The9

Nice planning. I'm definitely going, as usual I haven't put a penny aside yet.

Anyone could have written it, it's a pretty straightforward article which is opinion light. But he actually did write it. Splitting hairs on JWP "width", he has played out wide - and "when fit" doesn't imply he gets a lot of injuries, just that he is injured, which he is. Also, you can be a decent writer at the age of 12, when he graduated means nothing.

I'd rather have Soldado than an injured Gallagher. I'll tell you in 10 years whether I'd rather him to a fit one. As for England U20s, here are the defenders from the last 5 U-20 or "Youth" competitions England qualified for: Matthew Upson, John Curtis, Marlon Broomes, Jamie Carragher, Mark Jackson Stephen Wright, Stephen Haslam, Neil Murphy, Adam Chambers, James Chambers, Richard Cooper Steven Taylor, Matthew Kilgallon, Andrew Taylor, Phil Ifil, Martin Cranie, Jay McEveley Kieran Trippier, Jordan Parkes, Martin Kelly, Ben Mee, Matthew Briggs, Gavin Hoyte, Nana Ofori-Tumasi Blair Adams, Nathan Baker, Ben Gordon, James Hurst, Adam Smith, George Taft, Reece Wabara Obviously a few of the last two lists still have a chance to establish themselves, but from 1999 to 2008 there are maybe 5 U-20 defenders who have established themselves in the Premier League over more than one season, and about 3 of those have been "top half" quality, with only Carragher and maybe Steven Taylor regularly playing at the level Saints will need from Targett. So the U-20 credentials really don't say anything about Targett's ability. The fact we're going to be without Bertrand against Chelsea COULD be very significant. I doubt it's the case that covering left back is a problem for Chelsea, given that they're loaning us a starter. Man City have the same kind of depth, though Clichy seems to have got worse from not playing much. Man United aren't even in consideration - their lack of depth at the back at the start of the season was obvious and due to the injuries they're so far off the pace. Arsenal have been pretty weak at the back with their injuries too, so I guess you have a point about Man U and Arsenal's lack of depth. Liverpool and Spurs have sufficient depth but are handicapped by the European competitions, Everton are probably lacking depth for Europe and that's why they've been struggling too. If City and Chelsea had the level of injuries Man U have, it MIGHT affect their chances of challenging. In our case it definitely would. And we agree that an injury crisis can hit the biggest squad, but this is about the degree to which it is likely to. We can sustain the current 3-4 midfield injuries without really impacting on the team's performance. Yes, we can go 3 injuries deep at left midfield before we get to Isgrove, but that's more symptomatic of our unbalanced squad depth than anything. But if Pelle gets injured as well as Gallagher? We have to change playing style to accommodate Mane/Long, and that's not something that comes without risk. Chelsea have Costa injured? Just chuck Remy, Drogba or Schurrle out there.

Only the ones in the "centre". They're extra. Massages to the left and right are pretty standard. On an unrelated note, you'd think they'd be focusing on providing the most cost-effective measures of improving their players by now, wouldn't you? Three physios probably isn't that many for a 30+ squad, even in L2. Moaning about it seems completely pointless, it's hardly a luxury in a business based around physical exertion.

Chelsea and Man City's second choice players in almost every position are established internationals who would start in practically every other team in Europe. Ours are the likes of Targett and Isgrove, who have limited Prem experience and are at best potentially good. Plus our backup centre forward is either our left midfielder (Mane, Long or Rodriguez) or a kid in Gallagher who certainly has potential but has been injured all season. Why is this so difficult for people to grasp? I don't think we'll sell many if any in January, but we also aren't expected to buy anyone either, and it'll be a time of rumour and unsettling of players just as it was last season. Hopefully we'll still be high enough in the table to be able to promise the chance of CL come Jan 31st.

So you think 11 players, which is "at least one good player in each position" is a good squad? This does explain why people are so OTT about Saints' squad depth.

Saving is a good idea if you have disposable income. If you're suggesting some kind of "Saints In Europe July payout Christmas hamper-style catalogue club", then I'm not sure I trust any of you lot not to do a bunk with the collection money.

We have about the same amount of depth - of those who played in a reasonable number of games last season we've lost 7 and gained 7. No-one cares that the likes of Barnard (who can't even get in Southend's team in L2 this season and has gone out on loan) have left. Which is why the "stronger squad" thing people have been trotting out has been so strange, especially when Mayuka can get on the bench this season and wasn't close last. Our success in the next 2 months is going to be at least partially down to our luck in avoiding key injuries and suspensions at critical times.

Are you suggesting that the management shouldn't attempt to plan an approach in order to maximise our potential output from a difficult period where we're likely to need to rest players? Obviously there's the day-to-day with injuries and recovery and an element of unknown with the possible suspensions, but I'd expect the management team to have sat down and worked out exactly when and where we can afford to rest certain players with what's currently known about the schedule. It's extremely naive to think they won't have a "best case" and planned a lot of contingency in for worst case scenarios - for a start we know from the fans' tour of the training with Fonte that they were studying Man U a week or so ago, so they'd need to ensure that fringe players who may be needed are taking on that information as well as the core. I don't doubt for a second that with our attention to detail ALL of those things are considered. The club knows when players are ill before they do! As for exciting, what's exciting about NOT having to check who's potentially catching you up?

Not that many league games in January, the difficulty then will come from FA Cup 3rd/4th Rounds if we draw a top team. Mane can be replaced by Long, and Isgrove and co should be adequate for other Cup opponents if there are any problems there. Who knows whether Rodriguez will be available by then too. Midfield is the area where we have plenty of depth, Pelle's fitness and the impact on wide midfield changes if he's out without Mane around is the big problem.

Afraid my sizeable Saints shirt collection doesn't include any keeper's kits other than last season's ridiculous flourescent green one. Though the Saints IFC kit did have a 2006 yellow/grey Friends Provident one in the bag not so long ago, stevegrant may know... Failing that, if you do want to go into the 2000s there's this on eBay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Southampton-FC-Goalkeeper-Shirt-2004-2005-Large-/251703924655?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item3a9ab917af This one's mid-2000s too but only £8: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Southampton-Football-Club-Goalkeepers-Shirt-Jersey-XL-Adult-/271670734761?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_3&hash=item3f40d66fa9

Good luck getting people to sing a song celebrating the success of people from other nations than their own, and with a lengthy list of country names in no particular order. It's hard enough getting songs going when the words actually form a sentence. Not to mention that international caps have been a contributing factor to us losing players to bigger sides previously and the whole international system and potential for injury interferes with our chances of club success now we have significant numbers involved.

Just for the record, I have also passed 2500 pages (not so coincidentally at 100,000 posts). I saw the FL sanctions mentioned a few pages back - can we have a recap of those? I've forgotten what they can and can't do. Can they buy players for a fee? (Not that most teams do in L2 anyway)? Can they sell players for a fee? Are they allowed to offer contracts over 1 season? Is there a restriction on wages, or wages as a %age of turnover - ON TOP of the L2 wage cap?

Well, I for one am glad that "we must now be able to field one of the largest squads of international players as all but the big clubs". Maybe we could be all excited about getting one of the highest positions in English football other than the big clubs too?

That's it in a nutshell for me. Glad that it's not just me that sees our squad is still pretty shallow, and whilst our rivals they have competing tournaments, that's not a factor over the period when we're playing against most of them - in fact if anything our League Cup run means we're the ones with the fixture congestion at the crucial time. City at least have a CL match midweek before playing us.

Even though the stats say otherwise, I still find it incredible that McGoldrick scored goals, his technique was appalling and he only seemed able to kick a bouncing ball or pass one that bobbled. Obviously there's a lot of scope for his success or otherwise at this point, but if he works hard, he's not going to get better examples of what he needs to do to be successful as a modern target man than Lambert and Pelle. He's got at least as much as Beattie had for the first couple of years with Saints, and he did very well to make as much as he could from a far more limited skillset than Gallagher has already shown. The days of just getting better by being fitter are pretty much over nowadays though. Gallagher showed some superb finishing skill against the Skates kiddies in the demolition, but... yeah, not the Premier League by some distance.

You think we have more depth but are advocating playing Mayuka? Okay then. Though AFCON players are likely to be gone for the first half of January in preparation for the tournament too (also depending on where it is held). And "he who dares gets lots of injuries" might also be true. Thanks to the tv moves I personally think we can get away with playing full strength sides on Monday/Sunday/Wednesday/Monday - we've been pretty jammy on that front, players will get a little break after the internationals until Monday against Villa and the Wednesday/Monday (Arsenal/Man U) gap is much better than it would have been if it was Wednesday/Saturday. We then get a week before Burnley on the Sat and Sheff U on Tuesday, which is easier than it might have been, and both offer the opportunity to get away with resting tired players or give us games we might still win despite injuries. I can see us putting Gardos and Targett on the pitch again against Sheff U. The Christmas week is a sod though, hopefully half the team will be rested for Everton home, Palace away could be tricky, and then do we go for it against Chelsea or cut our losses and try and beat Arsenal instead. The top games in a row are a double-edged sword - they raise the expectation and tempo for players in preparation for the next game, but they are also much more demanding than going 2 up against a bottom side and shutting up shop.

What do you think he's missing? He's tall, reasonably strong, quick, good feet, can dribble enough, decent in the air, works hard closing down, a good finisher at youth level and is pretty agile. Plus he seems to have his head screwed on and I haven't seen anything to suggest he doesn't take tactics on board. He didn't score many at the end of the season but we were pretty dire and uncreative and going through the motions in attack by then, and he looked lively and not any more out of place than Lambert did.

Feels pretty similar to me - we're more consistent against the bottom teams and it feels like we're expecting to win rather than hoping to, but we were getting to that point in November last year. The gap is wider due to the other expected top sides dropping all kinds of stupid points and us not really doing the same. I still think, as I did last year, that the run of tricky games against the big sides will bring us down with a thump, but thanks to the buffer we've built up, even a poor run might only see us slide to 5th-ish, and we will still be in the European mix if we don't get picked apart in the transfer window. The stuff about a "much" stronger squad is a bit of an illusion, mentioning Fox for instance is ridiculous when he played in precisely one league match last season and that match saw Clyne sit on the bench. We're just getting lucky with all the injuries coming in the area where we are very strong, midfield. Even there we're starting to wilt a bit. One injury to Pelle or Forster, or maybe Alderweireld or Fonte, and we're starting to look shaky too. I haven't seen much from Gardos to suggest we have much of an upgrade on Yoshida, and just losing Bertrand against Chelsea could be significant in itself. I like Koeman's basic tactical flexibility (didn't like the lack of it against West Brom but he learned quickly) over Pochettino's one plan - though when that one plan worked, it really worked, and it was the way we mixed it up with the top sides so I wonder how we're going to do that against them. I absolutely love the way Pelle has been playing, even when he's been a bit quiet in the last couple of matches, he's exactly the striker we needed all along, and the one Osvaldo was meant to be. The defence has been great, except at Liverpool when they hadn't played together, and at Spurs when Pochettino's counterattacking pulled them all over the shop in a way we should all be familiar with. Overall, there's much more of a feel good factor with the comparison in where a lot of us though we might be in the week Lovren and Chambers left, and we're doing well by any measure even without that rise. That's nice, but it's still a novelty to be in the top 4 rather than somewhere we expect to be, and in that sense, again it's the same as last season. When it comes down to it, if we're still top 4 in February, it'll feel very different. Until then, I'm kinda still waiting for us to get picked off. Oh, and the kit's nicer to look at, even if it does fall apart a bit easily.

Has this been linked yet? It's the thread from when we acquired him from MK.http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?34980-MK-Dons-Head-of-Recruitment-Paul-Mitchell#.VGoafstFDqA

Literally the work of someone with the ability to multiply by 38/11ths in a spreadsheet.

I think the odds of him playing league football in the UK again are... Evens.

"The media" don't give a toss where we finish as long as they can write stories about something or other. There's big business in writing or making tv news for the largest audience, which within the Prem is for the big clubs with the biggest fanbases - and their plastics love to hear stories about how they're going to take players from other clubs because it affirms their support for the big club which they have no other affiliation to. Within that element of "the media", there are maybe 2 or 3 journalists whose sources lead them to write articles or make tv stories which Saints fans don't like, for whatever agenda they're pursuing, or whichever editorial corner they've painted themselves into. However, claiming it's a global news conspiracy is a teeny bit bonkers.

Whereas I read it as confirmation that he definitely wouldn't be leaving until at least the end of the season, seeing as he more or less said he'd base his decision on whether Saints were still in CL places. Admittedly, if we lose a lot of games by mid-January and drop off to 7th or thereabouts, the spectre might raise its head again just before February, but that doesn't seem to be the situation at the moment. Worth re-stating whilst I'm here that the L'Equipe information is pretty much exactly what he said when interviewed a few weeks after the transfer window closed.

So basically "don't be good at anything" then? I really don't know who decided footballers are role models, but could they stop assuming that means they're going to be behaviourally appropriate in every situation? A disturbing level of dedication to a specific cause is not always a positive characteristic, whether it's superfit athlete or driven business person. Taking the positives from one situation (footballing ability) and applying them to a completely different set of circumstances (social behaviour) is frankly a little bit stupid. And, no, I'm not suggesting that people can't be good at both, I'm saying that the idea of "role model" needs to come with a large set of qualifiers and caveats - and maybe a bit of common sense.