The9

Yeaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh, let's get player back who we let go because we'd already identified he wasn't up to it.

Personally I think the squad is so negligibly better than last year it's not even worthy of consideration. Long is better than Guly, Forster slightly better than Boruc, Targett is not the level of cover of Chambers, losing Pelle would be as significant as Lambert last year, despite having Long and Mane (and Rodriguez). We're already without Rodriguez and Ward-Prowse, and if we add another 2 or 3 of the starters to that list over the December period I'll be very surprised if we don't lose some games we might have won with the regular starting side. We're adequately covered in midfield but injuries to any of Forster, Alderweireld, Fonte or Pelle will have an impact, and sometimes it's the recovery rate in the 3 days between games and not just the opposition that is the problem. Basically if we do better it'll be as much luck due to avoiding injuries as the squad size. We're currently running a tired looking team which is still winning - put that sort of side out against City, Arsenal and Chelsea and we can forget grinding out a win.

Sneaking towards that 100,000th post.

If Joey Barton was from Cardiff, yes.

The "Morgan song problem" being that we've only got two of them for him already?

In the last 5 years the following teams have beaten Arsenal at the Emirates in domestic Cups: Saints, Chelsea, Blackburn, Man City. Dortmund, Bayern, Schalke in CL too. Plus domestically a draw with Leeds, defeat to Birmingham at Wembley and they also lost to then League 2 Bradford away in the league cup in this period. Probably more importantly, you can normally only lose one match per domestic cup per season so assuming a 50/50 split with home and away draws, there should only be 5 domestic cup teams at most on the list plus CL sides anyway, there are 4. But 3 of them are current top 3 Premier League sides.

We did well, and are clearly likely to finish above both of them in the League. My concern is when that 3 game week becomes a regular feature and we're playing the likes of Man City, Chelsea and Arsenal with little recovery time.

I think your groupings are reasonable too, based on pre-season expectations - but not when based on results so far. Obviously only May will bring the answers to whether we had an easy start or not, though December and January will give us a decent indication. It depends what you consider "normal": Looking at the table our defeats at Liverpool and Spurs were outliers as we should have got draws at least, and the West Brom home draw was one too. Then again, our wins at Swansea and West Ham might have been overperformances compared to league position. Anyway, no-one wants to be able to predict everyone's final position based on where they "should" be, it wouldn't be worth watching then.

Trouble is, your groups don't correspond to the current table. I'd have much rather faced Everton or Man U than West Ham given their form so far this season (though we beat West Ham away anyway). Also, West Brom are currently above 4 of the teams in the "middle" group.

Swansea have lost to Chelsea away, beat Man U away and drew away to Everton but haven't played any of the other top sides except Saints who they also lost to. Lots of top sides to play and probably a little over-rated. West Ham beat City at home, lost to Man U away, lost to Saints and Spurs both at home. They're actually doing very well considering their fixtures so far. City themselves have played all of the top 10 already except Swansea, Everton and Saints, which is a pretty tough set of fixtures.

We haven't played any of the usual top sides from the past 5 years other than the two we've lost (away) to, but based on the current Prem table we've beaten both of the teams in 5th and 6th away, as well as a weakened Arsenal (4th) in the League Cup. The question for me, is have those 5th and 6th placed sides, Swansea and West Ham also had "easy" fixtures?

Been going on about this for a few weeks already (even without the Capital One Cup game) - we don't have the squad to deal with December without having to risk a few of the fringe squad members.

In a competition where inches settle matches, it's amazing how much of this is down to the luck of how the fixtures fall. Having made a point about squad sizes and how typical it was that we were playing all the top sides when CL and Europa League is on a break, I was pleased to realise Man City have Bayern immediately before playing us. If we can get 4 or 6 points from Leicester and Villa before that we'll still be 2nd and it'll be a genuine crunch game, with them not much better placed than us as we'll be rested for it. But having said that, we'll then be shot into an away game with Arsenal 3 days later, with them having a couple of winnable aways with West Brom and Stoke either side - they'll be able to rotate a few in those matches, and we'll probably face their best available team. You'd expect that we'd be more fatigued as a result, too. Man U can't come soon enough for me with their poor form, injuries and suspensions, and I've got no doubt that if we'd already played them we'd have beaten them. Pleased that they have Liverpool the week after as it might serve as a distraction for them, and shifting it to the Monday night could be critical in terms of our starting team's recovery after the previous week's games. Burnley (A) Sat 13/12, Everton (H) Sat 20/12, C. Palace (A) Fri 26/12 should be manageable even with the likelihood of some starters missing by then, but only Pelle, Forster and the CBs are completely essential to success, we can cover most issues in midfield as we do have genuine depth there. Chelsea (H) Sun 28/12 could be worse, yes they'll be able to rotate and it's only 2 days after the Palace game, but West Ham are a physical side who could leave a mark on them and Spurs will give Chelsea a hard time shortly after, so they might gamble with team selection against us. Then it's Arsenal (H) on NY Day, again only a few days' recovery and the starters will be flagging, but Arsenal also have West Ham just before. The FA Cup third round draw might be a big factor in the sort of side we need to put out by now, a top side would be a real problem - best case scenario would be Arsenal and next opponents Man U (10th Jan) both facing tricky Prem games impacting their selections against Saints, with us at home in a match where we could field the best part of a reserve team. If we come out of that lot having played our best side in every match and without fatigue or impact injuries I will be absolutely stunned, and if we're in the top 6 at THIS point it's ours to throw away.

I was going to suggest selecting 1 ticket for each ST, but then you wouldn't know that was going to work until after you'd already bought one and that would leave you open to potentially not being able to get the second one (or not being able to get the seat next to it). So instead, I'm suggesting you have the second ST on a different account number, tbh. Then you've got 2 customer numbers and can add the 2nd one as a "friend" to link it for multiple purchases. They've said all along that you should have separate customer numbers for each person, presumably because of system functionality problems with things like this.

Ha ha, he put Liverpool 3rd. Their home support has been so quiet for our last two visits I wouldn't even put them on the list. Literally just YNWA before kick off and in injury time, and a brief Liverpool chant if they score. Utter joke of a list, excluding Palace, who are well stage-managed.

That is beyond mental. Yeah there's a slight bump in general interest due to their recent Premier League past, but beyond that and their above average League 2 attendances (er, wooh?) they're not given any extra thought.

This seems rather unlikely given the club's Saints Foundation work in Africa. What usually happens is they take the old stock out of the shops and leave it in the stockroom for a while. What happens to it after that... you'd hope it gets recycled as I've suggested. Because the training kit was on sale for about 3 months after it was reduced I'm sure there's been plenty floating around eBay. I bought an actual Rodriguez worn training top a while back for less than the training gear actually cost in the first place. Glad I passed on the Lovren one.

Poster doesn't appear to understand nuanced argument. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

That particular part of the regulation was a direct response to Facundo Sava's Lone Ranger mask and Jonas Gutierrez's Spiderman hood, which are both patently foooking stupid.

The rules are posted above, there's nothing stopping players doing that unless he makes provocative or inflammatory gestures or climbs onto a perimeter fence.

Actually I'd say a player celebrating a goal could very well cause it, but only in a ground completely inappropriately designed or used to hold the crowd within it, which is prevented by a lot of other regulations, removing the need to implement this "anti-celebration" rule for that particular purpose.

It had absolutely sod all to do with celebrating a goal, seeing as there weren't any. There was a contributory crush in the first few minutes when Liverpool nearly scored, but that was due to the overpopulation of the central area, nothing to do with a goal celebration, which is what we're actually discussing. This is a total red herring of an argument at any match in any ground in which crowds are of an appropriate size to the area they have been put in, which is all grounds in Britain for the past 20+ years.

I don't think it makes the blindest difference to atmosphere or the euphoria of a goal celebration whether a player takes his shirt off or jumps over a fence, with the exception of possibly the 10 people in the immediate vicinity of the goalscorer who might get a hand slap or something. Not one single other person feels slighted or less joyous because they're spontaneously celebrating the goal itself, not how the players are enjoying it.

I suspect they're going to have to go somewhere else to get the games they need to become top defenders. Saints have been quite weak in bringing through central defenders, though I suspect that's mainly because a lot of that position is based on experience and knowing exactly what to do in pressurised quick-reaction situations. The confidence to recognise situations and do the right thing is also built over time, rather than just being something you "know" and few teams are going to plug a kid in at such a critical and punishing position to let them learn as they go. There's also an element of players with the skills needed for the position being better utilised elsewhere so we don't have as many left for CBs too, I guess. Though apparently Arsenal are fine with it.

Or Bournemouth, Newcastle or Derby.