The9

The fact both Man U and Man C fans are unable to do that at the moment even against plucky losers like Saints (!) suggests it's a generally more attack-minded League than often in the past - or that defending isn't what it was with the systems currently favoured.

You can add "losing the plot and slicing the ball off the pitch repeatedly late on against Man U" to that list - he also managed one completed pass to Clyne which went off the side of his boot via a passing plane. I'm not sure whether we'll risk Yoshida with only a couple of days' training with the rest of the defence though. Very difficult to call our starting side for this one, especially with the Man City experiment in mind. We should, at least, be in a position where we have a few more squad players on the bench we can rely on - which didn't seem to be the case for the Wigan match.

I can easily see Guly doing the chasing down of defenders/midfielders that Ramirez's presence might reduce. I can also see Gaston getting a start because of the less physical kind of game Arsenal play - at worst it'll scare him into a bit of workrate off the ball, which most reports seem to indicate wasn't his strength until recently.

Crouch also did this, made his England debut and then left without playing another game for Saints - though in his defence we had just been relegated.

They don't usually use Keane for the England matches, and they have Dixon now. Still Chiles-heavy though.

The last time one got named 3 months from a transfer window being opened, I guess. Arguably Beattie...

It is indeed the brain that goes first when you're knackered. Not that 29,000 Saints fans should need telling after the last match... but apparently it was the subs, not the eleven who were already knackered on the pitch, that were the issue. Even though 5 of the ones giving the ball away all the time (GK, the back 4 not inlcuding Clyne and Steven Davis) weren't either subs or subbed.

Your mistake here is mixing opinion with fact. You can by all means claim you think he's worse than Impact Sub Johnno, but Zambia have won something or other, whatever it was, at some point, and people aren't autotuning goals on YouTube that I know of yet, so I'm pretty sure Mayuka has scored for someone, probably. By "mistake" I mean "guaranteed method of getting someone to bite", btw. Which reminds me, haven't seen MLG on here for a (relatively) LONG time.

But not in the Premier League, hence my amusement regarding the parallels with similarly-featured rising Premier League star Raheem Sterling.

It's difficult to know, IMHO, so not worth speculating. The evidence (including the Anniversary) suggests it's not high on his list of priorities. Not much of a problem when we're talking about developing a ground we've only had for 10 years or an academy setup that most people never see, but a little more spiky when it comes to ignoring (or otherwise) some of the club's most popular ex-players.

Block 3 is definitely comps, not sure block 4 was too - either way we still had far too many comps allocated if there were 3 rows of empty seats for Man U ! Interesting to hear that they weren't showing as available though.

Liverpool would probably take your arm off for Michael Ricketts or Kevin Davies at the moment.

Liverpool have no need to sign him, they have a player in the same position of getting his first call up who has as much Prem experience and is therefore of exactly the same ability already. It is a little bizarre to think that there's an implication that Lallana and Sterling probably have equivalent amounts of experience to some people.

I think you'll find people are referring to the early 1980s kit, made by Umbro and featuring pinstripes (but definitely not proper stripes). As was I, had you read it properly. Also, any team playing in all red looks vaguely like Liverpool, I've rechecked the cover of my WSC Season Preview about 4 times in the last 2 months to see which Saints player is on the front in the collage. It's Steven Gerrard. Finally, that's not actually our kit you've posted a link to. The collar is wrong, there's no contrast colour on the cuff and one of each pair of the pinstripes is the wrong colour too. As I've pointed out repeatedly, it's not red and white stripes, it's either "red", or it's "red and grey and white stripes".

You'd hope so, Oxlade-Chamberlain's "shortcut to England" last season slightly bothered me because it was exactly the kind of example that you'd hope wouldn't be followed by academy scholars at Saints. I guess the overall decision-making process is a lot more complex on a day-to-day level, and I can understand that careers are short, but seeing Oxlade-Chamberlain leap from League One prospect to England starter in a couple of months just by getting a transfer to Arsenal's bench said a lot about the money and the opportunity that goes with being involved with certain top-flight teams compared to working your guts off to achieve something at a smaller club - not just Saints but anywhere. It's the kind of warped thinking that underpins the new academy rules, which will make stockpiling of kids at the top clubs much more likely. For as long as we're one of them we'll be ok, but there's no way that kind of dumping of talent makes for a more competitive league or helps anyone except the financial elite maintain their position. See Scott Sinclair at Chelsea and now Man City - clearly decent from what he did at Swansea, but who's going to see it now ?

Agreed.

I doubt we'll ever get an answer, you know how he doesn't like having to follow up his random spoutings with anything resembling rational thought. I should have known better than to try to engage in a discussion, especially when I'd already gone to the trouble of blocking him due to ill-thinking nonsense like this. Come to think of it, a simple "I meant ..." from him would result in a load of just people saying "oh", rather than granting the troll his craved "look at me" status. Still, I can live without knowing, and if he doesn't want to share that's his prerogative, so I won't mention it again.

I believe you may have opened a can of worms with the reference to "celebrations" - for instance, what exactly did the club do that the vast majority would have been aware of or bought into as a genuine celebration ? I'd have been delighted to have some kind of museum-type event, free attendance, ongoing publicity of the anniversary, introduction to key players from the club's history or a history recap every game for that season, or any other, better, club-instigated ideas. But none of those things happened (outside the usual confines of our excellent historians in the programme, and they do that every season). The 125 was basically just an excuse to sell a different football shirt to more people (it worked well too) and barely merited a mention all season. They've also since proven they don't need any reason at all to change the kit to something unrecognisable, making my cynicism a little more well-founded. The only celebration I can remember came as a result of promotion from League One, not the club's history.

So that's two of us then. Both "trolling", apparently...

I said I was surprised, I didn't say there was anything wrong with it.

Oh come on, I had to specifically click on "View this Post" to see who you were referring to as well. I don't know why you have assumed people would know who you mean ? Do you mean Beattie, whose England "career" led to him moving to Everton but isn't one of our best ever ? You can't mean Matt Le Tissier, who played for Saints for years after his brief dalliance with England in the mid-late 90s, as England had nothing to do with his eventual retirement ? Mick Channon ? CB Fry ? Steve Williams ? Mark Wright ? Admittedly thousands was an exaggeration. Hundreds probably.

Seeing as Hodgson was actually shown direct from the Sky feed on the big screen at the ground (which I later learned was whilst Neville was waxing lyrical about Lallana) and it prompted "Lambert For England" from the back of the Northam [no comment ], I'm surprised there's anyone in the ground or watching on tv who didn't already know that.

If you mean "I don't know which of the thousands of Saints players who have played for England you think is our best ever", then yes, I am for real. Please clarify.

I disagree. The overall lack of fitness compared to Man Utd and poor decision making by the defenders for the last 15-20 minutes cost us the game. Wanging the thing in the vicinity of Lambert probably would have been more successful than doing so at Mayuka, at least assuming Lambert didn't get too tired to run for the general hoofs, but firstly we shouldn't have been randomly hoofing it in the first place and secondly we weren't doing that when Lambert was still on the pitch. Building up through midfield and on the floor, intercepting passes and creating chances during transitions in play when we already had players forward to support was suddenly replaced by a panicked concession of possession over and over until United had enough chances to score. Given that we hadn't been pointlessly hoofing before that, and that none of the players doing the hoofing were either subs or subbed, the subs are a red herring to the real problem of us continually giving possession back cheaply for 15-20 minutes. Guly for Puncheon was irrelevant unless you think that Puncheon's presence would have somehow prevented Hooiveld, Fonte and Fox from clearing it 40 yards (occasionally straight up in the air or off the pitch) when not always under pressure. Schneidelin didn't get a kick for 15 minutes, and Steve Davis gave the ball away attempting 3 successive passes and was clearly knackered too. If anything, bringing Rodriguez onto the left where Lallana had been just gave us a chance of winning something in the air from what the defenders and keeper were, for some inexplicable reason, intent on doing anyway. The irony being that after their 3rd goal, we restarted by passing the ball on the floor with Guly and Ward-Prowse and started creating (half-)chances again. The subs we did make brought on our 3 most regularly-used Prem players to that point to try and shore up a wilting side. At least compared to the Wigan match we looked like we had any players on the bench who might be able to slot in without obviously weakening the team.

Having never actually used the ticketing system for an individual seat, it's nice to know a problem I had just assumed existed from the evidence is actually there, and might, possibly, be solved (though if I know IT change management, it'll introduce an error preventing us selling more than 26,000 tickets or something).