The9

There's also the little matter of Saints gifting the Div 2 title to Bolton with a draw against 3rd place finishers Spurs... and Saints only needing one more goal to win it.

Ignoring the strict "derby is in the same city" definition for a moment... Cardiff v Swansea is a derby - 43 miles apart Cardiff v Bristol Rovers is not - 27 miles apart Newport v Bristol Rovers is not - 19 miles apart Newport v Cardiff (12 miles) is a derby if you're from Newport, but not if you're from Cardiff... remind you of anything?

Nah, it was special because it was a comfortable come-from-behind win in which we scored three great creative goals and Rodriguez got some element of redemption after an injury nightmare. The opposition was irrelevant other than how soon I could get home. I don't even know any Bournemouth fans, how's that a rivalry?

Yeah, their influence has been pretty much even this season overall in the games they've played. Obviously Redmond has played more, I mean proportionately to the matches they've played. And of course Redmond hasn't (yet) missed any vital penalties.

To be fair, there were a lot of people gobsmacked at that one at the time (even with him being on a booking) - there was a five minute period where everything went through him and he was a superb outlet for holding up the ball. Even let him off that awful giveaway near our box early on which nearly led to their second...

As with the original... as opposed to the people just making up similar-sounding words for the third line. Anyway, shouldn't Griffo be complaining about fans who make up crap songs?

There wasn't much between all 3 central midfielders in the first half, none of them were getting close to the Bournemouth players.

So, Hartlepool in their glorious pink shirts and shorts battled their way to a glorious historic point yesterday. Not bad for a side who'd lost three in a row, scoring 0 and conceding 11.

Tbf when we were losing earlier today it was mostly because none of Reed, Hojbjerg or Clasie was stopping anyone from getting straight to our defence. We only had the problem of Redmond not shielding Cedric from Daniels a couple of times though. Romeu is doing the job Wanyama was doing. Without all the red cards.

Why? Which part of "we've played loads of matches and he's rotated for all of them to try to keep players as fresh as possible" don't you understand? The only note of interest for me was Fonte being left out, as he's played 3 times in a week twice already this season.

In which case 6. I can't remember as I was sat in Twickenham at the time.

Yeah, not a first team fixture.

Indeed. They will have known it might have been needed in July, known it was definitely needed when Sky chose the match for tv, and beats me why they don't get replicas made. I can only assume we sell a tiny number of them and it isn't worth them doing it. They didn't do it for the EL home shirt either which is even more bewildering.

It was awful ten years ago when the Saints Forever team played there, and it looks exactly the same now.

Not long ago when you consider we've only been behind in 7 away games since then, one of which we drew and one we went behind with seconds left.

Anyway, here's "Last Christmas" after the final whistle... which was nearly as good as the game itself.

It's the "Oh Balotelli" rip off.

Spot on - it was bloody obvious that their thin squad playing 3 games in 8 days was going to tire compared to our lot who've been rotated all the way through. For once the midweek fixtures worked in our favour rather than against us.

Tbf we've just played every midweek for 5 weeks, and we're playing 28th, 31st, 2nd, 7th, 11th, 14th in Dec/Jan, we could do with a break. Which is also the reason I'm not saying "Puel will stop rotating soon" when I'm saying "we've been playing loads of matches which is why Puel is rotating". Because we don't get a week off between games again until 14th-22nd Jan, and even then we might have an FA Cup replay on 18th.

I dare say we'll have one at some point in the 7 years of Under Armour.

I've never called them that even once, and the B- version of it used for Bournemouth is utterly lame.

And part of that problem is that CMs who do bring loads offensively are either poor defensively or cost a fortune, which is why we sign promising ones cheaply to develop.

What makes you think they wouldn't have been rested in the Premier League to play Europa League games? Plus a knackered Pelle was next to useless the few times he looked tired last season.

There's no way we're selling that out unless we score and at least draw the first leg.

It's the willful cognitive dissonance that somehow he can't motivate players because he does dull interviews, despite the fact there have been games where we've started well (Everton), come from behind (Inter) or just been excellent throughout (West Ham away). The kind of nonsense spouted like "the body language of the players says they're annoyed with the manager", when they're just peed off at not winning, or conceding a goal, etc.