The9

I'd also like to throw Lee Powell into the mix, seeing as I played against him in school and his dad played for Newport County. He's on the squad pic for 1991/2 but I'm not sure he ever got a league game for Saints in Div 1 and disappeared to Hibs reserves not long after. Absolutely rapid midget winger with blonde hair, in our schools game he just ran up and down the wing beating people waiting for their striker to get free in the box.

Which seems strange and a little unlikely, as Surman was named in the England squad along with Theo Walcott, who would have been a much bigger draw. http://www1.skysports.com/football/live/match/96470/teams I've also just noticed that in January we had Gregory Vignal or Wayne Thomas playing at left back, and neither exactly pulled up any trees with Vignal in particular taking an age to get half-competent, so it probably made sense to try getting someone different in. Has anyone mentioned Kevin Miller yet ?

That's the one. No wonder I couldn't remember his surname if the "current player" I was thinking of was Jack Stephens.

Lee hasn't got on the pitch off the bench to my recollection, Mayuka already has. I'm not sure why it would make any difference, if Lambert goes down we'll have to completely rework our attacking play anyway as we don't have anyone else like him.

I think he's served his purpose, now that we have a Japanese player who's actually in the team, the market for Rising Sun foam hands and replica shirt sales has been established by someone else. No idea if he's good enough for the Prem though, he's rarely played and doesn't have the luxury of having a team built around covering his deficiencies.

FWIW a girl in the same row as me at Old Trafford to me was singing (alone) "Pochettino's Red and White Army" for about 20 minutes last month. So you're all very late to the show and the song has been decided.

You want to sing a song about face cream ?

I won't sing anything with a spelling mistake in it.

I would imagine it's because we're still below 14 other teams and there are only 13 who spent more in your list ?

First half however was Wigan doing the same to us.

I want to know if De Ridder got booked for losing the ball, chasing back and then tackling from behind. It's all that matters.

Both, silly risking his job given all the reports about Cortese's drive and general involvement and obvious desire to minimise Adkins' name in relation to Saints at the time as seen from the Everton programme, but also the sort of thing that could be easily overlooked.

I'm guessing they take all of the data from player positions during the match and analyse it to produce a breakdown of a player's position during a match, the distances they have travelled, how much is sprinting, and so on.

I read somewhere yesterday that Pochettino is massively into the analysis and also does stuff like half-time video presentations - or at least he has done.

Whilst I've come around to Lambert's ability to fit into a pressing game, actually press a bit, and the benefits it offers him in receiving the ball high up the pitch and near the opposition's goal, if we're genuinely going to push onto achieve Cortese's vision I can't see Pochettino putting up with the diminishing returns he'll get as Lambert ages and becomes more injury-prone. He's proving to be remarkably resilient for a player in his 30s at the moment.

You could argue it cost us the title, even if we'd signed him and sent him on loan to some Bolivian side that would have weakened Reading significantly. The fact he can't get in ahead of midget Mariappa or even the appallingly limited Alex Pearce is a sad indictment of his abilities.

The differences being that 1) they're at home 2) they have a lot of new players and 3) if we're pressing their midfield in their half we might be an extra 10 yards up the pitch. Will be interesting to see.

Having said I wasn't convinced we were all out pressing high in the Man U and Wigan matches (I was a little drunk and not my most tactically-minded to be fair), when Ed Chamberlain asked "what was different in Pochettino's first match?" I sat there begging for Moyes NOT to say "they pressed high up the pitch" in our first game. He didn't. He only said "they pressed". Which to be fair was probably all MP had the time to coach in 3 days.

They were hoofy when Cabaye was playing all of last season and didn't often play both. Actually it's not so much hoofy as "direct bally".

Gosh, what a shock... You can see me raising this on the Newcastle build-up thread from this afternoon.

He's shown for Scotland that when he's told to stay back, he stays back. Shaw's clearly done better than him this season but he's done enough against City and United to show he's worth a place in the squad, it's up to him whether he wants to stay or maybe leave and join one of the promoted clubs if an offer comes in, he's more than adequate back up for a bottom half Prem team but might want to play more than we can offer him.

Alan ferking Bennett and Chris Makin. TOGETHER. The only time Alpine has ever had a point on his pre-season transfer panic thread. Gary Monk and Mike Williamson, both Prem CBs (back ups admittedly). Shocked that 3 people remember Shayne Bradley, I saw his debut up front at Everton, we wouldn't have scored in 10 years. Then a couple of years later we faced them with Blackstock and Best up front, in pretty much their only Prem appearances. Stephen O'Halloran (now of Nuneaton) played for us at left back, 35 minutes against Norwich in a 1-0 defeat at St Mary's in 2008 - as did Lee Molyneux,. I'll never hear a bad word said about Dan Harding as a result. Googling Molyneux reminded me of Paul Wotton , Oscar Gobern (is he still at Huddersfield?) and Simon Gillett who may not quite be obscure enough but I'd forgotten them alright. One more, the kid we signed as cover in central midfield when everyone was injured or suspended who barely played but helped get us out of League One, same surname as a current player at the time, cannot for the life of me remember his name, only the arguments on here about signing "cover".

Weird, I've read that and don't remember that bit at all. I do know that only about 1/11 corners leads to a goal though, and that Brits are met with bemusement across the rest of the footballing world for the enthusiasm with which we celebrate corners for pretty much that reason.

For me this is the game when we find out if pressing works against teams who are set up to play the long ball from the start. It's all well and good stopping teams passing and making them hoof when they don't want to, but when pressing only makes them do what they like to do anyway, what happens then ? Could be a ridiculously open game with them bypassing our midfield and us picking up a lot of the clearances and attacking them straight back. FWIW I'd like it on the record that I'm pleased we've found the missing piece of the tactics jigsaw (for now) and that Lambert is a perfectly acceptable striker in a team which wins the ball so far up the pitch because he doesn't have to run far to score then.