The9

Hmm, he seems like a raw talent, quite a few loose touches but often recovered due to his sharpness and agility, good balance, decent finishing, obviously very, VERY quick, but also seemed to get leaned off the ball a bit easily on the rare occasions a defender got within touching distance. Not much evidence of his passing ability in that lot - but then rapid players usually don't tend to pass much. £12m is a lot of money...

Just saying there wasn't much on show on the Bayern video other than a man running quickly and hitting a decent shot past the keeper/getting fouled. I'm not assuming anything else about his all-round abiliities based on that - I can see how Mayuka comparisons have been raised though. That's definitely not just because he's black and fast either...

Well, he's certainly quick, isn't he? Any evidence online of ability to pass, control a ball, tactical systems, tracking back? You know, the other stuff...

I was pretty sober by 2am to be honest, had been basically out since 11am. The Brewers pub on Milton Road was home to a glass-throwing battle with the Milton Arms and a load of police - the Newport coaches turned up in the middle of it and it was vaguely sad to see some fat middle-aged losers waddling out of the emergency exit to erm, wade in. Broken glass around and we passed an hilarious conversation with one moron who was trying to clarify to the Police that his mate "had to get the bus back later" after they arrested him. Was quite pleased to see one of the antagonists looking rather worse for wear propped up against a garage. Saw one punch thrown, the bloke missed and fell over. I have about 5 minutes of video of people walking up a road en masse and then shuffling back again. It was frankly pathetic on both sides, suspect next year's fixture (assuming no promotions/relegations...) will be rather more expensive to police. What do you want to know? Couldn't hear the Fratton end, the rest of the ground sang "Blue Army" twice. One shot over the bar hit Westwood half way up the stand, you could see the drum and his hat. Whatmough was injured and didn't play, Devera was less awful than last season but still gash, they were tactically inept given that both Newport's wingbacks looked incredibly exposed all match long and yet they didn't once attack the wings. Umm, other than that, nothing much in it between the "undefeated at home under Awford and undefeated in 11 matches - until yesterday" top 6 side, and the "been crap since Christmas and no win in 5 this season - until yesterday" bottom 4 side, and the winning goal was a free kick which I audibly described as "terrible" before it floated its way past everyone into the far corner. Their keeper is wearing all fluorescent pink this season, btw. I have to own up to having purchased a programme, a balti pie, a sausage roll and a diet coke for me and the wife, so by their maths I probably now own about 25% of the club. I think there were a couple of dubiously-worded "give us your money" things in the programme which I might have a look at later, the only "Charidee" thing I saw in the pub was a bucket for "Scummers and Skates Doing It For The Kids" and a leaflet behind the bar generically mentioning fan ownership and pledging.

Nice assist for the 3rd Liverpool goal there... lost it 60 yards from goal to the scorer and ambled back.

I think he's still been toss to be honest. Massive hoof over his head against Millwall showing everything that's wrong with his game. Haven't seen enough of the West Ham game but he was still decidedly sub-good 4 days ago. In fact the biggest change I've noticed so far this season is that he's got YOSHIDA on his shirt now, instead of MAYA.

At least 2 Saints ST holders at Fratton today, we had fun...

The point he's making, presumably, was that the players weren't swapped. And seeing as Taïder is not on loan to us but Osvaldo IS still on loan to Inter, it is pretty obvious they are not connected now.

I think you'll find he's only had 5 birthdays. He was still not stopping us selling anyone from 7th on the central midfielder depth chart though.

I thought it looked a bit "weak foot ropey swinger" actually, but a goal's a goal.

This £10m thing is and has always been a load of cobblers. It was £10m from Spurs plus we got Chiriches and Holtby. It was never, ever, just £10m And we rejected that anyway. I will say that Schneiderlin didn't apologise in that interview, he basically said "I could apologise but I'll show what I can do on the pitch". We all know he's off in May if not January, but that's 6 months longer than we could have had.

Except as he's an U21 we can have as many of them as we like.

It must have been a pretty rapid change of heart, we were reporting his international call up on the OS and official Facebook/Twitter accounts only 7 hours before. If they'd known he was leaving at that point they probably wouldn't have publicised that. But then that re-loan didn't happen overnight either, guessing Taïder had his agent and Inter working before Saints knew it was happening .

Good grief there are some thickoes on this thread. I hope none of them work in logistics. FWIW in Liverpool we saw the coach going from the airport to the players' hotel and the following day it was right behind us from the hotel to the ground.

I see St Mary's has now been added to the list of locations on the app... Wonder if it'll be ready for the next home match?

I think Long has the ability to beat players and play a killer pass, Gaston could but never seems to, Davis has a decent if unspectacular through ball, and Schneiderlin has that subtlety too, albeit a long time since he's regularly been in a position to be creative. Even Cork has a decent "slip" pass in tight areas - Tadic obviously has shown ability above and beyond already. Not many others though. Harrison Reed?

I'm more surprised that we played at Highbury last year. Did we draw Fleetwood in the Cup? Fair point re JWP though, I'd completely forgotten that (possibly due to Boruc-related shock). And obviously right re: Yoshida and Cork.

Just to let you all know I'm embarking on my (currently) annual charity mission tomorrow, as the Skates face Newport County at Fart-on. Due to the need to drive myself into Southampton later for the purposes of getting drunk and getting a taxi home, I'll be a lot more sober than last season's equivalent match, where County beat the fishy feckers 2-0 comfortably, and at some point I'll be back here to report on the usual nonsense (i.e. fan volume, empty seats, fat in pipes, fans sniffing coke in the toilets, hilarious announcements, bizarre local pub signs and lack of ability of ridiculous-looking blonde wonderkids). Unfortunately I'm not anticipating a repeat of last season, though Newport (bottom 4 at the moment) have taken the lead against high-flying Burton and Morecambe in their last 2 matches...

It's just a new manager bringing new signing down to earth with some criticism in case he gets an ego - as old as the hills. There is something to be said for the wing back role needing even more stamina and energy than the full back position though, but that's not necessarily true in the case of a player who is already doing a lot of overlapping.

Because this thread will not die, I'd like to add "Billy Sharp to Leeds" to the list.

Sturridge has been a Liverpool player for 18 months. He was never on loan to them, has always been permanent. His only loan as a Chelsea player was 6 months at Bolton, who got relegated (though they did beat Arsenal in that period, but neither Chelsea nor Arsenal were remotely close to the title that season). Lukaku is about the only possible example of this, and since then he's permanently signed for the team he was on loan to, suggesting that actually Mourinho just didn't rate him. Plus having Victor Moses at Liverpool last season probably cost Chelsea more than they gained. It's crap having teams stockpile players, but let's not pretend there are many examples of them loaning out players who would be in their first team otherwise.

Statistically you would expect at least one with 40-odd squad players. As for secretly, well there's not really a great amount of choice in the matter yet.

We've done pretty much nothing from "decent crosses" against Premier League defences so far, and I suspect West Ham's centre backs are more adept than most at clearing balls into the box. We need some subtlety as well.

We won't know whether that's the case or not until next summer, I'd be fairly confident that Rodriguez, Schneiderlin, and Ward-Prowse will get sold, plus those whose contracts are expiring like Cork and Boruc may also not be around, and Bertrand may prove to be short term too.