The9

Yeah, but they have to live in Fleetwood.

I think that's why people have started referring to a front 4 and discussing all available attacking midfield and striker options, instead of just discussing the attackers.

Saints have also managed selling STs throughout the season quite easily before in the Prem, and I hardly think there would be a massive rush on STs after the start of the season. When I bought an ST once after single match tickets had gone on sale, all they did was give me a match ticket for elsewhere for the two games where my ST seat had already been sold, and kept the ST until it was valid from the 3rd match. It's really not difficult with a half-decent system - or even with a crap one, like the crap one before this crap one.

Will be interesting to see if they drop last season's games after 4, 5 or 6 games of this season. Might make a difference to me, as I don't plan on going to any of our away matches until at least November, but definitely plan on one or two in December.

I don't get it either - on Saturday at West Ham v Cardiff they were advertising their STs with 5% off, which covered the value of the game people were already missing nicely.

The comments about successful dribbles above make me think we'll have Rodriguez on the right and Osvaldo on the left with Lambert in the middle... and all of them rotating. Whether it's Lallana or Ramirez in the hole is the next question.

Amazingly you just named my two latest additions to the list...

We weren't winning the Championship between joining it in August 2005 and August 2011 either.

Hmmmm, being a Saints fan is still miles better than being a County fan at the moment, and I should know, I'm both - though they have done a lot to recover my affection since I played against them in 2000.

Quite. Targett has shown nothing in the first two... wait, he only played in one... in his one game against Chelsea U21s to suggest he's any more ready for the first team than any of the other Dev squad players.

And what of Johnno Quick ?

Didn't know about that, I'll have to keep a closer eye on BTSports this season than I did on ESPN. Obviously given my username I have a suspicious eye on false 9 and 4-6-0s... though it's sort of amusing and a tad postmodernist that one of the major tenets of modern football coaching is to revert to the kind of vaguely regimented flexibility that is the antithesis of coaching...

There's a big difference between the left back ability of a left back who can attack, and left winger who might be asked to defend. If we sign him and then "Stewart Downing him" I'll be stunned.

I think the 31.7% chance of CL qualification is based on World War breaking out this week. Those statistical websites are great for probability, but the sample size is one match so far, which somewhat reduces the accuracy. Now the same site based on 30+ results ? Solid statistical evidence.

Yup. FWIW, I can also see us finishing above Everton but almost certainly not Arsenal.

Will be interesting to see how we choose to deploy him, and which of the front 4 steps down. More interesting as Gaston is also preferred at home. What's good to know is that Osvaldo is already used to playing either side of a "front 3", which our 4-2-3-1 often looks like, that he can also play in the hole (though this seems less likely given Lallana/Ramirez/Lambert's ability there), or up top, knowing he can rotate into the wide positions as we have seen from our front 4 already. In fact, the only restrictions on our "front 4" from Osvaldo/Ramirez/Rodriguez/Lallana/Lambert seem to be Lallana not playing up top, the others are all capable of playing any of those positions (even Ramirez up front has already happened, though I'm not sure it's a preference). The movement alone makes us a sod of a team to track, ally that to the high pressing and hitting on transitions and the added pace Osvaldo gives, and we're looking like a far greater attacking threat - which is great news as we were already creating plenty of shots, just not converting them into goals.

Made me laugh, anyway.

I somehow doubt his driving ban has helped either... http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2330250/Southampton-striker-Tadanari-Lee-banned-driving.html How did that pass me by as well ?!!?

From all reports and the previous loan I'd only expect him to go to a Japanese club. He doesn't seem to have settled well and his injuries can't have helped. Didn't realise he'd turned down a move to FC Tokyo in the summer : http://www1.skysports.com/news/12040/8783334/ but from the translation that was due to him being a bit part player for them already.

We agree. But I think we need a striker with all that and pace to threaten the top 6. Admittedly I also thought we needed one to threaten the top 6 in the Championship, but you won't find me saying Lambert hasn't been impressive, more that he's done it against the odds.

No, just by saying "who cares" 35,000 times.

Like I said earlier, the deal has been renegotiated. This is evident for a few reasons : 1) There were no sponsors on the shirts when they did the kit launch photoshoot and videos. They had to photoshop the sponsor onto the shirt pics and splice new footage of just the shirt front into the launch video without players visible (and they only showed the players in shirts from the shoulders up, waist down or from the back to cover this). Why would that be the case if aap3 were completing the sponsorship deal that was due to run another season anyway ? They'd already know the sponsor and have their name on the shirts. 2) No sponsor on the U21 kits this season, which were sponsored by aap3 last season - if it was the same deal, they'd still be sponsoring the U21s as well - but as it's completely illogical for them to have signed up to a reserves deal that was shorter than the first team sponsorship, there must have been a termination of the the original deal, which now does not include the U21 kit. 3) Not evidence as such, but a whole pile of hearsay floating about about the club sending out marketing stuff to other sponsors last year, about "an F1 team", and then Lotus, being new sponsors, of away kit colours originally in Lotus F1 colours, of people claiming certain details regarding the kit were not complete and had changed. None of this says anything about how much was paid, but all of it says the original deal ended and was reworked when the club didn't have a sponsor with the season approaching.

It's the reasoned debate on here I love. When Bazza's "if Everton sell..." is the most reasonable thing posted in a thread, you have to worry.

What is it about these kind of football-based threads that makes them so unpopular ? Is it that the trolls have to work hard to make a point, or that there's too much effort involved to actually have any kind of discussion ? I've already seen Barry Sanchez saying stuff like "why do you think Osvaldo will play wide/central/make runs in behind/has pace" etc. as a way of diminishing his possible impact and making it look like he won't be a good signing, and I've seen others say he's not a replacement for Lambert/Rodriguez/Lallana/Puncheon. Here's the evidence that he could be any of those things, but why no discussion ? Too much like hard work ?