The9

Interesting, but the reason I can't hear anything at St Mary's is because the PA is quiet compared to the background noise, and the speakers are a long way from the crowd. It's fine in the loo, where the speaker is very near, and the only background noise is some tar-lung hacking up in the cubicle.

Well yeah. I don't really like Ramirez out wide though, he almost always loses the ball when he cuts inside using that "trying to cut the ball across my body when there's no more room" move (as he did on Saturday).

Get Guly back then.

I only ever remembered there was a policy of hoiking fans out when they were clearly in the wrong end, and there was then a 50/50 chance of getting reallocated in the correct section or put in the street. this was pretty standard across all grounds, but then I have a very small frame of reference (late '91-'94) for standing at the Dell due to my "previous commitments". Somerton Park never saw an away fan in the home end, because they all got marched in from the station anyway, you could always pay on the gate, and there was always plenty of room everywhere.

Worth trying if we're in the Championship, but we sell enough tickets at the moment not to need to resort to gimmicks like this. I don't have a problem with a "neutrals" section per se, especially somewhere like Fulham where they're reaching to fill the place most of the time, and have a ready-made tourist industry on their doorstep. The neanderthal opinion that people can't support rival teams alongside each other is completely outdated, but there are still enough morons who can't cope with the extremes of emotions at football to necessitate the continuation of segregation. However, having a section where plastics and football tourists congregate should be seen as a good thing by punchy knuckledraggers, surely?

Stand Down Operation Stewards Pointlessly Standing At The Front?

Lots of them still do, especially when trains are passing through, and they don't generally have the problem of 32000 people making noise all through their announcements. Plus the speakers at the station are about 10 times closer than those suspended from the roof of a stand, the information being given in very specific and they have boards to indicate the same information in case you can't hear them. For me the only thing I want to hear over the PA are the scores, and the screen should be assisting with those too.

He isn't refusing to train though. And we are also prevented from fining him repeatedly under the terms of all PFA-approved contracts.

There's been plenty of backlash - but if you think there might have been more, I'd imagine that was because there will be plenty of people who think that if he is prevented from going we want to be able to actually pick him, so some people are holding off having a pop because they want him to play and be good. Rest assured he has had plenty of sh111t from people though. There are also conflicting reports about him training, I know from a friend of a friend "source" that he was definitely at Staplewood most of last week and training for some of it, and we know from Koeman on Friday that he wasn't being asked to be involved this weekend. I'm sure we'll hear soon enough if he's been involved today.

Tbf only Pochettino didn't pick him, and even that changed once Wanyama got injured and he got a run in the side. I expect we're just waiting to see if he's worth retaining given that we have a glut of central midfielders at the moment. What I don't expect, is us to sell him (or anyone else for the rest of the Transfer Window), mainly due to the impact on Schneiderlin's situation.

He could, but he'd be terrible at it.

I suspect that as he doesn't select a team with a roaming sweeper/libero in it he probably doesn't expect his central defenders to be heading off up the pitch. And I shouldn't think he imagines that any of our centre backs can take a 35 yard free kick like he could either. In fact I doubt he has any expectations about our players based on his own abilities.

Well, THAT'S a load of gash for a start.

Get Sims in the team on the left if we're insisting on doing this.

I'm sure they do/did, yes. They're just Those Kind of People. i.e. morons. I found the English-language comments from the Algerian fans (mostly stuff like "hello, Saphir Sliti Taider has much love from Algerian to Southampton brought" pretty entertaining. Haven't got around to learning to read the right-to-left stuff squiggly yet.

Taider came on as a DM and his first few touches were on the left wing, but he was playing centrally. When Cork came on they had a brief pointing discussion about who was where in the 3 but I'd lost the will to live at that point and other than him hoofing the ball away from Boruc in the RCB position right in front of me I can't really remember much about Taider's positioning late on, but he did always seem to be mostly getting the ball in left-sided defensive midfield positions. He reminds me of a more animated version of Schneiderlin, tbh. Without the sulking... so far.

Yeah, that's right, the P is for Potential. I think we know what the A is.

On the bright side, usually can't hear music after goals either.

Is this the CA or PA, I get confused?

Yeah but to stretch the analogy, in your case you'd have to use your learned experience to make up for slackness into your late 20s, so there's no actual benefit of the experience because it's just offsetting the deficiencies of you starting young. Same with Chambers. EXACTLY the same.

Because all young, English players are guaranteed to improve, of course. It's the mantra.

I haven't heard a word over the PA in the Northam since 2001, except in the loos, where it's crystal clear (but you end up choking on fag smoke).

There's no way Isgrove is getting near the team after his performance on Saturday - not really his fault either, stuck out on the left and apparently asked to drive to the line and get crosses in, which he wasn't able to do because he's right footed. Surprised Bertrand didn't get past him more often but he'd probably been told to be wary of going foward too much (though that's not exactly a characteristic of Koeman sides).