The9

The wheelchair and ambulant sections are in Rows 30/31 of the lower tier, so there will be copious amounts of stewarding if any of that is blocked by people standing in front. When my wife rang the club the day before tickets went on sale they passed on that sitting will be enforced by stewards in what she heard as the "front 13 rows" - I'm guessing that's actually the "front 30" given the disabled section. I'm in row 32.

Plays in a way that gets him kicked a lot - all of his injuries so far have been from contact, not "being brittle". Utter comedy the way people don't see what he can offer (and already has offered), and that he has a workrate including defensively, not to mention the absolute rubbish being spouted about "running it off", knowing he was injured immediately and "not wanting to play in a rubbish team". Absolute, utter nonsense. FWIW Van Dijk stayed on because he knew he was essential, effectively irreplaceable - and who knows how many extra weeks out those couple of minutes cost him and us? Anyone knows when they've got an injury and can't continue, the fact he knew immediately was a good thing, not bad. He does look like he'll be excellent playing in home games in the #10 role, knows how to play a pass, does sometimes hold it slightly too long but still has good awareness despite that - probably not defensively-minded enough to play there in away games though - except against the likes of Swansea apparently!

Nice, and I bought it (nice fag packet style box on the cassette single!), but given that about 90% of teenagers had no idea about the song even at the time, it's a bit of an ask to think someone could get enough people interested 27 years later. Having said that, it's really simple and easy to learn... though it'll end up not sounding anything like the original.

Current likelihood of relegation is 4%, will rise to 9-10% if we lose this weekend. Still low. Sunderland are around the 60% mark at the moment.

Momentum is a completely false premise. Now confidence and belief... that'll make you work harder, run for longer and anticipate rather than react to situations. Oh, and luck, always a bunch of luck, whether deflections, refereeing decisions at key or favourable moments, or just the bounce of the ball.

He's no Gazza on that front.

Literally the only Saints goal I've ever missed due to being late for kick off as well. And yes, Ray Jones scored for QPR (one of his 5 career goals) in that match on 30 September 2006 and died in August 2007 aged 19. The Wayne Thomas, Cuco Martina and Paul Telfer goals were the ones that came to mind for me.

He is. Transfermarkt has him at about 4 times the value of any other out of contract CB (Forren was 3rd on that list). Whether he's a better option than those signed by other Prem clubs in the window (or others who we'll have been tracking who we'd have needed to throw money at) is a different matter.

It can take a while, but the criteria for the stages of approval are well laid out and based on verifiable stats like % of national appearances, etc. The club will have progressed everything they need to do in the meantime so the delay isn't on them. FWIW I'm not massively keen on the decision not to sign anyone in the window but I can see why they didn't sign any of the others who were available - and I wouldn't be surprised if Caceres was always part of the fall-back position either. A little too much brinkmanship for our usual approach though. I don't think there's any doubt they were expecting Fonte to leave but of the obvious targets who were linked, a couple started playing for their clubs and others got injured. Our injury crisis (linked to the hectic schedule, we've played more games, so are far more likely to get contact injuries) is the only reason we're even in the bottom half. We're still only a 4% likelihood to go down, it's still under 10% even if we lose on Saturday. A win drops us to 1%.

Or to put it another way, at least 4 points off the relegation zone with at least 6 teams below us. Even if we lose. We've still got a pile of winnable games left and will finish somewhere in the middle, unless our injury crisis gets REALLY out of hand, in which case whatchagonnado anyway?

I can't see us not winning this, tbh. 3-1 Saints. Wait a minute, BEARSY? How long have I been avoiding this place?

I see him practically every match, he is getting verbal abuse from almost everyone who speaks to (at) him for it. What a sad, sad man.

If we win the EFL Cup I'd reappoint Puel as manager for a start. I like your idea of having an ex-Newport County player in goal though. Anyone who's kept clean sheets against Gateshead, Telford, Alfreton and Darlington in the Conference is ok with me.

No wonder the Caceres rumours are doing the rounds. Forren is the third most valuable player on that list.

Can't argue about Romeu - not keen on Gardos, too slow on the ball even when he was fit and playing as regularly as he was going to get - good defensively with positioning, timing and headers, but concedes possession too easily when he has the ball.

Bertrand played in the same team as Targett 7 times last season, which is a fairly good indicator of a back 3/5. But you're right, never without Van Dijk. Swansea away last season looks like a back 4: 44 (G) F Forster 6 (D) J Fonte 17 (D) V van Dijk 21 (D) R Bertrand 33 (D) M Targett (86) 4 (M) J Clasie 8 (M) S Davis 14 (M) O Romeu (63) 16 (M) J Ward-Prowse 7 (F) S Long 19 (F) G Pelle (74) Cedric came on for Romeu but until then the 4 defenders were Fonte, Van Dijk, Bertrand and Targett, which is either a weird back 4 or a back 3 with Targett in midfield and (probably) Davis as the other wing back. I'd rather him than Gardos there.

Isn't it? We'll finish top half no problem. I don't really see the point in chucking £20m at a player to get us slightly higher up midtable. The only real argument is whether we'll be stuck looking for two of them in the summer, and now Van Dijk is out for months either his stock will fall in his absence to the point where no-one wants to take a risk yet, or he'll be fit enough to play and we won't have a problem until the summer when we'll have had 6 more months and a different group of players will be available. I can't for a second criticise selling Fonte for the amount we got for him, especially after how bad he was yesterday for West Ham. I can see the benefits of getting Yoshida and Stephens more matches to expedite their development, but there's not much increment of having another defender as long as we don't have more injuries - and there are far fewer matches happening less frequently now, so players should start coming back rather than more becoming unavailable. We generally don't buy expensive players to cover short term injuries anyway.

I rang at 9am on the dot, was queued for 15 minutes and all done by 09:23. Chose our exact seats and was able to pick seats next to the (reserved) ambulant rows for us as we're going as a group. This was quite useful (http://www.mapaplan.com/seating-plan/wembley-stadium-chart-london/high-resolution/wembley-stadium-london-seating-plan-00a-Detailed-row-block-numbers-exact-concert-chart-high-resolution.htm)

In case you haven't noticed, rotation is generally used when we have a run of fixtures close to each other. We've only got 2 midweek matches for the rest of the season now, so from 11 Feb onwards it is unlikely to be a factor anyway. Assuming we need 40 points to stay up, that's 5 wins in 15 matches. We're more likely to finish 8th.

Best ones I've sat in were (unsurprisingly) Club Wembley at level 2, high enough to see everything without being too far away like the Level 4 seats. Newport County getting back to the Football League came in the second row of the second tier, fantastic view. Losing to York in the FA Trophy Final the year before I was mid level 1 near the half way line and it was surprisingly poor. JPT Final we were level 1 behind the goal but far enough back to get a decent view. Level 1 is ok, but you are a little low down in the first 20-odd rows. Still miles better than the seats on terrace behind the goal at old Wembley though, I didn't even see Chris Waddle's goal in the 1993 FA Cup Final replay hit the net because the advert boards obscured everything in the 6 yard box! Mind you, that was £10 each for 5 seats together...

They've moved towards a "competition-specific" approach - Europa priority for Europa games, League priority for League games, EFL priority for EFL games. It's what all the top sides do - I happened to be looking at Liverpool's criteria for their League Cup game v Exeter last season for some reason, and to get a ticket as top priority you needed to have been to something like 7 AWAY League Cup games over the previous 5 seasons. Didn't matter if you were ST, went to Cup Finals or whatever else, just the relevant matches for the same competition. As for "if I'd known...", well that's the reason the criteria work. Because if everyone had known we'd get to the Final they'd have all chucked £12 at a ticket. They didn't, so the people getting priority are the people who've put themselves out to go to the earlier rounds and pay more to the club, and that's what makes it fair.

The rules haven't changed, the priority of the match you want to attend has changed. Checkatrade/JP Trophy Final isn't on the list of Club Wembley games because they know hardly anyone will want a ticket. EPL Cup (along with FA Cup semi and final, England games, etc) is, because they know people will.

The first 13 rows will be told to sit, repeatedly, as confirmed when we phoned about accessible seating on Tuesday. FWIW I'm in Block 132, near the exit which is about 2/3rds back in the bottom tier.

I wouldn't have signed any of the defenders that Prem teams bought in the Transfer Window either. Wague looks like a knee-jerk AfCoN signing and you'd hope we'd learnt from Mayuka on that subject Ranocchia is the closest to a player meeting our requirement but went to Hull on loan. I'm not sure we wanted to get "Alderweirelded" again and there's always the summer if Saints actually think he's good enough - he wasn't particularly impressive for Inter at St Mary's but we don't tend to evaluate on single matches (plenty of chances to look at Stephens already). Lescott is Lescott, a truly desperate signing. Wimmer was linked but is a semi-regular Spurs starter, they're still in Europe and Vertonghen is injured so he'll be playing more. Sakho clearly doesn't meet our personality criteria having fallen out with a couple of managers Also, based on last night, selling Fonte for £8m looks like absolute genius. Out of position and not tracking his man for Man City's first, and ran straight around him for another one. No Van Dijk and no Romeu, Fonte looked slow and isolated.

Seeing as Bertrand played there last season and if anything it improved the team AND Targett who got to play left wing back, I can see why he'd consider it. Also, if Van Dijk is out for (worst case scenario) 3 months that still leaves a few games this season he might be available for - and as I somehow doubt anyone will sign a player with 5 years left on his contract who hasn't played for 6 months due to injury, if anything this gives us more chance to see him for longer. I was fairly sure he'd leave in the summer, now I think we'll probably get another season out of him.