The9

Frances Hunter, academy GPS analyst ? http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/team/academy-staff/

Nice to see the good old WM in use on the tactics... floor anyway.

Whatever he's claiming, it's not "prolific", which just means the production of numerous things - in this case goals. Even counting goals in training he's still not remotely close to being remotely prolific for Saints, never mind "the most prolific ever". The definition of prolific is about pure volume only, there's no calculation to be taken into consideration. For what it's worth, he'd have to be insane to cut his pay in half just for the privilege of playing football - he can walk out of here at the end of his contract far better off financially, with a far reduced chance of getting injured, and the opportunity to negotiate a deal with a Championship side based on his undiluted current wages, rather than the cut he might have taken. He's already established as a Championship striker and there will be no shortage of takers in the top half of the Championship no matter what he does in the next 18 months. In terms of smart business decisions, sitting out his contract is second only to somehow working his way into Saints' first team to increase his value when his contract expires.

International football tactics no longer allow teams to use two strikers, and with no-one else to do the running in behind, Sheringham wouldn't have had a chance as a lone striker nowadays either.

Newport were £13 in the Conference and are £18 in L2, I think that's worse, add another £2 on the day. I haven't been to see Eastleigh for a while, but I thought £10 was reasonable enough for a Conf South team 3/4 years ago, they were up to £12 last season and haven't put the 2013/14 prices on their website yet.

Laughing the point about "people who sneer at iPhones can't afford them"... I had the first two iPhones and switched because Android overtook them, cost wasn't even a consideration. That was only 2 years ago so I had 3-4 years of iPhone use, jumped with the Flash decision (and having decided I wanted configuration and a decent sized display on my phone) and there's literally no reason to go back. Fingerprint security ? Firstly, big deal, secondly, there are already rumours the HTC Max has the same if you want it. Even now, with my contract expiring and the new contracts at the same tariff as I was paying until fairly recently, I'd rather keep the SII I switched to 2 years ago on a cheaper monthly tariff than go back to the iPhone - or any of the other current devices for that matter. There's nothing in speed, reliability or functionality that I want and don't already have, and getting something like an S4 is basically pointless as there are so few changes. I'll get a new phone when this one breaks or when there's something like a Nexus 5 but with some extendable storage in it. Completely over the "new phone for new phone's sake" thing - until my bank goes to NFC connectivity there's no functional reason to upgrade.

The question is why does the club have a system which requires people to have to do that ?

I suspect that would also be something the club would not give consideration to.

Eurosport managed to name him on their website on the live coverage...

I literally cannot remember a single second of it, and I know I was there. I do recall watching us having gone to Cardiff for the first match, missing the Birminghamvhome defeat to go to V Festival and then seeing us get thrashed 4-1 at QPR the week after on tv in the Mitre in Portswood, but absolutely no recall of this game whatsoever.

No, the CBs are named after the GK and before the FBs for some reason. EDIT : Ah, it's because both Surman and James are listed as midfielders on the Soccerbase site, so Perry and Svensson are the "only" defenders listed so are above them on the list. The team has 1 GK, 2 DF, 6 MF and 2 AT, which is surprisingly near what we actually play nowadays, as it happens!

I'd be quite keen to be chauffeured to Hull away, midweek, in case anyone from the club is checking this...

Me neither - probably because he only lasted until half time. Strangely, the team on that day was absolutely nowhere remotely near one of our worst - Cork, on loan and by far our most energetic and outstanding player at the time, didn't even start. K Davis (G) N/A C Perry (D) N/A M Svensson (D) N/A Yellow card A Surman (M) N/A Yellow card L James (M) N/A Yellow card (68 ) S Gillett (M) N/A Yellow card L Holmes (M) N/A A Lallana (M) N/A (67) M Schneiderlin (M) N/A D McGoldrick (F) N/A (46) J White (F) N/A Subs B Bialkowski (G) N/A (46) N Dyer (M) N/A J Cork (M) N/A (68 ) P Wotton (M) N/A (67) S John (F) N/A

Slightly impacted by not playing any matches at home in the months of June, July and only one in May and August.

I should think all of them, if they watch any video of the second half of last season. I'm not sure I agree that our build up is slower, I think we've become much, MUCH more direct and give the ball away a lot more often from longer passing rather than keeping possession - but by hitting early balls we're only conceding possession when our defence and midfield are still goalside of the ball, rather than pushing numbers forward and getting done with only the CBs in our half, so we're less likely to concede. We didn't press ALL the time even in Pochettino's early days, we only managed it for 45 minutes against Wigan away and we barely did it at all at home to Spurs last season. It's fair to say the amount of high-pitch pressing has dropped off though. I might stay sober on Sunday so I can pay a bit more attention to what Schneiderlin and Wanyama are doing too, cos so far it's looked like Wanyama just likes whacking long balls to opposing defenders and Schneiderlin keeps getting asked to play up front, and that CAN'T be right ?

We are quite "Fulhamy" though... maybe we need more movie stars in the crowd to truly become them.

I can't really see what's wrong with most of #2, the main weakness to his game is not being able to go past players and create goals for himself - he's able to shift the ball if he's already in the box or shooting range, but he's never going to run past someone 40 yards from goal and finish it. But he also has other strengths which purely fast players who can do that particular thing don't have. All of the others are tangibly utter cobblers. 1) He provides that creativity, 3) is down to him consciously making a commitment to improve around the time he signed for Saints and he's even said he hadn't been serious enough previously - plus his selection is down to his current status, not that from the previous 10 years. 4) Same as 3. He WASN'T that good until the latter part of the previous decade, now he is. Oh, and Grant Holt is more mobile, more agile, and faster than Lambert - I've also seen him run past defenders with the ball in the Prem. He's also a year older and not as creative, and most importantly in 2013, no longer playing in the Premier League. My point being, using the phrase "The Grant Holt mould" for those characteristics is just as inaccurate to Grant Holt as these criticisms are to Lambert.

Fulham, then West Ham, then Villa. Sheesh.

They are surprisingly efficient at qualification when they go into the last 2 games knowing what they have to do. It's only Euro 2008 they really arsed up by sleepwalking half a match against Croatia they needed to win, the previous failure for 1994 was a debacle from the start and with two matches left they were hoping San Marino could get a result against the Dutch, which was clearly never going to happen.

Can't argue with that, other than I don't think he's disappointed in the centre and I don't think he's that weak facing away from goal, he just tends to try and run instead of holding it up like a knackered old pro would. He hasn't played in the middle anything like as often as we have others who prefer to play there. He does prefer to run at people though, but we wouldn't want a bunch of photofit players who all do the same thing - the fact they have unique strengths and weaknesses is part of the problem for defenders as they have to keep thinking and changing the way they defend in each situation, which makes them more likely to make mistakes.

I'd started by thinking that we'd be inclined to think the "why not" would be that we'd be even more susceptible to long diagonal balls, but when our practical line up is 2-4-3-1 anyway with the full backs level with the defensive midfielders overall, it's actually a more defensive line up than we've currently got and would also give us more ability to close down the wide long balls without being exposed along the rest of the back line.

We've signed Osvaldo precisely because he fits our system and the manager knows his strengths already.

They're red. If they were white it might have helped a bit...

Agbonlahor has been in pretty good form recently but I don't think he's in the squad. England only really need a draw in Ukraine anyway, as long as they're ahead of Ukraine after this match you'd still expect them to beat Montenegro and Poland at home, though Ukraine have Poland and San Marino. A win would make it easier, of course, but a draw would be absolutely fine provided they don't completely arse up in the last two matches.

As Steve is in Ukraine it will be a few days before this can be confirmed... says "banned" next to delldays on his account, maybe that's the easiest way to delete an account without losing the posts. I'm considering a rebrand myself...