The9

I am reliably informed by someone who works in the fabric industry that the likes of adidas and Nike are amongst the strictest enforcers of the regulations, they have far too much to lose. I will say that all the adidas kit I've bought this year smells of the subcontinent out of the pack though.

I'm with you on this one, Gaston's red card was vaguely unlucky as he was being fouled (not dissimilar to Lambert's in Brighton a couple of years ago), Osvaldo's already had a couple of potential red cards not seen and has been a tad on the jammy side, I know which one of them I think has the dodgy temperament, and it's the one who's been known to punch a teammate.

He's not lazy (just as Guly isn't) and when needed he works back, but as with many players his style of movement is effortless and can make it look like he's not trying. However, he is lacking the strength to hold players off and gets leaned off the ball a bit easily on occasion. He also needs to learn an alternative trick to the one where he rolls a player using the outside of his foot, in order to make defenders thing he might occasionally go the other way - as it is if he gets the ball with his back to goal he always turns the same way and that makes him easy to read. If anything, he lacks the exaggeration needed for people to buy some of his dummies - a "proper" shoulder throw instead of a half-hearted one which the defender can ignore. The final improvement is concentration, at first I though his lack of complete passes in the attacking third was due to us not having players who could control or utilise the passes he was seeing, but his slapdash passing in the Bristol City game makes it a concentration issue for me - he needs to ensure the simple passes get there just as much as the clever and more technically difficult ones. Also, we should give up on him taking of set pieces, JWP does it better, with more pace, accuracy and success already, and rarely hits the first defender. He's not there yet but he's certainly got potential. Somehow I think it's unlikely we see the benefits of that in the Premier League with the rest of the side doing well - but he might be instrumental in a Cup run or two.

...by idiots.

Speaking as a now-veteran of, er, 4 League Two matches this season (and a couple of Skate games on the box), I think I can safely say that they are slightly worse than Newport, who are slightly better than mid-table. So they are basically around mid-table. When Wallace goes to some vaguely competent League One side for tuppence-ha'penny and a significant pay rise in January (surely?), they'll be a bottom half side. Accrington - who I've actually seen home and away AND on tv against the Skates - are looking odds on for one of the two relegation spots, and it is unlikely the Skates will capitulate enough to take the other. Then again, they've utterly collapsed in the second half of the last 3 seasons when the wages have run out, so who knows? I was begging for a Skates v Newport JPT draw, as I was keen to get the Newport at Fratton experience out of the way before Dec 14th so I could give the league game a miss and go and watch Saints in Newcastle again instead. So JPT draw comes along, and pffffft sod's law, Newport v Skates... in Newport. It may be my hometown, but there is no way I'm going to share the journey up and/or back with that bunch of inbreds, so sod it, I'm not going (even though I was one of 81 Newport fans at Crawley last Tuesday). I now have only the FA Cup R1 and maybe R2 draws to try and get me to Newcastle.

Doesn't matter if he scores or not if England don't, provided San Marino don't get a result against Ukraine.

I would say absolutely at most we'd have got 6 more points. Gazzaniga played in wins against QPR (away) and Newcastle, (plus Cup wins Stevenage and Sheff Wed), draws against Fulham (he was partially to blame for one goal, so let's say 2 points there), Swansea (say 2 more there arguably), and Norwich (say 2 more there too). The defeats were away to Everton (he was at fault for one goal but we'd have lost with any keeper), away to West Brom (we were awful, nothing to do with him), and Liverpool (still dunno how we only lost 1-0). So 6 more points, and that's assuming we won not drew the 3 home matches. We actually won 45% of matches he played in, and 19% of those he didn't. Even without the League Cup games we won 33% of them compared to 19% without him. Those 6 points, with Norwich, West Brom and Swansea all losing a point each as well, would have seen us come 9th (still below West Brom, but above Stoke, Fulham, West Ham, Swansea and Norwich). We'd have still been 13 points adrift of 7th, and frankly even the remotest effort in winning at home to Stoke in the last game would have seen us 11th. Even blaming him for everything, we'd still only be realistically 6 points better - and that's assuming Boruc actually would have been a better option at that point.

I'd be pretty comfortable that our front four would be Rodriguez-Davis-Lallana; with Osvaldo up top, based on recent matches.

I am now firmly in this camp, I'm sure he'll superb in 6 or 7 years' time, but... fat lot of good that does us now.

When incorrectly used. Back to the point though, Hahahahahahahahahahahaha Cardiff City. I've been waiting for this since Tan took over, they are the prostitutes of senior football, will do anything for the money. As a Newportonian, not much gives me greater pleasure than watching them fail.

Suicide. Though in this case the question of being a minor probably means there's no offence.

Incidentally, this is what a "place with no culture" looks like and acts like. It may have been created in 1978, but it was unique in depicting about the only thing the area is known for, historically : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-south-east-wales-24400028

Well, I worked on an installation project right across the South (and some bits of the North) of England and Wales, and have seen cities and towns in every county in that half of the UK, spending a week in about 30 of them, and I actively chose to live in Southampton permanently a few years later after being a student here. Suffice to say I don't agree with the ranking at all. Far worse places than Southampton I've been to include Stoke, Coventry, Middlesbrough, Luton, Slough, Swindon, Merthyr, my home town of Newport, and basically anywhere urban east of Swansea, west of the Celtic Manor, and south of Brecon excluding Cardiff, Usk and Caerphilly (i.e. the 90% of South Wales which isn't Cardiff or Cardiff Bay). There are doubtless many more I have not yet been to. Merthyr is by far the worst though. It gets dark around 3pm in December, there's literally nothing for miles to the north except slate collieries, there's hardly any greenery around within the town itself, it has some really ugly estates, it's desolate, deprived, dirty and dangerous, the terraced houses are charmless compared to others even in the immediate vicinity, and it's full of neanderthals and other miscellaneous thickoes. It may be handy if you want to go abseiling off a bridge or potholing, but there are still nicer places to do that, too. Though even the sh0itest bits of South Wales are within 45 minutes of some awesome beaches (as are Sotonians), you can't get much further from the beach than Merthyr in South Wales without getting shot at by low-flying planes or uzi-toting drug security nutters. Also, if you can't have a decent night out in Southampton, you're going to all the wrong places, it's got something for chavs, students, skint 20-somethings, the mainstream lot, aspirational tvvats, and old farts too. The best thing about LagerWorld is that all the bellends go there and leave the rest of us alone - admittedly I wouldn't bother with anything much within the, ahem, "QE2 Mile", other than a couple of places, but that's because it's mainly shops, right?

Goals conceded apart (easily explained by the skewing of fixtures against the top half teams for Adkins' spell compared to Pochettino), those stats are barely different from under Adkins and any variation could be explained by sample size and standard deviation. It's a hell of a leap to show that part of Saints' "long ball" game is to take advantage of un-set defences (true of pressing), when a quick look at the actual "long passes" shows that around half of the "long balls" are entirely within our own half. Other than the accuracy of the statement that stats in football are underdeveloped and often fail to show cause, the only thing I thought was notable about the article is the phrase "Southampton’s front four press quickly, in clear formation: one going to the ball, two backing him up and a fourth looking fill space and pounce if the ball gets through the initial wave." I hadn't noticed such a clearly defined "method" to the press and will look out for it... in the matches where we bother to press at all.

It's nonsense, based on an outdated rule that no longer exists.

Lallana's had one game this season where he's been obviously good, I'm not sure that's really international form. He's on their radar (and has already had a token call up) but needs to be a lot more consistent. Also, there's no such thing as the residential rule any more, so you can stop going on about Schneiderlin for England. In order to do that he'd have to take British citizenship (and then decide not to play for Scotland etc. ).

Anyone else note that Redknapp signed a random South American in a position he already has loads of cover for and has so far given him 2 minutes as a sub in the two matches he's been eligible for? Usually that means Willie Mackay's involvement - but this time the guy's got the same agent company as Gaston.

I don't think the current team is lacking in belief, rightly so - even last season we were unlucky not to get anything up there - though we did have the element of surprise that time with Pochettino new to the job at the time.

Pat from Poole covered what I was going to say... I actually saw Accrington play Dagenham and Redbridge on Friday night, they were barely going to be accused of playing football, and conceded from two breakaways, before scoring with the rebound of their only shot of the game to that point late on after some awful goalkeeping. Terrible match, little skill on show outside of Caton, Odejayi and Zavon Hines. They've got a chance of staying up if he can partner Odejayi with someone who can finish. Beattie amusingly parked his personalised plated car right next to a ramshackle portakabin near the players' entrance (avoiding the autograph hunters in the main car park). Bit of a contrast.

It's because there are 9 uninspired sad souls on here who think that voting for Fox is hilarious and will annoy people.

I'm amused to see the Manc who has completely misunderstood the meaning of "headstrong" - it doesn't mean "mentally strong", it means determined but reckless. We did play very well there for 45 minutes and it's interesting how highly the Man U fans remember that. What Saints have now is not automatic points on the board, but it's a couple of systems and personnel that give us the opportunity to play and compete for 3 points anywhere in the Premier League, and that's really all you can expect and hope for.

Ess, seamlessness is just some made up concept you've invented because Apple have no innovation any more. All those things can be done on Android, and the integration is from the OS that runs everything on the same device, not some pretend corporate ethos which extends as far as "stuff looks the same". I wrote a list of what delivers all that stuff on Android (except eBookmarks and wireless speaker streaming because I don't do those, but I'm sure they're out there), and I can do them all on an OS I downloaded about 18 months ago with apps I've had for 2 years.

Looked like the goal he gave away against Wigan at the start of last season, the difference being Lovren was covering this time and between them they managed to flatten Bony just outside the box, rather than no-one getting near Kone. A quirky illustration of how we've improved in the past 14 months to say the least!

Been taking tips from Redknapp. Next he'll be slagging off the Uruguayan FA as soon as he knows he's never getting that job. I do hope he brings his brand of cheating to the Prem and gets absolutely slated by all and sundry for it, but with all his mates at the Beeb I suspect it'll have to be Sky that progress that agenda...

I know, it's that one of them doesn't think there needs to be cheese in a cheeseburger despite charging for it.