The9

I see they have signed a centre back today... they're trying, I'll give them that. Still available at 11/1 to get relegated with Corals... As for the standard of the Conference, Luton have been down there for 5 years despite having the biggest crowds by some distance. It is not an easy league to get out of, but they have to get into it first. I think I'd like to see them eat humble pie in the Conference for a season or two, even with all the backing they could get from a sale to a legitimate buyer in a few years they're still only going to be one of 20 ex-Prem sides battling it out in the Championship at best from now on, they have no value, no potential and a bigger club siphoning off the floating fans around their catchment area by the second (and if it's not us, it's Brighton) .

Those 2 points would have saved us, yes. On goal difference. Unless the Skates had shipped 7 to West Brom on the last day, which lets face it, even the Premier League couldn't have ignored. 17 West Brom 38 5 8 6 17 24 1 8 10 19 37 -25 34 18 C Palace 38 6 5 8 21 19 1 7 11 20 43 -21 33 ® 19 Norwich 38 7 5 7 29 32 0 7 12 13 45 -35 33 ® 20 Saints 38 5 9 5 30 30 1 5 13 15 36 -21 32 ®

My advice to the new CEO would be "the sheep will ignore absolutely anything negative you do, as long as the team is successful on the pitch".

I'm in the 8 or 9th year of a self-imposed TalkSh1te ban for very similar reasons. I will also switch off any mention of the 2008 FA Cup Final, or a certain match at Fratton in our Prem relegation season. I am still refusing to park in car parks at St Mary's at the moment, and have broken my streak of successive Saints home kit ownership since 1987 by refusing to buy this season's pathetic effort. I'm sure there are a bunch of other things I'm not currently doing for vaguely pointless reasons too, but I can't think of any at the moment.

He's been getting gradually worse for nearly a year now, I don't bother commenting usually, but the stats speak for themselves, he's already not first choice when Osvaldo is fit and available against the top sides, and he may not even be getting starts by the end of the season, depending of course on our ongoing level of investment...

Obviousness of ownership thing affecting transfer dealings aside, I'd say integrating players over a 4 month period without any pressure of relegation or expectation of winning anything is the perfect reason to strengthen now rather than in the summer.

Clearly the topless dancer who isn't really part of the band is Bez, who they signed on a multi-million pound transfer from the Happy Mondays (who actually received £1.50 and 17% of a gobstopper once the CVA was taken into consideration). Bez left the Bandstand in 2010, but they're meant to be paying him until 2016.

Pretty much sums it up for me, oversaw some great things for Saints, getting us not only back to the Prem but back to the top half, but far too concerned with doing things his own way for the sake of it, and singularly disinterested in any of the details which make the club a pleasant experience for its customers. I've said a few times that if he wanted to be liked by Saints fans, it wouldn't have been too difficult with what he's done, but for some reason he always wanted to be a bit of a d1ck. Still very appreciative of the improvements in the footballing side since the takeover though, and hopefully he's now done with football, because I sure as hell wouldn't want us on his bad side.

James Harper is a midfielder. I remembered him being a pretty decent midfielder in the Championship for Reading and got worried for a minute - then I checked, he hasn't played for Reading in the Championship this decade and hasn't played Championship level for 3 years. And he's now 33, hasn't managed more than 5 matches in his second season with any club since 2009, so seems to be identified as a weak link by most of his managers after a year. He's still got to be better than Devera/N'Gala though, maybe they should play him in defence. I also noticed the other day that the kid who shipped 7 against Saints in the Youth Cup started for their first team away to Southend. They've gone W1 D4 L8 in their last 13 matches, btw. Between Feb 16th and the start of April they have to play 1st, 3rd, 4th, 6th and 8th (away) and 2nd, 12th and 14th at home. Three of their last 4 matches of the season are home to Bristol Rovers and away to Northampton and Bury, good job they've had all this Cup Final experience this season, they'll need it, assuming they're not relegated by then. Plymouth at home last match. Basically if they don't hugely improve in the next 3-4 matches mostly against mid/low table sides, they're going to find it very difficult to dig themselves out.

Newport tried their best, but a late equailiser away to Accrington dropped Stanley back below the Skates. Accrington have dropped 3 places due to that - Accrington, Bristol Rovers, Torquay and Northampton are your teams to back... plus Bury, Wycombe and Mansfield just in case. Let's also not forget that in the past few seasons Portsmouth have been significantly worse in the second half of the season than in the first...

Not too worried about it, Yoshida or Hooiveld can slot in and have done before, we just lose a bit of width going forward. We'd probably put Fonte at RB - though maybe not if it goes all Villa on us, and you have to think West Brom are looking at going long and countering, it's their strength and how they played last season when they were successful.

Yeah, I got that one the other day, something about child porn blah blah police called - yeah yeah, sure. I have had one or two malware warnings too, usually from russian sites linked to from wiziwig, but most of them are fine. Most of the stream ads can be "X"ed after a few seconds and once the "full screen" icon is available just use that and ads usually aren't visible. I'm trying out a new app which links to Sopcast on my new Android tablet today, got about half an hour of excellent HD stream for the Chelsea match before the stream got closed down. I'd be there, but off work following knee surgery and can't walk much without getting knackered.

Fascinating stuff, both from the perspective of Saints and generally. Allardyce's use of POMOs is pretty widely known and has been for around 10 years, but it's still a very rigid implementation of a system in a dynamically changing game, which probably explains why it's not as successful as it used to be - as well as everyone else using the data now so you're running just to stand still. Was interesting to see the stuff about Redknapp and Woodward too. That Luton match was our first away match of our first game outside the Prem in 27 years (and we lost 3-2 to a club which has now been non-League for 5 years). I wonder which is the Prem club that doesn't use Prozone?

Presumably - he's been a busy traveller: Years Team Apps† (Gls)† 2006–2009 Liverpool 0 (0) 2007 → Dunfermline Athletic (loan) 13 (1) 2007–2008 → Southampton (loan) 25 (0) 2008 → Blackpool (loan) 22 (1) 2009 → Barnsley (loan) 14 (1) 2009–2011 Barnsley 64 (12) 2011–2013 Wolverhampton Wanderers 23 (0) 2012 → Middlesbrough (loan) 10 (0) 2012–2013 → Huddersfield Town (loan) 16 (2) 2013– Huddersfield Town 24 (1) Unbelievably he also scored 2 goals in 7 matches for England U19s and played for the U21s in 2011! Beware Saints kiddies...

I missed the first 10 minutes of the QPR game when Jermaine Wright scored, got there in time for Kelv's clanger though. As well as Ian Pearce, we also had Alex Pearce in on loan at some point that season, Reading donkey and totally out of his depth in the Prem last season for them, but still a zillion times better than Alan Bennett and Chris Makin at centre back together, which was so bad I actually drew cartoons on Facebook designed to capture their perennial state of separation. That was also the one and only time Alpine was justified in his criticism of the manager, tactics, etc - the season we didn't bother to sign any centre backs until September.

Actually it would probably cost them loads to convert the seats to be safe standing areas, assuming the proposal uses the German "barriers with seats attached" method to allow standing - and we've been repeatedly told how "unsafe" standing in seated areas is for 20 years so I don't doubt that will be the case even in the depths of the Football League. Probably wouldn't lead to much increase in capacity with the allocated ticketed standing area and barrier either, most stands are now built for seats and the sight lines and step heights are different to a terrace. I'm sure their safe standing support is actually just a piece of fan-friendly fluffery, they can't afford to budget for "longstanding" roof leaks, never mind rebuilding the place for similar capacity.

Now, now, it also gave them the right to purchase really cheap STs for this season (and thereby give the club more money) and complain like hell when the cost goes up significantly next season.

Tom Naylor has scored that many goals for Chesterfield this season - and he plays for Newport County. Re: Newport signing Rene Howe - not sure, he's experienced at this level but I also saw him bigging himself up on Dating In The Dark, so slightly cynical. Newport need a striker though, Conor Washington has dried up, Aaron O'Connor still injured (and just slated the manager on Twitter for asking him to come in for 8 hours to rehab), Zebroski is injured too, Danny Crow is still fat, and Christian Jolley seems to be out on the wing a bit too much now. They have quite a lot of strikers compared to, say, Portsmouth... Newport have done their bit for the Portsmouth relegation cause though, lost home and away to Northampton - Accrington and Bristol Rovers away this month too...

I'd assume that as the attendance isn't likely to get near capacity in the next few years, no-one will ever have to disclose the actual safety-approved limit? I'm torn between wanting to congratulate them on actually investing in the infrastructure, and laughing at the lack of fan involvement in the "shareholding" decision (on a par with their representation on the board and the actual value of their "shares") as well as their original estimate being so far out, and the utter needlessness of actually increasing capacity if that's genuinely the goal. Whichever way, LOLz.

Other than improving the standard of the team? Yeah, that's not going to be beneficial. If we signed world class players in goal, central defence, midfield and up front we'd be MUCH better, and less susceptible to the injury problems and lack of depth which have directly affected results for the past month.

He usually just makes attacking runs when the ball is immediately likely to be delivered to him. As we've been pressing a lot less recently for some reason (Wanyama and Schneiderlin missing might be a clue) we're not getting the ball in attacking areas anything like as much - plus we haven't been a "through ball" team for a long time, preferring angled balls to running midfielders and lay-offs to running players, and it takes time to switch between systems. I've been quite impressed with his workrate off the ball in some matches, but not all, and he's definitely got a dubious selfish streak - rather than one of those "good" selfish streaks where players score for the better of the team but will also pass to better placed colleagues, and are not just in it for their own glory.

If this isn't an article about Steven Davis, they're talking about the wrong "unsung key man" at the moment.

He wasn't poor vs Villa, Pochettino made a tactical switch to ensure there was someone in the box for Shaw's crosses, and took off a ball-winning midfielder in a match where we already had the ball basically all the time. He left Cork as the DM and played the rest as attacking midfielders or strikers. I don't think "not being as attacking as Davis, Lallana, Lambert, Rodriguez, and Osvaldo" is a criticism of Ward-Prowse. He was also fine against Chelsea for as long as the rest of the team was, and neither here nor there against City. No idea re: Newcastle, I've only seen highlights - but he's hardly likely to get in ahead of Davis with his current form, and similar things have been said recently about Lallana and Rodriguez too. So he hasn't been "poor", but he's not currently on as good form as 3 other midfielders.

It must be only Premier League games, because including all competitions, Palace have won 4 all season long and we've won 8, which is 4 more. But wait, in the Prem we've won 6 and Palace have won 4, so even that's not right. We have, however, got 11 points more than they have from 16 matches, which would suggest we are significantly better.

I think they should give it to Lampard, he at least made some kind of contact with the ball which was going towards the goal, and the defender doesn't want the OG anyway. It's not like that Huddlestone one for Hull which was obviously going wide until Skrtel headed it in. Sometimes I wonder if we shouldn't just adopt the rules for Ice Hockey, where the last attacking player to touch it gets given the goal no matter how many defensive touches there are afterwards and no matter which direction the puck is travelling in. Occasionally you get some wacky accreditations, but it makes things a lot simpler. I don't think I'd like to see the end of the OG though, it's an important part of football's identity.