The9

I don't. You said "you dont get to 4th by playing badly with our squad" How does drawing at home to a team that has one point from 7 matches and losing to one of the bottom 3 sit with "not playing badly" then? Did we do really well to lose at Norwich or let a five foot five player score a header from a set-piece against a team who has precisely zero other points this season? Clearly we have played badly at some points, yet we are indeed 4th.

Significant direction change caused by Chico's attempt at a clearing header before the ball came to Rodriguez.

He's better than Garth Crooks' choices usually are, but then so's Fox. So was Ryan Dickson for that matter. Though I'd take Crooks' choices over Stephen O'Halloran in terms of skill.

Pretty sure everyone in the Northam and Northam end of the Kingsland was clear, where were you?

They showed an angle from behind the goal near the goalpost where you could see both that Dean didn't blow until the ball was already in the net, and that Lovren had a big handful of Chico Flores' shirt at one point, but not only could Dean not see that, others have already said Flores fouled Lovren first and it had little effect on either of their abilities to play the ball. Plus this is all assuming the ref wasn't just going to make something up anyway.

Barcham looked quite decent in the first couple of games (after the hilarious Oxford opener), his form seems to have fallen off the planet though. FWIW Accrington brought a very nippy loanee called Caton on late on Friday and they soon got a goal back against Dagenham. If him and Odejayi (who won everything in the air) can get their act together, that second relegation spot might open up again.

They have Brian Jensen as backup (as I saw in my League Two Tour of Accrington v Dag/Red and Bury v Newport on Fri/Sat). So they're probably happy to ship out his wages.

There is a huge shirt pull by Lovren, but any actual foul is completely incidental to the whole whistle-blowing episode anyway.

We didn't play well against either West Ham or Sunderland (the latter only have one point, from St Mary's) but without those two points we're 3 places lower - and had we also not lost at bottom 3 Norwich playing badly we'd probably be top. We've played 2nd (Away Win), 12th (Away Win), 13th (Home Draw), 15th (Home Win) and the bottom 3 (Away Loss, Home Win, and Home Draw), so Liverpool aside, I suspect there's been a bit more wiggle room for poor performances than if we faced the top half and one bottom 3 side at the start of the season like we did last year.

Yup.

He'd have pointed "to the middle" if pointing in the direction of the foul anyway though. He wasn't waiting for anyone else. He's got previous for phantom fouls from corners when it should have been a goal kick, the only strange thing was the delay in blowing. If he blows when the ball is on its way to the box no-one knows what it's for because most people are watching the ball. Waiting as he did allowed the opportunity for us to put the ball in the net and have to have it disallowed.

I'm not sure he's an attacking midfielder, but one of the benefits of him being so young is that he could be anything - even in the summer he's added an awesome dead ball delivery to his repertoire, so no reason he doesn't add late runs and finishing to his skillset, but I don't think he's got that at the moment.

Different positions, I wouldn't expect JWP to be hovering around the front line hitting shots, he's a tidy, hard-working midfield passer who doesn't get forward that much - and made a massive difference when he came on today as Swansea suddenly didn't have free rein down our left any more.

A convenient coincidence for the ref. What we SHOULD have done, was taken the corner short and kept possession until the ref couldn't give a decision, and used the mistake to our advantage rather than giving him an easy way to get out of it.

He seems to be the one who initiated the practice too. To be honest it undermines the concept of the referee's decision entirely, and he should probably be disciplined for it. Two wrongs don't make a right and all that. If he's messed up in the initial decision, just change it - most people will already know it was wrong and won't have a problem with it.

Exactly the same here - I still don't know why he didn't blow during the cross, he left it far too late to give the obvious phantom decision.

Guly is now a (somewhat ironic) crowd favourite, but to the untrained ear it sounds just like a lot of support - can't say the same for Fox - and you can also see why.

Much more entertaining, showed some defensive steel when under sustained pressure, very happy with that overall. A very open and exciting game. Fox got exposed over and over again - partially because Swansea started entirely attacking down our left, but also, I'm surprised to see how many positive comments about Davis there are when his late arrival in the position was often responsible for the overlap and space they could exploit. There was a reason Ward-Prowse came on, and from that moment Swansea also stopped making every single passing move come down Saints' left side as well. From his positioning, Fox had clearly been told to back off and let the left midfielder sort it out, but there were also a lot of occasions where he needed to be tighter to block the cross. Of course if he got too tight, Dyer would have just blown past him, so he was always going to have a tough time. On another day the 5-ish headers we allowed from crosses would have resulted in goals, but Bony and Michu missed a few and Boruc saved a couple well. Oh, and can't really complain about Wanyama's being disallowed, it was obvious they'd get a phantom foul as soon as the ref realised he'd given the corner incorrectly. What I couldn't understand was why he waited so long to blow, usually the whistle goes when the ball's in the air from the corner. He didn't blow it until Lovren had gone for the header and the ball had dropped in the 6 yard box, if he managed to blow at all before the ball crossed the line. Wanyama took literally 10 minutes to find a teammate with a pass and mislaid the ball 4 times in a row before he calmed down a bit, still a goliath defensively but God he's wasteful sometimes. Overall though, another clean sheet and managed to attack a lot more today, which was great.

I thought it only worked the other way around - if you apply for US citizenship you have to give up your existing citizenship. If you're already a US citizen (presumably from birth) then you can add other nationalities dependent on those countries' rules.

Prove it with an official government document.

Which is what I said re: Newport, who played York on one of those occasions. Incidentally, also in the same division as ye two tyme Championes of Englande, are supposed minnow teams with FA Cup and League Cup wins in their history (plus at least one with a European Quarter-Final to their name).

"Pinocchio" is the least close I've heard.

As I have noted elsewhere, I think we are incredibly dull at the moment. Only 5 goals scored in 6 matches including 3 at home, two of which were against the likely divisional whipping boys, says a lot. Entertainment doesn't necessarily = goals and vice versa, but at the same time, we often seem ponderous on the ball and clearly love a backpass in preference to a forward ball. In the Championship season we frequently overlooked the through ball for some sideways possession, but at least that came with movement and the knowledge we were pullling the opposition around. At the moment we seem to get it, have a think about it, wait for the opposing defence to organise, and then pop it about in the inoffensive arc outside the box (I may trademark that ) without looking like we have any chance of creating a chance in open play. Strachan used to call it "propaganda football", though ours is supposed to serve the purpose of easing pressure on the defence - rather than just not creating anything. I think for me it's a combination of not enough off the ball movement, not enough risk taking in the attacking third (the times we played off-the-cuff flicks and moved the ball with pace against West Ham we looked likely to score from some jammy deflections for more often than when we were in controlled possession against Palace), and just not moving the ball around quickly enough to threaten to unlock the defence. We're not actively offensive like West Ham's one-time random launchball, but also we're not the free-flowing, exciting, attacking side we were for much of last season (crappy defending not necessarily being a consequence) and we don't even seem to have the excitement of wholesale pressing. One thing I will say, Pochettino has done well to avoid us being "that pressing team which is easy to play long ball against", which is what we were in April and May, so maybe it's just about sliding the balance a little more towards "attack" again?

Interesting to note that almost all of our long balls in our own half are successful (i.e. under little pressure), and our long balls (conventional, our half to opponents' half) are far less successful in the away games at Norwich and Liverpool than in the home games.

That certainly sounds like the spirit of the promotion. Come to think of it, the club could then refuse to fulfil the prize for the competition winner and then pay out compensation at the last minute if it got to court. Everyone's a winner.