The9

With the "Stam-meg"? Yeah. Went ahead in Jan 2015, Jan 2013, Sep 1999, Egil in 2-1 defeat in Feb '97 too. Pre-'95 Soccerbase only seems to have scorers not times, so I may be doing Simon Charlton an injustice in 1995 as well, before '93 they don't even have scorers.

If you mean the FA Cup match, it finished 2-2 and we won on penalties, that counts as a draw.

Rodriguez put us one up there early on in one of Pochettino's first matches (end of Jan 2013), we should have won that one as well.

I *hope* they'll stay for one more season, but then that's what I hoped for last season. If we finish top 4, no player has any excuse for leaving other than money. We are all pretty much in agreement that even with CL money we can't match Chelsea and Man City for money, right? That leaves one other team with a CL spot who might be an option (whether it's Man U, Arsenal, Spurs, etc) or they're leaving for a less successful team. Bertrand and Alderweireld will be different cases with that in mind, of course, as we'd have to agree deals.

Personally I've been saying "we'll see, if we're in the top 6 in mid-January" and generally downplaying it. So I'm ready to go pop. It's not like we've got a ton of difficult matches - top 2 away, which we'd expect to lose anyway, but the rest of the top half who we still have to play will be at home (except Newcastle next week), and the whole of the bottom half to play. Plus there are very few weeks where we have multiple matches, so the problems of December shouldn't be revisited - unless we get another horrendous injury crisis. Even losing key players for key games is not really an issue now, only Spurs, West Ham and Liverpool home look like matches where a couple of injuries here and there might make the difference (Pelle and Forster aside).

Let's just do both.

Given the delays, I don't think it's a reasonable expectation that he'll be up to Prem speed the second he comes back, and it's a gamble to assume he'll play a significant part.

All indications are that we're overachieving and huge expenditure is not part of the plan - it'll be interesting to see if anything changes if we make the CL with the money that comes with it (or indeed the EL, which is less rewarding). So far I don't get the impression that Katharina is the spending type - it was basically 7 out 7 in during the summer when adding around 5 more would have insulated us against all but the very worst crises, and we've lost points due to tiredness and injuries we probably didn't need to as a result (Villa and Burnley away being the obvious ones). As it is, we're still one CB, GK or Pelle injury from likely points-costing problems, and we're now in a position where winning most of the 10 remaining games against the bottom half sides and the home games against the top half (Liverpool, Spurs, West Ham, Swansea) could put us in an incredibly strong league place, without even considering the aways at Newcastle, Man City and Chelsea. We really shouldn't be taking any risks from this position when you consider the money available for getting into the CL. It won't be easy, there will be bumps in the road, but top 3 is very much achievable from this position.

Last penalty I can remember for a shirt pull in the box other than the Fonte one was for Ireland in the 2002 World Cup. Seems consistent with yesterday.

Anyone got a pic of the other occasions? There's one where you can't see Pelle's number because Smalling has it in his fist somewhere around his shoulder. Compare with the penalty we conceded at Arsenal in the Boruc Cruyff Turn gamev last season for Fonte briefly grabbing someone after a Saints player had already been shirtpulled and prevented from clearing the ball...

Koeman knows the situation, he was already in charge when Osvaldo went out on loan in the summer. I'm pretty confident he's never so much as training with Saints' first team again. Would be fun if we could flog him to Bournemouth in the bizarre but increasingly likely event that they come up though.

So glad he wasn't in charge for the Spurs match when the goal decision system showed the ball had crossed the line but offside had been given.

He's on BBC tv and radio, and BT Sport (as both a pundit and a commentator). Trust me, I know what to avoid.

If we develop a negative zone trap I'm blaming you.

http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?52905-Sneak-peak-The-Southampton-Way-1-hour-doc-on-Saints-on-NBC-in-the-USA-on-NYD

If nothing else it all led to this: [video=youtube_share;skNc9RFBAek]

Chinese International Wang Dong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Dong

Although to be fair, if he was "6 weeks" from New Year's Day and they got to the Final on February 8th, it might be worth keeping him around. If he's "ready in 2 weeks" as suggested above, their group games are 19th, 23rd, 27th, QF on 2nd Feb and SF on 4th/5th Feb. No doubt his "ready in 2 weeks" is designed to say he'll be fit in time for the tournament start.

Presumably the replacement rules are the same as in the World Cup, i.e. they name a squad and can change it for injury up until a fixed cut off time prior to their first match.

Oh, I think we will have told him we will sell him in the summer, in exchange for forcing him to stay last summer. The only question is whether we make Champions' League and if that's enough to keep him around.

De Gea's been playing all season, 50% win percentage, would have to look at his save percentages, shots faced, all that stuff. But he's certainly had a couple of top-drawer high-profile games... as well as Leicester. I'm hoping you haven't jinxed it either, I've actually bet on us to win for the first time in years, 4/1 is value alright.

He did.

All international loans are conducted as full transfers, apparently. Though that's still weird terminology, because we can't get out of them transferring him back at some point.

If he leaves Liverpool (which I'm unconvinced he will), Palace seems like a likely destination. Manager he knows has faith in him, no superstars to get shoved out of the way by, limited options up front and still plenty to offer a bottom half side if used sparingly with the attack built around his strengths.

Fair point on Elia, but it's not just the player, it's how he'd fit our system and how that would interact with their system (especially difficult to predict when they're getting injury upon injury at the back). There's an element of Carrick protecting their awful back line there - they've won 70% of matches with him in the side this season (and drawn the other 30%). He didn't play until November and they won the first 7 matches he played having not won the 3 before - but yeah, up until then, 4-0 defeat to MK Dons, beating QPR 4-0, and leaking 5 at Leicester aside, most of their matches were 2 or under goals from each team. Not really sure why that's happened, maybe their game management, enough players to control tempo and keep the score down when they had no right to be in touch, but without being able to impose themselves for long enough to make chances? Would probably have to look at specific stats like possession and chances created and I don't have any access to those.