The9

He was alright last night, didn't do anything exceptional - people would have been raving if his bog-standard top corner bender Osvaldo-alike shot had gone in, despite that not being that difficult a thing to do. His deflection of a waist-high cross into the bottom corner when he wasn't expecting it was impressive though, but some people think it was a fluke. He's nowhere near the level of the starters we already have, but at this stage that's because he hasn't had the opportunity to be challenged at that level and get used to the endless nudges and tricks of top players, the pace of decision-making, gamesmanship, strength and also in the longer term the need to be flexible and adaptable that comes from playing at the top level week in, week out and the endless analysis of playing styles and tendencies that goes on nowadays. The only way to find out if he can do it is to give him the chance.

The benchmark has to be the Poortvliet season - Lowe wanted to integrate a bunch of kids with no experience into a team already with little experience and probably not up to the task. Saints are currently bringing players through (mostly) gradually into a side that's used to winning, with a core of stable, reliable players who are already good enough at the level we're at. Most of that has come from shrewd and consistent recruitment to what appears to be a set of pre-determined "person" characteristics (though we've gone away from that since Adkins left). Part of it is having the knowledge and support from teammates for the thousands of on-pitch decisions, and part of it is just having the talent which is good enough already to reduce the workload on the young players if needed. But in some ways, dropping into L1 allowed us to start from scratch, needing to maintain Prem status meant we just couldn't make that big change. You'd also struggle to find anyone who thinks adding Clive Woodward to the set up was good for anything other than incremental improvements in the infrastucture and psychology, and probably not worth what we were paying him. He'd be decent as a consultant for a different perspective, but not for at that price for a cost-cutting club. Lowe's ego said "I want to be different and make a mark", Cortese's says "I want to make a mark, that may involve being different".

Bless BT Sport and their commitment to making my recovery from knee surgery as easy as possible.

Oh he knew about it, it was an excellent little divert, pretty much all he could do with it and right in the corner.

Hardly a benchmark for importance, is it? I've been off wheeling away after scoring in the playground with a tennis ball.

This ignores our tactic of fouling high up the pitch to prevent counterattacks though, if Cork had managed a minor foul on Delph against Villa on the halfway line in the last 10 minutes I'd have been absolutely fine with it. It's where the fouls occur that's the key.

You'd hope Cork's performance has shown that he's a better option for games against sides where we'd expect to have a lot of possession and not spend much time trying to win it back, he's a much better user of the ball and Wanyama's skillset is much more handy when we play sides we need to get the ball from. Of course the issue there is that Wanyama is much more likely to score than Cork.

I think these kind of moron cleansing exercises should be a lot more frequent, it was the closest thing to entrapment the police could do, put a bunch of people who dislike each other rather a lot a safe distance apart and then make one set of them very happy and the others increasingly bitter. The bald guy who went over the confront the Skate and appeared to spit at him was actually in the seat immediately in front of me for most of the match (in Block 2) - he'd done a few w@nker gestures and sang one song a bit louder than the rest of us, but until that point seemed to be no worse than about a third of last night's crowd and purely there for the Skate-baiting. Anyone running through empty seating just reminds me of BadBoySaint and his hilarious Leicester fail, when we equalised and by the time his blubbery-gutted shirtless mass had got to the home fans in the Walkers Stadium to do whatever teenage idiots do, they'd scored again.

When I had my ST in 2001/2 and was living in South Wales I did the "slow walk down the steps" for every single midweek home match, timing it to disappear right on the whistle. I always had a 2+ hour drive ahead of me due to the lack of train service at that time of night, had no intention of missing a second of the game, and still needed to run flat out at the final whistle back to the car to get up The Avenue before the traffic stuck another half hour on my journey I didn't need, in order that I could get enough sleep before sometimes needing to be in work by 7am. I know for a fact, however, that the blokes in my row who for the duration of our League One and the Championship seasons got in after 10 minutes, left after 35, returned on 55 and left for good at 85 were just trying to get as drunk as possible. I sort of miss them and their banter now they (presumably) can't afford to come any more though.

There was much joy around us at the fact he'd stopped something, nothing mocking about at all, just people pleased he'd made a save. The p155-taking came immediately afterwards. And I'm impressed at your ability to identify large numbers of specific people in an even larger crowd mass to know that.

I have a problem with those in bold. The others, not really, and I'm actively in favour of stupid Christmas jumpers and women at foot-y.

I was in approval of the raucous cheer which greeted Gazzaniga's first save in three matches on Saturday. We have a guy in the row behind us who jumps up and yells "yes!" whenever the ball goes remotely near the opposing penalty area. I have a similar thing, making a Marge Simpson-type low groan to myself whenever the ball goes near ours, but at least mine's based on years of experience and doesn't make me look like a loon.

Presumably no-one outside their boardroom two weeks before Whittingham got sacked - I've been to Crawley this season and I didn't even know who their manager was at the time.

Reacting with "passion" just means "has no sense of proportion or perspective to the events which have occurred", which I'd say is about right.

According to anyone who's ever seen Osvaldo play I should think. Even Zaha is more of a team player than Osvaldo at the moment, the one downside of his obvious talent.

Ferking cheek claiming it was a "Cup Final performance" by Saints, probably fair comment last season when the 3-1 looked like a blip, but not this year for a bloody home draw with their crappy away record, if it was teams raising their game for them surely that would have happened more last season when they were actually Champions? Then again, they'd know about losing to smaller teams in Cup Finals.

Didn't Cortese insist on Saints players having "winter tyres" fitted, according to one of those Mail articles the other week...?

Oh and there's what he didn't say about the Chairman at Newport: http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/23533706 Scadding, a Newport fan, funded the signing of striker Christian Jolley, who scored the goal at Wembley to get them promoted, out of his own pocket. But he plays down the part his bulging bank balance has played in the club's success since he arrived in April 2012. "I'm not a sugar daddy," he said. "I'm not an open cheque book. But as I've always said, if we're in a position to do something, and we need another player and Justin comes to talk to me we usually find a way round it." Living within their means - as they have had to in climbing the non-League pyramid - is definitely the message from Scadding, but he will not let that curb his ambition. Seeing as the chairman won £45m on the lottery and all... though he has just got divorced.

Speaking of Newport... http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/25237557 Justin Edinburgh explaining why he "turned down a possible move to manage his former club Portsmouth"... Involves the following (I have assisted with some reading between the lines in places): "It was an easy decision" "they're a massive club" (I assume the apostrophe denotes the omission of the letters w and e, he was referring to Portsmouth) County's current success is just one of the reasons (NB they're not even in the Playoff places at the moment) "I made my feelings quite clear that I was happy here" "It's flattering" (as it is when anyone expresses interest) "Being my previous club as well, where I finished my playing my career was obviously a bit of a pull." (but not enough to even speak to them) "Loyalty is laughed upon in football but..." "I felt that it was the right decision that the club refused permission for me to speak to Portsmouth" "I think I've got stability here" (what, Portsmouth, unstable? Nooooooooo that was before) ""I've got the board and a director of football that are excellent and give me their full backing" (not expecting such a thing at Portsmouth?) "we have a fantastic set of supporters" (possibly the best in the world, better than the Skates' it seems, anyway).

Oi, I've just forked out £60 for 3 tickets to see them a week Saturday (sorry, can't help where the cash ends up, I gave it to Newport County), at least wait a fortnight to knock it down.

I don't think it makes the blindest bit of difference, it's all part of the myth. There is no pressure at that level, and the local newspaper is all but irrelevant nowadays. Even when they were in the Premier League nothing the News said would have been in any way relevant to on-field performances.

We are pretty much currently at a season-low of 8th, which is higher than we were at any point last season - I'd say some "better performances" may have been involved somewhere along the way.

It's not a bad bet when you consider they're likely to lose any of their vaguely decent players to any half decent offers of long term deals or any kind of transfer fee, and they can't replace them with anyone permanent who costs anything. A couple of injuries to Webster and Barcham (who I think is decent but doesn't get a game often) and the inevitable Connolly recurrence and they'll be right in it.

Interesting that none of the injured players are the 3 who got called up for England though...

Small squad and a compressed fixture list with more games in a shorter period means we're suddenly not getting the recovery times, and the depth of the squad has been a concern all along. We've got a great first 13 or so, after that there will be a drop in performance as the less able players fill in, and we have some players who simply can't play 3 times in a week and have to work around that too. There's a reason Swansea have been struggling in the League, it's because they're playing so many games and haven't got quite the squad depth of a top 4 side - but also a reason why they had a good midweek performance this week, that being they're used to having to play twice in a week in terms of preparation and recovery.