The9

I don't understand why anyone would want to sit in Row B behind the goal to begin with, it's the closest thing to a restricted view you will get in St Mary's. I noticed on Saturday we seem to have resolved the problem of not big empty areas by selling the front row last, about a quarter of the stadium had the front row empty. Makes sense from a security perspective as well.

Whose? They belong to Saints.

I think it's an excellent way of preventing the media twisting his words. He's clearly more than capable of communicating with the players to get his message across, and that's all that matters.

I only doubt the JFK one out of that lot as well, though I suspect it's more to do with the film (which I know has inaccuracies) coming out when I was an impressionable age, rather than any great suspicion.

"The Home Nations made a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ that naturalisation should only be allowed in football terms if a player had five years of education in the country before the age of 18." That would somewhat put the mockers on it, though FIFA don't actually recognise it as a rule. http://eurosport.yahoo.com/blogs/pitchside-europe/home-nations-must-scrap-parochial-archaic-gentleman-agreement-172637816.html Oh, and of course Argentinian-born Dani Osvaldo only qualifies for Italy because he has a GREAT-grandfather who was Italian and that qualifies him for Italian citizenship - that wouldn't qualify anyone for British citizenship in similar circumstances.

Signed for Saints on 27 June 2008 and was 18 then, so Schneiderlin's been eligible for England under the current regulations since 27 June. The only other element is the "gentlemen's agreement" between the home county FAs (that doesn't include Ireland, hoho) and whether that is still in place, seeing as technically living in England is, in terms of boundaries, living in the UK.

Hopefully they haven't been superseded since 2008, this FIFA clarification letter has the info on page 2: http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/affederation/administration/81/10/29/circularno.1147-eligibilitytoplayforrepresentativeteams_55197.pdf It's also clarified here: Here, Press Association Sport looks at how those laws work, according to FIFA's guidelines. Q. Who can a player play for when he has never played international football? A. A player can play for any country for whom they hold a permanent nationality. Q. What if that player wants to change nationality but has already played for a country? A. A player who has more than one nationality, acquires a new one or is able to play for several sides, can, on one occasion up to their 21st birthday, request to change countries, provided that: a) The player has not played in a competitive match for his current association. b) At the time of that appearance they already had the nationality of the country they now wished to play for. Q. What if a player wants to acquire a new nationality? A. If a player wants to get a completely new nationality, then one of the following must be met: a) Be born on the territory of the association. b) Have a biological mother, biological father or grandparent born on that territory. c) Have lived continuously on that territory for at least five years after reaching the age of 18. Q. What happens to a player who is eligible to represent more than one Association an account of his nationality? A. The player can play may play in an international match for one of these Associations only if, in addition to having the relevant nationality, he fulfils at least one of the following conditions: a) Be born on the territory of the association. b) Have a biological mother, biological father or grandparent born on that territory. c) Have lived continuously on that territory for at least two years.

Nope, they have to be competitive matches, ie qualifiers or World Cup or confederation tournament matches. The reason there was the stuff about Hargreaves was because it indicated who he was going to commit to, not because he had committed under FIFA regulations. I can already see I'm going to have to revisit the bloody national regulations soon.

We have, it's an open and shut case too, and despite all the releases of the 2014 World Cup adidas kits I haven't bumped it yet either.

He's talking about a home game. 3200 away fans, 3000 tickets already sold to non-ST Saints fans plus the Saints ST holders doesn't leave many unsold.

You can understand why though, he does look like he should be in 24 or something.

Coutinho is now back and will probably pick up where he left off too. Sturridge more than took up the slack in Suarez's absence and it remains to be seen if Liverpool decide they're actually better off without Suarez and with about £40m instead to try and find a replacement for Gerrard who won't have much longer at the level he's at.

It's the table above minus these Adkins games: 11 10.11.2012 Swansea C home D1-1 12 17.11.2012 Queens PR away W3-1 13 25.11.2012 Newcastle home W2-0 14 28.11.2012 Norwich home D1-1 15 01.12.2012 Liverpool away L0-1 16 08.12.2012 Reading home W1-0 17 22.12.2012 Sunderland home L0-1 18 26.12.2012 Fulham away D1-1 19 29.12.2012 Stoke City away D3-3 20 01.01.2013 Arsenal home D1-1 21 12.01.2013 Aston Villa away W1-0 22 16.01.2013 Chelsea away D2-2

Thought I'd break it down into the matches in that 38 game period: Played Arsenal once at home, Liverpool 3 times, but Everton, Spurs and City once from the top half. Also includes 5 matches against current Championship teams. CAPS for this season's matches. 1 Arsenal H Draw 2 Liverpool H Win A Loss & WIN 3 Southampton N/A 4 Chelsea H Win A Draw 5 Man Utd A Loss & DRAW 6 Everton H Draw 7 Tottenham A Loss 8 Man City H Win 9 Newcastle H WIN A Loss 10 West Brom H Loss A WIN 11 Aston Villa A Win 12 Hull H WIN 13 Swansea H Draw & WIN A Draw 14 Cardiff 15 Norwich H Draw A Draw & LOSS 16 West Ham H DRAW & Draw 17 Stoke H Draw A Draw & DRAW 18 Fulham H WIN A Draw 19 Sunderland H Loss & DRAW A Draw 20 Crystal Pal H WIN ----------------- Wigan A Draw Reading H Win A Win QPR H Loss A Win

Worth noting that we will only have played Man U, Chelsea and Liverpool twice of the top teams in the timescale given. Potential second results against Man City, Arsenal, Everton and Spurs will have been replaced with actual results against sides lower in the table (or even in the Championship by now).

In case there's anyone who still doesn't know though, Ramirez wasn't available to Saints on Saturday for the Hull game as Uruguay have their World Cup Play-Off with Jordan on Wednesday. Suarez only played for Liverpool because they stumped up for a plane to fly him out there immediately afterwards and Uruguay agreed, but the rest of their squad wasn't available for selection on the weekend either.

He's a much better player, plus strikers don't need to rely on fitting into systems as much as other players.

Yes, the revenue of ALL clubs has gone up massively, which means signing players a class above all the others is much more difficult to do, because everyone can do it. You also need to spend a massive amount of cash just to stand still as a result.

And finished 5th. Not bad going.

Back when you could buy an entire squad for half the amount we've just spent on Osvaldo, Lovren, Ramirez, Wanyama and Rodriguez, and when the Champions League had only just become a league competition.

Unfortunately you can't spend all season playing the bottom half.

Quite. In my opinion the only way England will be able to compete and get to the last 4 of any tournaments in the next 12 years is to take the core of a successful club with a lot of English players playing in a specific way and build the best of the rest into that core - and there's no currently successful team with an English core better than Saints. So, Saints don't have an English keeper up to the task, nor any English CBs or (with Cork not playing), any defensive midfielders. Plus they have to fit Rooney and Wilshere in really, so how would that work? Obviously Rodriguez is only a squad player at the moment, and Lambert's probably a sub with the short recovery times in tournament football, but it makes a lot of sense to try and graft Saints' pressing onto the England set up - the main problem is not having enough time (and possibly not enough coaching ability) to make that happen in an international break - but in the run up to a tournament there's almost a month to do it. Then your main problem is playing the press repeatedly in a tournament environment with short breaks.

I'd say that until this season Lallana hasn't been consistent or hard-working enough, so just this time, Hodgson might have got it right. I'm pretty sure Gerrard, Lampard and Beckham couldn't score a goal like that either, but they've all been worth picking over the past 15 years...

Garth Crooks talks a massive amount of bo11ocks and this is no exception, he has clearly only seen the goal. Baggio never had that kind of workrate off the ball either.

It would be nice to think that we'd have some goalkeeping, defensive and midfield depth if any of our essential players got injured, plus if our dream really is real, we're going to need another 11 or so to spin in and out of the European matches.