The9

Horrible away day though, much as I like Swansea, their policing is straight out of the 80s.

This stopped for me in our League One near-miss play-off season. Came back around September for a couple of weeks but went away again when we played QPR at theirs.

Beattie was clearly uber-fit when he was with us under Strachan, that's why he suddenly started scoring goals.

I like the concept of the 9 angles but it's quite difficult to see. Really like the editing on the the second video though, could do that for probably every game (and then have the Premier League go mental about it, rather missing the point).

He has obvious skills, but it's clearly Rodriguez's ability to get in behind (aided by Lambert's movement when he pulls defenders away from other runs) that's the key to exploiting Ramirez's strengths - he also needs to learn another trick alongside that one first touch flick and roll he does, everyone's read it in the last couple of months.] He's had some decent spells but the games where we've played in spells are the ones we haven't won (eg Wigan a, QPR h, Newcastle a, Norwich a). I'm not suggesting they're spells due to Ramirez though.

The pace thing is actually pretty much what Le Saux said on the BBC website as well, maybe they and Lawrenson do conference calls to decide why certain players aren't getting picked for England. For me it's a combination of (primarily) his age, that he's repeating Holt's success from last season and he also didn't get a call up - which I think is because they both succeed in teams that are geared up to take advantage of their strengths, and that he doesn't play the kind of style Hodgson wants. It's not just about pace, it's about doing what he does AND having pace. Apparently unless you're Andy Carroll, who's horsesh11t on the ball but has pace. Or Welbeck, who... anyway.

If it wasn't apple, it wasn't him...

See my point about teams with Prem experience - Villa are massively lacking in that area and that's probably their biggest problem. Their youngsters don't seem to have stepped up like Saints' players have though, I think we maybe had a core of success and confidence from L1 and Championship winning seasons that Villa can't call on. And they were bloody awful when we played them. I'm a big fan of his, but Gaston's going to need to up his workrate to get into this team unless we completely change our style (again).

As for as comparing results, a lot of people seem to have overlooked the fact that the players took a good few games to get used to the pace of the Prem as well. At the start of the season we had a pretty inexperienced team in Prem terms, now we have a squad of players many of whom have 20-30 games at this level - I'd love to say we wouldn't slip up against Wigan at home now like we did in August, but we weren't much different at their place early in Pochettino's reign, and we were still making some, but far fewer, daft errors on Saturday - you just get used to making those decisions at pace. For a good illustration of the thousands of split second decisions and how regular playing in the Prem helps make you more accustomed to that level, you only have to look at Kelvin twice hacking the ball off the pitch - he hasn't been called upon for 3 months and it didn't show in his shot-stopping which you can train over and over again, it showed in his passing under pressure from unfamiliar players, which is much tougher to recreate. So, anyway, bit harsh for Adkins to carry the can when the improvement of players was always going to take time - which is why people were calling for us to get experience in to start with. It looks as though we've ridden that learning curve out and a fair few of our "inexperienced" players are proving their worth. FWIW, we only had 3 starters on Saturday who played in our capitulation at Blackpool this time last year : Hooiveld, Schneiderlin and Cork.

To be fair, I can't even remember him HAVING another one, that's because one of his weaknesses is having the pace to get himself into those positions. He doesn't get 1:1s because 1) we don't often play through balls to him and 2) he wouldn't get away from the defence if we did. There are plenty of other ways to use him effectively though, and clearly at the moment, using Ramirez in midfield to feed through balls to someone who won't benefit from them is much less effective than using someone else in midfield who can press and win us the ball upfield with Lambert already near the goal.

It was about 10 seconds after we won a match under Pochettino, I think - can't be sure though.

Just a reminder that the "4 week death clock" would only be on their expulsion from the league, they might still get into the Conference if the takeover was completed (and if the Conference didn't have really strict financial rules)... there's a 10 day clock on their court case too.

I played it without the sound... maybe I'll have another go round... Oh yeah, forgot to mention all of the parking meters everywhere - that was a real novelty for me when I moved down originally in 1991, then after not coming down much between '95 and '98 I realised they'd all disappeared.

He hasn't really done anything. Like your posts about our first 8 games of this season, you have incorrectly identified that he was doing something wrong and has changed it. He was doing plenty right under Adkins too, and the world and his dog knew we'd signed him to improve and develop and he'd probably get better by the end of the season if we kept picking him. It's like saying Spurs turned Bale into a world class player, when he was making 50 yard dribbles and pinging in free-kicks for Saints in the Championship. As indeed Rodriguez was scoring for fun for Burnley, come to think of it.

I'm in Hedge End getting 30 meg and don't seem to have any problems running the PS3, torrenting, running 2 phones and a laptop at the same time via the Superhub, mussssssn't grumble, though about once every 3 months it seems to have a funny turn and the service either disappears for a while or keeps dropping for a couple of hours, pretty good overall though.

It wasn't the product, it was the complete lack of ability for the customer to be able to buy the product even if they wanted it - there just weren't any around to be had and it took so long to get the console to the UK in sufficient numbers, and I for one got fed up of waiting and just bought a 360 instead. I then bought a PS3 years later when the price had come down enough to justify a second console. By the time I did that they were launching the 3rd version of it and I picked up an original "slim" for £100. Games of course were then dirt cheap, because I had 6 years' worth of back catalogue to explore and a load of under £10 classic games. FWIW having both consoles, I can agree with the general opinion which is that Xbox Live is better than PSN because you pay for it, the graphics are much of a muchness on both, and the PS3 is less limited and more interactive with streaming and suchlike (and of course has BluRay rather than *cough* HD-DVD, not that I've ever used either).

As for 1994, I'd forgotten the roundabout, car dealerships and hotels near the airport weren't there back then, and of course the Wide Lane changing rooms and development aren't there. M27 J5 without the feeder lane(s) looks really dated too. The Uni on Burgess Road is hugely changed of course, and looks like it did when I had my graduation. The Biomedical Sciences Building at Boldrewood is still there too, they've been knocking that down for years now. Shops near Stag Gates look strange without Dock of the Bay. Amused to see Gilbert's Books at number 2 and a half, who sponsored my uni football team (and look at the state of us from 1993/4...) No Que Pasa, nice to see the old red City Buses, very odd to realise that when I was a student the KFC near the Square (Balloon) was an Evans clothing shop, and there's Tyrrell and Green, which was an anachronism even then and hung on for about another 5 years. The rest of it is pretty similar to now though, also interesting to see what hasn't changed. Shame they didn't go through Portswood though. Eeeeeeee, and you could leave your door open, etc.

Awesome video, what Southampton looked like when I was first down here as a student. West Quay Road looks bonkers without Ikea, Leisure World and West Quay off to the right... all the buildings are so low compared to now. Nice to see the Old Orleans on Town Quay Pier which I used to go to loads (and the shops which I'd completely forgotten about), as well as reminding me what was up the hill from the Mayflower when my ex was living in the dodgy flats overlooking the train station. Ocean Village without the flats and "new" bars, but with the old shops... Gets a bit dull after Ocean Village until the Bargate shops for me - nice to see the Saints light blue Pony kit put in an appearance at 11:50. Weird seeing the Burger King was already there in '93 (even though I remember going in it as a student), and even weirder to see the view towards where West Quay is without West Quay being there. Oh yeah, and shift this to The Lounge maybe?

Can someone merge this with the Pompey Takeover Thread please ?

I prefer reading at home.

I'm fairly sure the FL will be moving to close any "no effective punishment" loopholes with some statements in the aftermath of the court case. I seriously doubt they'll allow an overlap period where matches aren't being played but the season hasn't ended, or any grey area in what constitutes the end of the season that can be exploited Skate-style. It would raise the possibility of them needing to apply the -10 for the previous season retrospectively, which they wouldn't want to do for reasons of "fair competition".

Just found the wife's pics too...

I quite liked this one, get a coach any way you can...