The9

Yeah, all the best keepers are able to save powerful curling headers which only just bend inside the far post, didn't you know ?

Having taken the pee out of Reeves for most of last season for being lightweight and hitting the same cut-through sliced pass in every situation, I thought he was excellent up at Stevenage when he came on in centre midfield, really used the ball well and did everything with tempo and accuracy - using sidefoots. He's not had much of a break and he's going to struggle a little with the physicality of the Prem, but he does have something to offer - anywhere down the left.

Showed enough today to warrant a starting place - even though Rodriguez scored his first Prem goal yesterday, Mayuka might have leapt over him with his inspirational workrate and creativity yesterday. Would love to see him start alongside Rodriguez at Leeds to get some games. Of course then it's about who you drop. I have an opinion there, but most of you have already read it and I can't be bothered arguing it again. Suffice to say there are plenty of available striker spots and he could get a run at right wing or through the middle.

So he can get match experience with the Dev squad rather than sitting on the bench for Prem games maybe ? Davis seems popular and is going to be better for the dressing room anyway, if it's about being able to play in an emergency and "contributing".

Why ? Apart from anything we've played 80% of the teams in the top half after West Brom, and only 2 in the bottom half.

I didn't hear any "shhhh"ing, but we were basically silent for the entire first half after the first goal went in. Hardly surprising when we were utterly abysmal on the pitch. Second half the crowd fed off the players and vice versa - and then the injury and subs killed that momentum.

Clearly we did. Even if they had been louder, they were singing our song.

Even if he'd been perfectly positioned and jumped with Bale, Bale would have outjumped him and may have scored nevertheless. That's kind of the point of crossing at the to the tall bloke up against the shortar5e fullback.

Because the manager thinks Boruc is a better goalkeeper with experience at a higher level, perhaps ? I haven't had a problem with anything Boruc has done so far apart from his first few kicks against West Ham, and anyone can be rusty.

The thing I've started picking up on with our defending is how infrequently we're defending facing the right way, and how often we get caught shorthanded - watching other matches over the weekend the majority of sides have at least 4 behind the ball, and that becomes 8 or 9 outfielders if the ball isn't moved quickly by the attacking team. We never seem to have more than 6 or 7 back there in positions to influence play, and we ALWAYS seem to be chasing back down the pitch and out of control. This is obviously heightened when the opposition breaks quickly down the wings (we've had that problem since League One), and the starting positions of BOTH our full backs being somewhere around half way every time we turn over possession. I'd expect one of them to be forward, but we seem to get both of them caught up the pitch. Lallana was required to do a ton of tracking back again yesterday, which remains one of his weaknesses. The one thing the second half proved is that attack is still our best form of defence. Nice to see Mayuka show what he can do as well, pinned Bale back, made some defensive tackles (well, at least one) and created loads. The goal won't hurt Rodriguez either, his confidence clearly improved after the goal.

I pretty much agree with all of that.

As the club have access to precisely those kind of distance covered / tackles / interceptions etc stats (as well as the science stuff which is a good indicator of tiredness/susceptibility to injury) I'd be inclined to think those things are behind the decision. I'm not sure where this idea Lambert is "all over the pitch" comes from though. He comes back for corners, and as Davis' goal against City showed, he then can't get forward to join the counter-attack. Again, it's about choosing the right combination of closing down and creating - we're not struggling up front when he doesn't play, so as we're leaking goals, maybe the priority is more defensiveness.

He's scored, so I'd be guessing yes. The question is bigger than just picking your top scorer, it's about the balance between attacking and defending generally. Evidently Adkins thinks Guly and Rodriguez have better defensive abilities and are more suited to matches when we won't have the ball as often, it's why they started against Man City. I'd question whether the same could be said of West Ham away, but as it turned out we were excellent in the first half going forward AND defensively, and had we been able to maintain that we'd have won the game.

Going forward I think I agree, until the West Ham game it looked like we knew how to score goals when he was on the pitch in a way we didn't seem to have when he's not there. The question is whether we need additional impetus going forward in a side which scores a lot of goals anyway, when it's conceding them that we need to work on. I think there's a reasonable debate to be had about whether Lambert's ability to hold the ball up front is as useful a defensive tool as Rodriguez or Guly's additional body closing down in midfield.

We absolutely owned Carroll in the first half and West Ham were awful, so whatever "lift" they got from Lambert not starting had absolutely no effect on the pitch.

As 90% of them won't have heard of the rest of the squad before this season it's hardly surprising you're getting lots of "why isn't the only Saints player I've heard of playing" is it ? Lambert's not playing in away matches because we need more workrate and closing down up front. He did neither against Arsenal and we got destroyed (not that I'm blaming him for it but someone needs to stop the ball getting to their midfield too easily as well), he wasn't greatly involved against Everton even with Ramirez in the team, and when he came on against Man City we started conceding goals (as well as scoring them) - the opposite was true at home to Man U but the whole side was knackered by the time he went off. He's playing at home because we're generally more attacking and push more players forward to deliver him the ball in advanced positions without having to have him link play from deep, so he can stay further up the pitch without becoming isolated. Anyone who'd actually watched us play would have seen that. Anyone who thinks we were a "one man team" last season probably won't have grasped that, hence the question. What I'd be asking was if Lambert would have played as often if we'd had Rodriguez and Mayuka last season ?

Firstly, I'm completely in support of improved customer relations by the club - if nothing else because it gives me fewer reasons not to buy the products they're offering me. Addressing each of these in order : I don't care about the club's PR - I want them to consider fans in their decisions and give us what we want to enable them to get as much of our money as possible. I don't need them to spin stories to make themselves look good, and I don't want them commenting on every piece of ridiculous speculation. If they don't comment on anything, that's fine by me. The Ticket Office doesn't need to be more flexible, ticket policies do. Part of the service is distribution - I don't want to know what that costs, I want a single price for my ticket for each game, without any add ons - absorb the (tiny) admin cost into the cost of tickets and every other part of the business. You shouldn't have to jump through hoops to get tickets, merely fit the right eligibility criteria - which for home matches is "be a Saints fan or want to watch a match". As I've said, I absolutely don't care about the club confirming news about players and as fans you can do your own sleuthing if you want to know more than the reasonable level of interest confirmed by the manager "looking at some players in some areas to improve the squad". That's all I need to know. I don't care about the club's media relations with the Echo or Solent though - provided they are not stopped from being able to report on the matches, that's all I expect. The club has media commitments from being in the Prem, that's all they have to do and I'm fine with that. It does however help the club to appeal to people more widely if they have a mutually beneficial relationship with the media. Generally more customer friendly ? God yes. The usual shopping list : plenty of notice of tickets and prices, a competent booking system with no penalties for using online (by far the cheapest method the club uses), no insistence on having to go to the ground to pick up tickets, if they HAVE to charge for the car park then free validation with a purchase, some kind of competent fan-based kit consultation so we don't end up with no stripes or playing in blue/white/red, availability and convenience of products I'd actually want to buy, reasonable prices for food and drink to the captive audience and a decent method of maximising delivery of those products. What else ? Oh yeah, keep the chairman off the front of the programme (I note he wasn't so belligerent for the first game of this season for our match against Wigan), and if they want to drive more traffic to the OS, employ someone to write interesting, thought-provoking articles about parts of the club that fans don't already know about (and get rid of that awful page break format).

Seems like a step on the path to Ashley ownership - sounds like they've only sold the name and right to use the brand to an intermediary, which is in line with what's left of Umbro when the current kit contracts expire.

He took a massively under-fit squad from Ramos which was clearly nothing like as bad as it's actual league position even at the time and initially made them vaguely average - Jol had them doing the same thing except far better only a few years before. He then spent shedloads of cash (£100m+) bringing in players that would improve any team, and he also had the benefit of Gareth Bale, bought by the previous manager, turning into one of the world's top 10 players. The point about Spurs receiving £68m from selling players doesn't indicate ANY value added by Redknapp, in fact he may have lost value on players through his oft-repeated policy of falling out with people and ignoring them for years, or just "not liking them". Point being, the sales were of assets Spurs ALREADY HAD and which could have been worth more, yet he still needed to bring in over £100m worth of talent. It doesn't contribute to any discussion about Redknapp's ability as a manager that he realised he'd have to sell some of the people he wasn't going to ever pick - only players he originally signed and then sold on for a profit can enlighten that discussion. My dog could spend £100m on top Prem players and make the team top 5 material, and my dog's been dead for 10 years. "Value" comes from buying players, developing and selling at a profit, or from improving what you have. When has he EVER just improved what he has without throwing cash at it - and how exactly would that solve our problem until the Transfer Window re-opens when Adkins could sign better players for massive money just as well ?

Besides, is this rumour wrong or is the one about us having a "new European manager in 3 weeks" wrong? Spare me the semantics, Redknapp is not primarily "European".

I'd absolutely rather see us maintain our style of play with Adkins as the manager in the Championship than see us playing tedious Prem football for the sake of it. Have we all forgotten that we enjoy winning matches at whatever level already or something ? I would MUCH rather we had stability, a side that wins more than it loses, that's involved in an exciting campaign, in a league where every match can be won or lost and there are no multibillionaire-led foregone conclusions and a decent turnover of opponents every season, and a genuinely likeable manager with progressive attitude and a feelgood feeling around the club than drudging around in the Prem feeling like we'd sold our souls, especially to that dodgy car-salesman anachronism in particular. I fail to see how anything other than a more defensive outlook would improve current results, and it's not like we're overflowing with creatively brilliant lone strikers to take on the burden up front is it ?

I agree, Redknapp certainly fixed it last time. Lets hope he can sign Davenport and Bernard again.

So is this going on or not ? I think it would be an excellent gesture - wouldn't hurt to show the players who ARE still here that they're we appreciate their contributions and they're not just forgotten the second they happen to get loaned out. Plus it's a good cause, and it's not like we're doing this all the time. Oh, and they've already had some of my money. You can guarantee the club won't be having any of it though, they wouldn't even sell LJS Foundation stuff in the club shop (unlike Doncaster and Forest) because of the Saints Foundation. Still think this should be stickied though.

"The Club Policy (featuring The Ten Commandments)". 1. Thou shalt not communicate with the media. 2. Thou shalt not realise Saints play in stripes... Knock yourselves out.

I shall add you to my shortlist of people talking sense.