The9

Even the main stand opposite the camera is only about 1/3 full at the moment.

I disagree with you on both these subjects. Gardos is unproven against Premier League opposition and isn't in the same class as Alderweireld, and if Targett was near to Bertrand's level he'd be playing more often. We could still win it though, yes. Stoke are a bit more attacking tonight but we'll probably be as solid as usual in front of the back 4.

Meanwhile Stoke go with the less physical presence of Bojan and Diouf up top instead of Crouch...

I've read all this and am somewhat surprised to find that there are people questioning Blackmore's comments in the OP. From what I can see most of them are true or at least have a reasonable chance of being true, albeit there's clearly a bit of spin about the players who decided to leave and their convenient relationship breakdown which helped try and make them look less like money-grabbing mercenaries. I couldn't really care less about the relative relationships between players and Cortese vs the current board as Cortese's "truths" were based on an unsustainable pie in the sky scenario and if anything he was TOO loyal to the incumbents (whilst at the same time promising things he couldn't deliver), and the current board at least seems to be realistic about what can be achieved. In short, much of it was true or at least someone's perception of the truth, can't blame Blackmore for reporting that.

I quite liked singing "you're our second favourite club" whilst leaving the ground, talk about confused, they didn't know what to do.

You mean African Nations Cup Winner Alaeddine Yahia, who has 150 appearances for former French champions Lens and 21 Tunisia caps to his name? You're looking at the wrong guy to start defending that sh111thouse Nilsson though.

There's an element of truth to this, but Man City having the most difficult opponents and still being in the top 3 somewhat overshadows it.

They're usually down the bottom, after all the individual ST matches are listed. But only for the ones recorded against YOUR customer number, so no-one else's will show, and I think they have to have a separate customer number to buy a ticket so that's what they'll be recorded against.

The likelihood of injury is the same, the effectiveness of the replacement isn't.

Not sure your point here, but Chambers was a starting quality RB who is now playing there for Arsenal pretty regularly, and our left back cover last season was Clyne - who still plays for Saints. So yes, losing Chambers weakened our squad. It would have been much weaker had we not covered the position with a couple of signings who prefer to play elsewhere. We strengthened it back up with Gardos and Alderweireld providing CB/LB/RB cover, and shed Hooiveld, leaving us with either Clyne, Gardos or Alderweireld potentially playing LB, and a non-first choice CB starting there to cover the others moving. Suggesting that as all sides have a 25 man squad firstly isn't true to begin with, and ignores the simple fact that not all of those hypothetical 25 are of the same standard across clubs anyway. Chelsea's back up keeper is Petr Cech, ours is Kelvin Davis. They and Man City have an entire squad of established internationals and winners, with cover in all positions that might be weaker than their preferred starting side, but is still stronger than their opponents' starting side. All sides are vulnerable to injuries, not all sides have reserves better than their opponents' best players.

I was saying we needed to add 6 or 7 players to last season's squad back in January in order to challenge the top 6, we did that in the summer, but as we also sold many of the best 6 or 7, and even though Pelle is now showing that he's a definite upgrade on Lambert and that mobile target man I'd been banging on about for 18 months beforehand, there's still not much more depth than there was. It's the same solid 15ish (you can add JWP and Rodriguez but it's reasonable to expect you'll be running without maybe 2 of the first 18 at any one time) with about 3 that would probably weaken the side (eg Reed, Targett, Yoshida at this point).

Except Drogba's header was definitely on target. We're assuming that they've ruled that Mane's effort wasn't on target as otherwise it would still be his goal even after the significant deflection - though they still haven't explained how they could tell from the existing footage, as the direction of the ball before the deflection was almost impossible to determine.

The assist is the last pass before a goal, if it's Van Aanholt's goal, it's Mane's assist. If they haven't given Mane the assist, they're (wrongly) saying he didn't touch it at all, in which case Tadic might have still got the assist depending on how they calculate OG assists.

Martin Tyler said this during BOTH ITV commentaries of Saints v Man U in the FA Cup when we were out of the Premier League. And Jonathan Pearce is an idiot, full stop. As I pointed out at the time, Pearce basically said that Saints' biggest previous win in the Premier League was 3-1, and we beat Newcastle by more than that under a month previously.

I expect we'll be playing him against Hull next weekend, so it may be we stick with Mane in midweek.

Pretty negative yourself, we CAN definitely finish above Chelsea and City too. We just won't.

He's on loan until January according to the Saints and Bournemouth websites, but a 93 day loan (which is the most an emergency loan outside the transfer window is allowed to go for) would mean he returned on 21st December, as he went on 19th September. You can recall an emergency loan at any time once the first 28 days have passed, which they have. The League allows an extension to the 93 day in extenuating circumstances, but not sure what those would be. Loans are allowed until 4th Thursday in November though, so I wonder if they plan on temporarily returning him when they don't have any matches and then loaning him for another couple of months before that period is up or something. The recall period for a "season long" loan is only open during the transfer window.

I still don't get this "we're miles better off in terms of squad depth than last season" argument. We are at almost exactly the same level, give or take the improved quality of one or two players, and we're still exactly as susceptible to a massive goalkeeping injury calamity as we were last year too. Yes we have Gardos instead of Hooiveld, and Alderweireld is more positionally flexible than Lovren, but Gardos/Alderweireld are also covering the left back/right back options just as Clyne covered left back last year with Chambers sitting on the right, and Targett is no kind of replacement at the moment. We've got Tadic instead of Lallana, Pelle instead of Lambert, and Mane and Long instead of Guly and Ramirez. Mayuka was seen as surplus to requirements last season and he's made the bench this year, and the likes of Reed and Gallagher (if he wasn't injured) are still bench players with not much experience at the moment. We've already lost Rodriguez for as long as we did last season. We are SLIGHTLY better off than last season, because basically Long is better than Guly and Mane more effective than Ramirez, but we probably can't even field both of them at the same time. We needed to add players, not change them, and come late November and December, that'll be a tired squad playing against the top sides, and the same problems as last year will probably still be there. Where we might be luckier is not losing the keeper for months on end, or key players (eg Lovren, Lallana and to a lesser extent Ramirez) for long periods.

Leaps up, ridiculous rapid sideways clap, fist waving, ridiculous sideways rapid clap, sits down again.

I thought it was very surprising that they brought Mame Biram Diouf on and didn't try a single through ball in the entire second half. Wanyama coming on was a decent response to that possibility, Gardos coming on was pre-emptive to them hoiking it at Crouch and the centre backs in injury time. We finished the match with 2 defensive midfielders, 3 centre backs and two full backs and STILL looked more likely to score than Stoke.

Could be a completely different etymology though, to do with being tied to another team's registration, and not about a match (or a draw) at all.

That is however, completely irrelevant.

Oh, and Match Day was a popular 1980s Spectrum computer football game produced and written in the UK, so I'd be fairly sure that's been around for years as well.

You've never heard of a "cup tie" then? 1909, Leeds City v West Ham, "Second Round English Cup Tie"

For it to be classed as an own goal the ball must have been initially going wide OR its forward momentum towards the goal must have been stopped. I've never yet seen an OG classed as such if the ball is on target. So they have to have decided that Mane's original contact was going wide (to the other side of the goal), and having watched it about 10 times on slow-mo from various angles, there is absolutely no way they can tell where Mane's shot was going without using some kind of super-slow-mo video technology. But the main point is that I don't think anyone in the ground (including Mane and Van Aanholt) even considered that it was actually an own goal. So why even bother judging on it? It's not like the defender WANTS the OG. It's even crapper than taking Dodd's Skate corner off him and giving it to Pasanen who headed it off the bar into the net from the post, or Egil's hat-trick against Man U.