The9

And yes, for the good of football it should be stopped, but who's bothered about the "good of football" and in a position to do anything? No-one. The only way this can be reversed is by the majority of teams in the Prem voting for a new system (which they would only do through self-interest anyway) and the second they do that, the top clubs will be off to some pan-European Super League and the TV money suddenly dries up. To be honest, if it means the English league becomes competitive again, I'm all for it, but there's no chance the clubs will.

Master of the Obvious. It is in no way "ironic" when that was the goal of the FFP for the big clubs in the first place, and bloody obvious what the effect of it would be to the extent that that notable altruist Nicola Cortese even voted against it because he knew it would guarantee that Saints wouldn't be able to spend their way to the CL the way other teams had done.

If he did it more it would lose the surprise factor.

Shame we didn't work that out before the West Brom match, there's me on the build-up thread saying "drop Wanyama despite his performance against Liverpool, keep Davis in, we need creativity and quickness in transition" and we play 2 DMs and look like we're wading through treacle against a side that barely crossed half way with the ball.

He did that, what, once? He also did twelve million quids worth of ridiculous dummy, excellent entertainment.

Pelle's most important contribution to yesterday's match was never giving up despite how crappy his luck got - he was clean through at one point and the ball just appeared glued to his head. By the time it came down there was a defender in front of him and even then he got a backheel off which deflected wide. He had a couple of air shots where you could see he was trying too hard, but kept going, and eventually got his reward. I was genuinely delighted for him - hopefully he'll get some confidence from it and start showing what he can do, he's clearly taking a bit of time to adjust but he's got all the physical qualities needed to succeed. Have to say I thought our fans were excellent in supporting him last night as well.

Long was very good last night, busting a gut up and down the wing, much more support for Pelle through the middle, and some superb skill too.

I wasn't, as he'd failed to break through in the three years he was on the fringes and we were in L1 and the Championship. He showed signs of improvement just before he went though, stopped hitting every pass with the outside of his foot, floating them all, and started sidefooting stuff with more pace and accuracy.

I can't believe there are people who don't think Shane Long's dummy was deliberate. How stupid are you? He took about 6 stutter steps before it to line it up, looked towards a completely different side of the pitch, passed it with his standing foot directly to Clyne, and despite swinging his dummying leg up to waist height he didn't even lose his balance. If you can't see that's a superb piece of skill you may as well give up watching football.

You can google the fixture too, but in amongst the legit results will be a pile of dodgy malware and time wasting clicks to nothing designed to harvest page views.

That's two people today being critical of another person's sentences when there's nothing wrong with them, strange.

I saw that one of the Dubai Saints on Global Saints on FB said it was on, which is a pretty good indicator there are streams out there. Also, most of the streaming sites have lists of the matches they're going to show for weeks in advance which are tweaked nearer the time.

Funny, I'm not remotely concerned about it, we have a pile of midfielders much of a muchness and should be giving the others a shot in a game like this. More interested to see that we're sticking with Fonte and Yoshida, which makes me wonder if Gardos is being saved for the weekend or if he's got Forren Syndrome. Bertrand isn't involved either btw, is he off?

Yep, he certainly is, I meant McCarthy. Pretty solid team we've put out there, anyone would think we were punishing them for being pants on Saturday.

Much less hassle doing everything on your own!

CEX will have a load, though their website only has games from the last generation consoles, their stores are still stocking the odd Super NES game and plenty of PSX and PS2 stuff (along with others). It is indeed in the Marlands.

He might talk utter crap, but that's perfectly understandable English.

I would bloody hope he can be better than he has been so far, one goal per 50 shots and nothing resembling the ability to beat people most of the time doesn't impress me much. I'd rather we bought someone else for that kind of money...

I'd like to see: Forster (well actually Boruc, but that's not happening); Stephens, Fonte, Gardos, Bertrand; Cork, Taider A combination of the established players, new players who need to work the system out, a couple of youngsters on the fringes and the squad-deep centre midfield position where Taider On the bench: Davis, Targett, McCarthy, Hooiveld, Wanyama, Sinclair, Rowe.

I am still completely at a loss as to why we'd even want to sign Townsend, never mind considering losing Schneiderlin in order to achieve it. I mean he's better than Isgrove, but then I think Josh Sims is as well...

Not to mention that "only" 12 would only be 2 fewer than Lambert got in the League last season taking penalties and free kicks...

People would have you believe the player we have signed IS immobile.

Why?

Quite.

Also worth pointing out that we've stopped passing the ball short at goal kicks, so chances are that'll be adding to our "aerial duels competed in" stat as well as Fonte not seeing any options other than wanging it at the big man.