. The navy away sat in the wardrobe for 3 months before I wore it for fear of scagging too.

I don't mind them, so far this season my household has won two Saints shirts with their ads on the front from various online stuff and a bluetooth veho speaker, headphones and something else with veho on it which we haven't opened yet from the score prediction competition on Facebook. Also got a couple of Pebbles and stopped bothering with them a matter of days later. So I'm doing alright out of it!

I think the thing with reserve keeper can be misleading, Davis is on the bench for experience, and also so the other keepers can get experience in Dev squad and (previously?) Youth games. If they're on the bench for the first team they're missing out on matches. I honestly don't see Gazzaniga getting another contract based on last season's performances though.

I no longer have a problem with Gardos, he's shown he's worth his place based on his defensive abilities, just don't ask him to make a passing decision with the ball at his feet. The reason he hasn't passed to any opponents or been caught on the ball in the past couple of games as much is mainly because we've adjusted the decision-making so that if we're under pressure at the back with the ball at the back, we now pass it to Forster or one of the full backs instead of Gardos. His clearances is defensive situations are fine, but he does give it to the opposition too much (including Ipswich) when he's trying to play it out of defence. Now ideally I'd like our defenders not to have that handicap, but we're working around it, so it's not an issue at the moment. The Yoshida for Gardos swap at the end of the Arsenal game showed how Koeman felt about the balance between the need to retain possession at the back and opposition's (complete lack of) aerial threat though.

I wouldn't include Rodriguez because I have no idea if he's going to be able to be as good as he was. I'd put Elia in because he's been great and has plenty of experience, and would play Davis ahead of Mane in the hole because Davis is everywhere, defends as well as he attacks, is the player who links our defence and attack in the middle of the park when we're carrying the ball, and is the main reason teams can't keep a rigid defensive shape and don't just sit back and defend long balls and crosses from us. Mane is also a superb impact sub. Would probably go with Tadic on the right though overall I think he's been playing within himself, though Ward-Prowse's free-kicks and set pieces offer another dimension, so it's a close one. You'd have to wonder about anyone not going with Forster; Clyne, Fonte, Alderweireld, Bertrand; Wanyama, Schneiderlin to start with though.

Another ref could have given handball against the Newcastle player who blocked the clearance immediately before it with his elbow, too.

We DO lack cover at right back, because it significantly weakens the centre back position. Albeit Gardos has been less of a liability since we stopped passing it to him.

What, against Ipswich? Based on their one, lucky looping headed effort on target which happened to go in the top corner? We slaughtered them for the 10 minutes we were actually trying and spent the second half camped on the edge of their box failing to create a shooting opportunity. Like in whole of the replay, they weren't going to score in months and only one side was ever going to win it. That also had nothing to do with depth or tiredness, and everything to do with attitude - which was right for the replay.

Reed has come along so much we can add him to the depth chart, and Gardos has shown in the past few matches that despite his ponderous decision-making on the ball and dwelling in possession, his defensive positional play and ball-winning skills are enough for him to contribute too. We've also added Elia, and Mane has shown he can play in the hole, so we're a couple of players better off now than we were when I was ripping apart the lack of depth everywhere except midfield in October-December (and even then the problem area of midfield turned out to be where we were strongest in depth in theory). We've still got a problem without Pelle or Forster though, but the way we've won away without Alderweireld, Wanyama and Schneiderlin in the last match shows we've got enough to beat anyone in the bottom 12 even with a couple of injuries. It could well still come down to having key players available in the borderline home games (the other top half sides below us) and as ever that might be down to a bit of luck.

He's our best currently fit player and... your opinion is wrong.

Just in case this goes anywhere, I'd buy one too.

You understand that the market on Betfair reflects the fact that there are loads of Arsenal fans out there, right? Just like Saints dominated the first 10 minutes at Old Trafford but were longer odds to win after kick off despite nearly taking the lead a few times, because all the Man U plastics woke up and bet on their team to win when they found out there was a match? Basically what's happened is Arsenal fans have got carried away. Best result for us yesterday was a draw, but then we're only 5 points behind City with them to play Chelsea away next (and us home to Swansea). They've got Liverpool, Man United, Spurs and Swansea to play away, our only top half aways are Chelsea, City and Stoke.

Fair to say they were comfortable and settling for a 1-0 win before we got carried away and gave them a couple of easy ones. But equally they've been awful some weeks, mostly without Toure.

I was told that the "mythical next level" couldn't be achieved. Something about requiring massive expenditure. Hell yeah we can catch City, they've got CL and other Cup games and have already shown they're subject to the odd silly blip, we've only had one of those, away to Burnley. We'll need to win our tricky top half home games against the likes of Liverpool, Spurs, Swansea and West Ham though, as well as beating the bottom half, and Stoke away. They've got Chelsea in the League next up, if we win against Swansea and they lose we'll be 2 points behind them. Or to put it another way, if we can get to mid-May in the top 3 and with Man City only 2 points ahead of us and one game to go (away to them), we're in with a shout.

Agree with this, but not your choices.

I'd be asking if people who don't pick Davis have seen us without him. He's been our best player apart from Alderweireld and was the only player who added tempo to the team until Elia arrived.