The9

They were singing it better than our hyperspeed version for ages, arguably theirs is still better.

Yeah, Neville talked about the old back 4 on a rope analogy and showed that Fonte should have split the gap to Yoshida with Clyne basically being where Fonte was and Puncheon worrying about Gibbs who Clyne was covering - Fonte was then too far away from Gervinho to get across and influence play, Yoshida got spun by Gervinho a bit easily, couldn't get back and Kelv got done at the near post by a shot he probably didn't even see. My question was where was the pressure on the midfielder who played the pass that time, and how did Podolski manage to lose 3 of them and find 10 yards of space just by not falling over before rolling it out wide for the first ?

Are you talking about the slow version of "OWTSGMI" which we nicked back off them in the mid 2000s after we stopped doing it for ages at St Mary's and they showed us how to sing it properly ?

How many times will people have to watch Wigan take our 4-4-2 to pieces for 10 minutes at St Mary's to realise that it's a formation for failure ? Every single coach atthis level knows precisely how to take it apart. At least with our 4-3-3/4-5-1 managers are having to find slightly less conventional methods of exploiting our line-up...

I'll be worried if we don't get any kind of result at home to Villa, who, this weekend against Swansea aside, have been utter gash.

No, it's not. HTH. Arsenal were using the same ball. Also, Saints have been training with that ball since the start of July.

The thing I noticed was that at one point in the first 10 minutes Arsenal had the ball in the centre circle unchallenged with 5 players between our midfield and defensive lines.

What's Kelvin meant to have done now ?

Clyne seems to be the consensus. Ironic given that most of the goals came down his side, but he actually played pretty well and has done most of the time this season.

Can't disagree with that. Stood off a very fluid Arsenal team and huge spaces for them to exploit out wide with us defending the width of the 6 yard box facing the wrong way most of the time.

It wasn't much of a freekick, about half way to the middle of the goal. Maybe he was unsighted, but I don't really think it was a big mistake in the grand scheme of things.

Looked to me like the work on defensive shape meant we defended very narrow, almost within the width of the 6 yard box - we stood off them in midfield, they played in between our lines, rolled it out wide (either side but mostly their left) and we gave them the time and space to do what they liked out wide, with our defence then turned and facing their own goal. Too narrow defensively, always taking too long to get out there. More worrying was our complete lack of composure on the ball at times - we've started slipping into the hoof it mentality - in fact rewatching it, the quick long out at Lambert (who didn't win anything today except causing Szczesny to drop it to Fox) was our main attacking threat. No bones about it, Arsenal played very well, but we gave them enough time to do what they liked in midfield and just didn't get close enough much of the time. Yoshida for the third by Gervinho was the worst defensive mistake, but to be fair to the guy he's had 2 days and got thrown in at the deep end. It didn't really feel like a thrashing to me, dunno if that was the drink or just that everything they did came to a goal. All this talk about Adkins going is just ridiculous though. Now if we lose the next three and don't look like we're improving...

I like watching NFL a bit, a bit of NHL, dip in and out of F1, and that's about it really.

PM me an offer... ah, I see there is a bid !

No-one bought it ! Guh.

Aw, sweet. The long sleeved or the short sleeved ?

Get out.

I think I do too, though the all red with one white hoop is pretty, erm, badass.

Well yeah, but the missus would kick up. One long sleeved and one short as well.

That one or it's following season red socked cousin ?

I do have two of them, won't be selling though, I'm only selling off duplicate shirts even now. Shame you weren't after a Theo nosebreaker shirt...

Yeah, I bid on one of those last week, ceiling was £25 so I stopped, it went for £25. WITHOUT the sponsor too, so even more rare, because it did have the Saints Apparel logo instead of the crappy 1976 embroidery. I'm still annoyed that a mate picked one up from the concourse sale for a quid.

I've distinguished between the Patrick shirts by picking the Rank Xerox because it's got the nicer typeface, btw. I actually prefer it to the unsponsored shirt because that looks like it's missing a stripe.

This is DEFINTELY striped :

Without the advert... which is on Buy/Sell if you want to see it. So, what is your favourite Saints shirt, I still care...? I've settled on the Rank Xerox home - it IS striped, dammit !