The9

When he plays, yes. Or whoever's worse than him...

Hey now that's not true, just the worst one he'd met, there could be loads of worse people he's not met yet.

I think by "aggressive" they mean "committing fouls" as opposed to just closing down, they had us as "aggressive" against West Brom with the two sendings off. Clearly Gaston didn't take as many of our free-kicks as we imagined - or everyone else was terrible at them. Lambert seemed to force a save or hit the woodwork with most of his. .

http://www.theargus.co.uk/sport/10428541.Vicente_blasts_Poyet/ “the worst person I’ve come across in football”. Sorry about the annoying noisy video, blame local newspaper website templates, it's the same with the Echo.

Just had a look at player positions for the Stoke (H) match and Lambert is marginally further forward than the trio of Rodriguez, Lallana and Steven Davis, with all of them operating in an incredibly narrow corridor in the centre of the pitch - though I suspect in practice this is due to Davis actually playing there in the middle and Lallana and Rodriguez switching wings, thereby averaging out in the centre. Against West Brom (H), when we got thrashed, Lallana and Rodriguez were wider though still showing quite narrow, but again slightly deeper than central Lambert, with Davis sitting much further back alongside Cork in the middle and Schneiderlin deeper than both. Against Spurs (A), when Schneiderlin was missing, Lallana played just in advance of Lambert overall, with Rodriguez in behind them, again all crammed into the central areas. Guly played in a RCM role and Davis and Cork held, but were still much further up the pitch as a pair. Shaw was much further forward than usual, on average in Spurs' half ! However, there is some evidence of Rodriguez "up front": the last away match we won under Adkins (at Villa), showed Rodriguez as the furthest forward player by some distance, playing in an outside right position, with Lambert in behind in the middle and Lallana and Puncheon in line as a conventional 3 supporting across the width of the pitch. That game also saw a centre-line 4 of Clyne, Shaw, Cork and Schneiderlin, as with all of these games the CBs have been a good 10 yards deeper than the FBs, on average. If nothing else it shows that being the furthest forward player doesn't necessarily correlate with goals.

From WhoScored.com , based on technical match ratings and pass by pass appraisals, the end of season report for Saints indicates the following : http://www.whoscored.com/Teams/18 Southampton Characteristics (* Strengths, weaknesses and styles are calculated from team's current domestic season statistics) + Strengths Stealing the ball from the opposition - Very Strong Shooting from direct free kicks - Strong - Weaknesses Keeping possession of the ball - Weak Defending set pieces - Weak Defending against attacks down the wings - Weak Defending against through ball attacks - Weak Protecting the lead - Very Weak Avoiding individual errors - Very Weak Southampton Style Attempt through balls often Take long shots Play the offside trap Non-aggressive Consistent first eleven Do we agree with all that ? Quite surprised to see that we're "weak" at keeping possession of the ball and the apparently high numbers of offsides against us could be a side-effect of pressing.

Would be interesting to see if that's actually the case. WhoScored? will have match by match breakdowns of Saints' average positions. I wouldn't say Rodriguez was EVER our furthest forward striker whilst Lambert was on the pitch, no matter how much the latter dropped into the hole. He was also on a different planet to Guly in terms of effectiveness, and I'm one of the ones who was still defending Guly's workrate at the start of the season.

Did you see his massive parting shot at Poyet ? Hilarious.

Is it because Fred has Hulk and Neymar and the like actually creating stuff ?

Yeah, he played for the deflection beautifully. Ah, there we go, 2-2.

What the actual fock is going on ? I am concerned that Steve Grant has been sucked into a parallel dimension, as he's there.

Along with Sun Goals and UFC on BT Sport... anyone would think they weren't the same ads the Brazilians were seeing. Unless you were referring to haircuts of course.

They are using an orange, pink, black and fluorescent yellow ball. Let us not understate this.

My favourite thing about this match so far is how the adverts on the replays are completely different to the ones when the action is shown live.

Teletext holidays taking advantage of the fact that those pitchside adverts clearly aren't what is actually being broadcast inside the stadium to run a "DESPERATE TO GET AWAY LIKE WAYNE?" ad, most amusing.

He did pretty well for Liverpool for a few years as well, just not for England.

Should get them the 3-0 defeat they crave.

The ball just disappeared behind a non-existent advert, FFS.

Firstly, what a terrible ball, and oh God they've got those awful "green screen" adverts that just look wrong again.

Anyway, Bra v Eng anyone ? http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?45171-Brazil-v-England&p=1706950#post1706950

...anyone ? Walcott 9 wearing what looks like a kid's XLB shirt, a new era for England ?

No, it was brilliant, even if it wasn't as good as your brain expected it to be. The main reason a tackle didn't go in was because he put most of the players he went past off-balance before he even got to them.

Much easier to do when I don't have to waste my time reading stuff I already know will be pointless based on swathes of previous efforts.

I'm fine with that, knowing that it's highly unlikely that I'm actually missing anything of any merit.

I'm glad he came back, makes it so much easier to add to the Ignore list.