The9

He wasn't around on the "official media day" because it was in the immediate aftermath of being told he wasn't leaving when he was at 95% sulk, so there's no official photo OR video for Sky Sports - you'll probably see that his head has been plonked on "generic body" (like Alderweireld will have been, and like Osvaldo was last season) for the team line up on Sky's coverage.

At least a 2XL. It's quite broad across the shoulders and very long, only the midriff is fitted. I'm a 44-46" chest with broad shoulders and 5'9" and the 2XL is like a minidress on me, so should fit you fine.

I think so, haven't bought one myself yet, as I won an additional home shirt in a competition ( ) and hope when it turns up I'll be able to swap it.

Got a link? It wasn't in the version I looked at, but it wasn't the format I was used to seeing either (and for some reason I didn't link to it).

The one thing it does confirm, however, is that despite my wishful thinking (and him having played in the EU for Metz and Salzburg for the past 4 years or so), he doesn't have an EU passport from any kind of Senegalese French colonial parentage legislation.

I've heard we're still waiting on the work permit. Though I heard that on Friday and Saturday, so who knows what might have happened by now? As said above, he's not listed on the squad list because technically he can't play for us yet. He IS, however, listed on the Premier League squad list, so once the legalities of the work permit are sorted he's good to go. Probably doesn't help that there's a high-profile amendment to the work permit regulations being proposed which will reduce work permit approvals by a significant amount and its all over the sports media today.

Given his role last Saturday, I think we have to consider that Cork can play as the furthest forward "attacking" central midfielder as well now, he wasn't in position to score by nicking the ball away from Williamson by accident, he'd been up that high all half. You would assume Koeman had this in mind when letting Gaston go on loan to Hull - or that at the least it was a serendipitous discovery in the training sessions after. I'd prefer to think the former.

We could have gone top with a 2 goal win at Arsenal on November 22nd. I'm fairly confident that our squad is comparable, not much better or worse than last season (the numbers in and out are fairly even), and our team - at the moment - is slightly worse than it was last season. Though I think they'll improve as they get to know each other's games to the point that we'll finish 8th-ish again. Our manager looks better because he's inherited the shell of a squad which already had a good base understanding of the pressing model, and he's added more tactical variance and newer systems on top so we're more flexible to react more successfully to what happens onfield during a match. This is already a significant improvement on what I was saying about "lower mid-table" before Long, Alderweireld and Mane came in. Alderweireld in particular has some pedigree, though we're yet to see the "new" defence under any kind of pressure or need to make rapid decisions after Newcastle's feeble outing.

To be fair to Crab Lungs, he's hardly ever on here, had been sitting on the information he gave for weeks already at that point, and almost everything he said was about retrospective activity anyway - it was an explanation of what had happened and what he'd been told about why it had happened - the only thing even remotely opinion-based was what he said about the club being sold, and he made it clear in the original post that he didn't know that to be the case but it was an assumption based on what he'd already heard. Basically his information seems to have been correct, but the spin on it was that he interpreted it as being down to former players and manager losing confidence in the club post-Cortese, rather than, as I believe, a load of them being opportunistic and cashing in on a peak in their performances they felt might not be repeated, with the change in leadership giving them the perfect excuse to leave. I still think the ownership has decided we're going to be a top half side, and will sell top talents and try to replace them every summer going forward though.

The Twelve Pins next to Finsbury Park station on Seven Sisters Road has always done well by us. Not that I'm going.

They might yet be better, how would you know without seeing them?

Ok, so I DID re-read the interpretations... kinda knew I would. It's the "Direction of Play" bit which refers to where the ball, or indeed player, is going.

Except that it was clearly denying a goalscoring opportunity, which is a red card - unless the ball is going away from goal - which it was; but it's unclear (without re-reading the current interpretation of the laws right now) whether a "going away from goal" DOGSO is always a yellow, or whether it then becomes "not a DOGSO at all" and is judged on the merits of the foul alone. I suspect it's the latter, but good luck trying to argue that punching someone in the head when going for the ball isn't at LEAST reckless, and excessive force could also have come into the equation (as could "striking or attempting to strike an opponent", a de facto red in its own right).

Two that I can think of, the Sunderland game he got injured in, and the Spurs home game where he just started hacking at stuff. That's not a bad return from 40-odd matches. Yes, he might have been reacting to Fonte's calls, but communication works both ways, and you don't become a bad player just because there are bad players around you. It is obvious that he and Skrtel haven't got that stuff sorted yet and the number of times Skrtel has failed to tell Lovren to push across because he's already marking the man Lovren is worried about and Lovren has 10 yards of space next to him (which is then exploited by a striker) has been repeatedly highlighted on Sky in analysis, most obviously against Man City.

As noted on MNF yesterday, he's tying up an opposing striker/midfielder whenever Liverpool have the ball, but because of the man-marking job on him (Ward-Prowse, Agbonlahor, etc) he now doesn't get the opportunity to ping 40 yard Hollywood balls to Sterling, and as he's a defensive liability with the loss of pace and especially significantly reduced agility, he is now basically just a passenger without the physical capacity to get away from his marker and affect the game. They also noted that if he switched with Henderson occasionally that would at least give the marker something to think about, but of course it would also take Henderson away from where he's most effective, winning the ball on the half way line and playing it into a runner.

Apart from Sigurdsson, they haven't been starting with any of their signings - Fernandez, Gomis and Montero have all been mostly subs, so they're not massively different to last season, whilst we are a bit more direct. I can see us going back to the defensive shield as we're away, but them having a load more possession than last season, so Forster; Clyne, Fonte, Alderweireld, Bertrand; Schneiderlin, Wanyama; Tadic, Cork, Davis; Pelle for me. Subs: Boruc (Will keep listing him until we start naming him again), Gardos, Yoshida, Ward-Prowse, Reed, Long, Mane. If Mane's clearance comes through I wouldn't be THAT surprised to see him on the wing to play in the space behind their full backs on the break. Will be interesting to see if we set up to play on the counter as I expect we will - last season's jammy 1-0 win had 0-0 all over it until that last minute spawniness from Lambert though, so wouldn't be massively surprised to see us cancel each other out.

Lovren looks cack because Liverpool still don't have a decent defensive midfielder, and with a big space in front of him for the attacking players to do what they want, you're not going to be able to stop everything. Unfortunately this just means we'll probably end up selling Schneiderlin and Wanyama to Liverpool as well (and they'll sit on the bench until Gerrard explodes a leg or something, he should have been dropped or played somewhere else months ago).

Interesting new role we had him playing on Saturday, not seen him up behind the striker before - maybe they decided that as he can't shoot we should get him as close to the goal as possible?

2 hours 30-ish to Cardiff from Southampton direct, not much different going from Southampton via Reading - but as a chunk of that is getting from Southampton to Basingstoke, going from Basingstoke you'd have been a lot better off going via Reading (though I think it's more expensive). Still, sold out before I even knew they were on sale, and I'm going to Shrewsbury v Newport that day anyway.

Welcome to the new era of timewasting. They already did away with multi-ball because despite it being specifically designed to speed up the return of the ball to play, teams were somehow managing to use it to slow the match down when they were leading, so how many hoofs over the stand with no other ball readily available do you think we'd start seeing if there was no time recovered for it? I've already given the example of a team I was playing for blatantly wasting time due to a daft countdown clock (though in our defence we did play 2 games in one day the day before).

I'm unlikely to take the opinion of someone on Saints history if they "mug off Rickie Lambert with a Y" as it was so eloquently put on here once. Lallana's achieved exactly the same as Schneiderlin, fwiw.

Yeah, because Scotland wouldn't be in the EU with all the freedoms of movement etc (or at the very least retain all those privileges in the handover), right? At worst they'd need an E111/EHIC and they already have a separate NHS Trust for Scotland. PS It would have to be an English and Welsh and Northern Irish citizenship test... you're getting England confused with Britain, with or without Scotland. It's a very English thing to do.

Well, he's basically said fair play would be everyone being able to spend the same amount. Can't argue with that. I can say that him saying they should be allowed to spend as much as Man U is exactly the point, but the principles of fairness certainly aren't represented by uneven limits. "We should be able to spend as much as Manchester United have spent before we play them on Sunday" is Redknapp's half-baked way of looking at it - what he should be saying is that Man Utd should only be able to spend the same as everyone else, not that everyone should be able to spend as much as them (especially as some of them don't have it).

My memory is random and awesome: S Club 7 Bring It All Back Number 1: 13-06-1999 The Vengaboys Boom Boom Boom Boom Number 1: 20-06-1999 http://www.number-ones.co.uk/1999-number-ones.html Saints 2-0 Everton May 16th 1999. http://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/southampton-fc-everton-fc/index/spielbericht/1149977 It wasn't the same week I went to Hartlepool, it was a month later on a different trip oop narth, but still, Rachel Stevens=90's Now back to the boabs.

You can have Stevens as part of the 90s, S Club's first hit was in 1999. I know this because I was on my way to work in Hartlepool for a week and I'm pretty sure it was the same Sunday Saints beat Everton 2-0 to stay in the Prem... I'm at least convinced they had a number one on that day even if it may not have been their first one. I'm going to check. Good work with the pre-offputting Porter pics. And Beckinsale, though weirdly I think she looks better nowadays. Request for Christina Applegate then.