The9

Personally I think Mayuka's only on the bench because Gallagher's injured.

You can easily make a case that if Schneiderlin was in the team, centre back Alderweireld wouldn't be looking to shoot on the edge of the opposing box and pull up injured; you could say that Schneiderlin being available for a pass (or calling to warn Fonte) could have stopped that backpass, you could say that with Schneiderlin in midfield we're in possession more often and don't even concede the free kick which Rooney takes, or that he tracks van Persie. And you can even have him take the penalty instead of Tadic, or whisper that the keeper always dives to his left, or whatever. They're all pretty spurious, but that's the nature of speculation - as said above, no-one can say those things wouldn't have happened. What can't be argued with is that Schneiderlin has been excellent this season, and missing him from a decimated midfield has certainly had an impact. The lack of creativity in the last couple of matches specifically stems from Davis being asked to play Schneiderlin's position and thereby being 20 yards further away from our attacks.

We lost to Man City, which was to be expected. Since then Davis has been playing out of position as a defensive midfielder, it's difficult to claim that having Schneiderlin back wouldn't make a huge difference because it would allow Davis to sit further forward and pull the strings. That's the thing with having a poky squad, your options get limited by your players being marginalised by playing out of position and it impacts the whole team not just the position they usually play. Alderweireld coming back rather too rapidly for my liking from a hamstring tweak was probably responsible for his (IMO) by far worst performance of the season on Saturday too.

He started looking better for Saints with a run of games, he hasn't really had that anywhere, and when he does, he gets sent off or injured. He'd be ideal sitting in the hole at the moment with some defensive midfielders behind him, just being able to create for a striker who actually might get onto his through balls. I've been saying that for 2 years now...

Bertrand will be getting a rest against Chelsea over Xmas and his form in the past 4 matches has been sketchy at best, I'd give him the chance to get it out of his system. Don't think Schneiderlin will be risked, and you'd hope (of there was still any question over Alderweireld's hamstring) that we'd be able to cope with Gardos and a midfield of Wanyama, Davis and whoever plays in the hole (I still prefer Tadic there, but as we don't have Pelle available we could change formation altogether). We have missed Davis in more advanced positions though, makes such a difference to our creativity.

The yellow for Hesketh was probably about right. I thought if it had been a lump like Wanyama not a waif like Hesketh, he'd have got a red for it, as the impact would have been much worse. However, on watching it back a few times, he was face down and unable to stop himself sliding into the keeper practically on all fours, having been knocked off balance after lunging for the ball long before the keeper was there.

The Man U offside goal against Liverpool yesterday was ridiculous, lino clearly just didn't see Van Persie's flick-on. Having said that, the (other?) lino was stop on for the third goal, which all of us watching initially thought looked MILES offside, and wasn't, thanks to Lolvren staying in. But those are decisions which actually DO get scrutinised, the problem are the 10 or so little incidents which affect every match - Saints players staying on their feet when Man U/Arsenal/Man City players chuck themselves on the floor at every touch, yellow cards for nothing much, all leading to possession turnovers and incremental yellow card totting up problems for clubs with smaller squads. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but the matches against Arsenal/Man City/Man U ALL had tangible bias by the refs against Saints in cumulative minor decisions, though also we had that awful Aguero booking - non-pen, a booking for Rooney for dissent, etc to give the pretence of fairness. I think the worst ones this season have been the pulling back of advantages to attacking teams though, we had a couple of infuriating ones against Man City where the ref clearly had no idea what he was doing.

On another note, I saw someone I know on Facebook posting that there was fighting BEFORE the match, this all seems to be about afterwards?

How's your delete function? And I'd imagine a load of the yobs would be blaming stupid things they do when drunk, too.

Erm, you appear to have made the mistake of thinking that people who are pointing out that you are wrong to assume the fighters are "council scum" also think that hooliganism is a good thing. It's perfectly possible for you to be castigated for some neanderthal thinking on your own part (your assumption) without those people supporting the violence. On a completely unrelated note, I lived on a council estate until I was 9 and did my Politics degree dissertation on the Policing of Football Hooliganism.

Oh, and one other thing, why haven't they automatically added the Season ticket holder's seat number to "Favourite Seat" on the system? You actually can't do it for yourself until a Cup game, because your seat is always reserved (to you) for all the league matches - and if you're in 41 or 42 you can't do it for this match either!

We went online to reserve our own seats in Block 41, only ever once been covered by segregation (against Man U when we were in L1 and they took the 3300 not the 2700 or whatever it is), but due to the online booking system not being able to differentiate between sections within Blocks, we couldn't reserve anything in Block 41 because the whole thing is unavailable. This is even though it's impossible to actually give Block 41 to the away side without also doing that for Block 40, which IS available online. In the meantime, my wife had also gone in, and because it was before 9am I was getting the "not eligible" message. Then at 9:01am I was getting the "you already have 2 tickets" message, because she was logged in with 2 reserved too. When she kicked herself out (after I'd re-added her to my Friends and Family list from which she'd been unfathomably deleted), I was then able to buy some (other) tickets, because the ones I'd already reserved still wouldn't allocate to me. But we then changed our minds, and got 9 seats with mates in Block 2 instead. With the exception of the deleting of my wife's info from my Friends List, this is all the system "working as intended", but it is SUCH a bunch of faffing and the error messages are toilet.

Watch your 80s techniques about catching where you can fall apart with 2014's footballs. 1994's footballs for that matter. The reason keepers punch now is that the lighter synthetic balls regain their shape more quickly so are much more prone to "knuckling" (i.e. veering) than even the Mitre Delta, never mind the Multiplex or one of the older balls. The '94 adidas Questra World Cup ball was the first one I noticed obviously swerving at lower speeds. Players are far better athletes now and also more likely to hit a ball harder and faster overall (though there have always been some with that kind of power, logically it should be more widespread). So as a keeper, if you don't know where the ball is going to be when it gets to you, the safest thing to do is block it away to a safe area, rather than risk glancing it or missing it altogether and it ending up in the net. The rest of it, I'm pretty sure they do all of it already, the only reason Forster didn't claim the 2nd goal as a cross was because the entire trajectory was out of his range until the moment it dipped suddenly onto Van Persie's foot. Up until that point it looked like it was floating off the pitch, but Rooney put dip and bend on it that kept it on the pitch. The ball was moving too fast for Forster to make a decision to come for it, and the entire defence was defending the edge of the area and left it to go out or at worst a cross, expecting that it would probably go off the pitch.

That's explained to me how Cardiff managed to bolt a load of new red seats onto the back of one of their side stands over the course of about 3 months then, especially as their stadium is only a few years old.

Barcelona fans must be thinking something similar with the leaks of their HOOPED home shirts for next season. (Pics above)

I refer you to the "walking" post I made above. I'm fairly sure if it was just me driving in, parking and driving back that I'd be able to say the same - the point is that lots of people have lots of reasons that they can't do that, and some of them evidently choose to nick off early rather than get stuck in it all.

I think my argument would be that if you're going to a midweek match and it's going to take a couple of hours to get home, then that's about midnight you'll be getting in, and the last thing you want to do is add to that time if you've got to get up for work the next day.

A mile and a half? Nice little stomp if you're not with someone who can't walk that far without discomfort. We've got someone with a load of metal in their spine, someone with arthritis and (currently) a broken leggie in our lot. Two of us have knackered knees too, and there's one with really short legs...

I'd be more hopeful that we got back the free bus tickets that the City Council insisted on until we got relegated from the Premier League and Lowe wangled getting out of it as another cost-cutting exercise when the crowds dropped below 27,000. The club were meant to be providing free buses and park and ride services as a prerequisite for having use of the stadium as part of the council's Green commitment, and even the renegotiated deal for the club to be free of that requirement was conditional on us not getting more than 10 x 27k crowds a season - which we clearly are. The traffic is a side-effect of not having those measures in place. Then again, the buses to Hedge End stop too early to be of any use anyway.

I can confirm, from 5 years of sitting in a pub on London Road post-match up until this season, that if you're not out of the area south of Inner Avenue by 10 minutes after the final whistle, you'll be there for at least half an hour. There was solid traffic on the Avenue and around London Road after every Saturday match until gone 6 and until 10:45pm midweek. We've also sat in traffic in the Northam estate after a 5pm finish until half 6 this season. Even so, I don't leave matches early. It's going to be fun working out a plan for a quick getaway on 20th so I can be in south Wales by 7pm...

I remember a survey from when we were in the Prem before which indicated that we had one of the most widely geographically spread fanbases in the division. Probably as a result of the dearth of other decent teams in the south outside London, and the long spell in the top division prior to the 7-year blip. Loads in Winchester, Basingstoke, Salisbury, Dorset, Wiltshire etc., (and two in Newport). As far as "leaving early to beat the traffic", when I lived in South Wales and came to midweek matches I used to leave my seat at 90 minutes and slowly walk down the steps to the exit before pegging it on the final whistle, jumping in the car when completely out of breath and consequently getting halfway to Swindon in the time it would have taken me to get to the M3 if I'd left it another 5 minutes. This was brought home to me on Monday as we waited for full time, walked to the car in near enough the same spot I used to use, and then spent 50 minutes just getting to Hedge End.

From my not-particularly involved recall of it, people just accepted that he was going to make loads of money from going to moneybags Blackburn and accepted it. Weird to think what passed for big-spending back then when you look at how much Saints have spent in the past 6 months alone.

You can't use the term "MILF" for something that happened before the term was invented in 1999, you'll create a wormhole in time, or something.

An early leak of what half our team will be wearing next season... Warrior are rebranding to use the New Balance name, in boots as well as shirts - and this is Liverpool's 2015/16 shirt.

I look like frigging Nostradamus now. :/ Need to get the confidence back by beating Burnley and remind ourselves we're still better than 75% of the teams in this division, but Christ, a bit of luck wouldn't go amiss.