The9

I'm not sure he's ever jumped that high.

Yes, that is Saints bias, but that doesn't mean anyone coming to that conclusion is doing so due to Saints bias - and lets face it, that sample size is subject to a lot of random factors and in no way indicative of anything useful. Even a huge sample would suffer from media bias. The bit in bold, yes, absolutely, but that's not the same as you saying our best players are automatically not as good as any one of theirs, which is what you implied by mentioning Saints bias - and have repeated by saying our best are their middling players. It's true of the overall squad standard and can be seen in the League table, as you've said, but there are individual examples where that's not the case. Anyway, we are getting repetitive, I'm happy to agree that overall Man U are better and I think we're agreed on the reasons for that, are you still saying it is impossible that we might genuinely have a better player than Man U in any position and that thinking any different is always due to Saints bias ?

I think you make fair points, but Lampard has made a significant contribution to Chelsea and the only reason Gerrard's looks more important to Liverpool is because Chelsea also had others making them successful - even in that environment Lampard's contribution was still outstanding. Gerrard in Chelsea's side wouldn't have looked as outstanding - it's open to question whether Lampard could have dragged Liverpool to the success they had in Gerrard's place, but just because someone else is also good doesn't make a good player worse.

But ALL Man U players are squad players, even van Persie. PS I like the irony, given that your previous post was duplicated.

Firstly, ALL players at Man U are squad players, world class van Persie-type to dubious Brazilian twin loanee full back, due to the rotation system and number of games they play. I agree that as a basic concept there's an overall shift from the middle, to GOOD for Man U and LESS GOOD for Saints. BUT that does not necessarily mean the individual match ups in certain positions will always favour the Man U player. It doesn't mean we have to be being biased towards Saints for thinking our best players are better than their Man U equivalents (who are not necessarily Man U's best players), and what you were saying was that we were ALWAYS biased for thinking that a Saints player could be better than a Man U one. Hell, even as a team we even outperformed them for more than half of both matches against United last season - but still lost due to the lapses of our lesser players. That's why we finished 48 points behind, our worst players consistently make mistakes their squad doesn't.

I am saying that a team can contain some better players than another team without being a better team. You're saying because they are better, all their players are better.

That's not pedantic, that's pointing out where the difference is. I would say that the differences are not just in overall squad ability on the day, but also how often that "day" can be attained. Man U's "West Brom home" days are a lot less frequent that ours. If that's part of your "better" calculation, fair enough, but what I'm saying is that their "best" levels can be the same in many cases and it doesn't have to be Saints bias to think that (say) Cork is better than Anderson, or Lambert is better than van Persie. May have let myself down at the end there.

I see your edit - but that's where most of the difference comes from. Even at parks level you're only as strong as your weakest player, and try playing 5 a side with 4 excellent players and a complete donkey against 5 good ones. (Well, it would be nice...)

You can also print off the various covers from the EA website too, IIRC.

The point I'm making is that saying individual Saints players are comparable to their Man U equivalents isn't necessarily viewing it through Saints-tinted glasses, in some cases it's a fair comparison. However, yes, overall their squad has more good players and fewer weak ones. You also said they wouldn't finish 48 points ahead if half our team was better than theirs. If our best 6 were slightly better than their worst 6 starters but their remaining 5 (and all of the bench) were miles better than our other players it's perfectly possible that could happen.

Ha, i.e. "We don't know why we let that guy loose in front of a tv camera, please ignore everything he said".

I also loved the justification that "the word City wasn't unique" and that was a reason to change it... I guess he could have always bought a club from a town, or a village, or just one which ALREADY HAD A UNIQUE NAME if it bothered him that much - the likes of Port Vale and Crewe Alexandra must be gutted.

I think you're missing the point - you can indeed make a case that many of those players are of similar quality. What you're missing (or more likely deliberately ignoring) is that the ones you haven't mentioned are nowhere near the same class. Ferdinand/Vidic compared to Hooiveld/Yoshida, Van Persie/Rooney and Rodriguez/Lambert and pretty much their entire bench compared to Fox, Guly, etc. is where the difference lies. But at least one, maybe 2 of the 3 starting central midfielders are comparable. There's also the issue that they may be at a similar level at their best, but the consistency of being at their best vastly differs. I'd see Puncheon on top form as comparable with Valencia, but I'd take Valencia as someone who is going to turn up and reach that personal peak far more often in a season.

I can see why.

Thought as much, the Japanese love a bit of PES/Winning Eleven and it'll take more than the game being cack for most of the last 5 years to convince them otherwise. FIFA have never done J-League Editions for a start.

Quite. Another random businessman with too much power and half-baked ideas buggering about with club traditions for absolutely no tangible benefit to anything other than personal ego. For some reason a Saints v Leeds match programme from August 2011 sprung to my mind then.

We very much can take the moral high ground over it, as most of us are against Saints doing it as well. In fact, along with Cardiff (and maybe Coventry and AFC Wimbledon) we're probably one of the better placed groups to be critical of it. Now MK Dons fans complaining about something like this, THAT would be hypocrisy.

Turkish already said that. Well done on picking the wrong side.

In the sense that both decisions will alienate the majority of people already invested in the product by pursuing failed attempts to attract customers from other markets who have repeatedly proven themselves only to be interested in aligning themselves with trophy-winning sides no matter what their actual name is, yes, they are two sides of the same coin.

Wouldn't they still be more naturally predisposed to playing Konami's PES (or more accurately Winning Eleven) over there ?

Seeing as a whole pile of clubs had official FIFA covers last season, including some pretty poky ones as well as the usual suspects, and we weren't one of them, this is just a sign of Saints following where others have led. Nice to see a Saints shirt on the Japanese cover though, that should get a few people asking who Yoshida's playing for nowadays if nothing else.

Funnily enough I agree with all of that apart from the stuff about JWP's ability. He's unlikely to get any kind of run in the side, and it's difficult to see how he'll improve with that being the case. He's still young though, not many kids able to impose themselves in that kind of company but I'm hopeful, rather than expectant based on what I've seen so far.

You do have to wonder if the Championship/L1 years will have dried up the allure of our Academy to parents between 2005-2011... if we're recruiting kids aged around 8/9 then the dip would be coming along right about now - but that assumes we don't have the ability to recruit others at higher ages to fill the shortfall. I'd have to back this vaguely half-baked theory up with the likes of Shaw and JWP and the years and ages of their recruitments, and frankly I don't have the inclination at 1:30am. I think it's difficult to make snap judgements on whole academies though - how late did Bale develop ? It only took a year or two from him nearly being released to first team Championship debut. For any kid there's always the possibility something just clicks, or the hormones kick in to develop a kid's body to improve their physical presence hugely.

Varsity (Portswood) has merely rebranded to Wild Lime, at least one of the London Rd Varsity staff is in there. However, as they serve you a strawberry on the glass along with your red berry Bulmers I'd be inclined to think they won't be showing too many live football matches, and definitely no dodgy streams/feeds.

I disagree re: Plan B, what were we doing at Spurs last season if we were committed to 4-2-3-1 and didn't know how to play any other way ? Yeah we got nailed by counters and hoofing at Newcastle and home to West Brom, but the former had a pile of defensive errors and an offside goal, and the latter was just a terrible low tempo performance all round. I wonder actually whether trying to change our style away from 4-2-3-1 was the reason for our relatively poor end of season form. Pochettino knows when the system will work, and boy did it work when it worked, but he's also started picking up on the games where our high pressing system just leaves us open and we need to play a different way - Spurs away (without Schneiderlin, remember) was very nearly a lesson in how to deal with them, but Shaw just showed Bale inside that one time...