The9

That was one of my concerns when we first got him in, I said something like "even if we get to the Prem, he's only ever signed players who are U-25s from League One and the bottom of the Championship, how are we going to get players good enough to stay up ?". I'm over it.

Thinking you've conveniently forgotten the Wilde/Crouch spend and bust that actually dropped us in the financial mire after we went down. Lowe's entire m.o. on relegation was cost reduction (once Woodward had gone anyway) - 15 players out at Xmas, then when returning, picking the kids, closing the corners and cutting overheads to try and reduce the debt. It was the splurge and the contracts from the Derby Play-Off defeat season that pushed us over the edge. Still, we needed the catharsis and the fresh start, it's old news now - the crucial point in the Academy Legacy debate is still the one about Souness' role, and no-one seems to want to discuss that ?

May as well remove "Ward-Prowse" from the thread title now. Just saying.

For me 1) Pahars v Skates - I literally goosebumped all over and nearly passed out from leaping up so quickly. 2) Brighton away L1 promotion season - Luffers can be a bulb on here but it was all the better for him hugging Fonte. 3) Camara v Norwich Prem relegation season - the roof coming off St Mary's. Sunday's second had me stumbling down three rows of empty seats and hugging pretty much everything in a state of disbelieving delirium, pretty close to the list.

We did... We actually ended up stood 3 about rows forward of the disabled section, having worked out how many rows down we could go to be out of their line of sight. There were a lot of empty seats down there.

The missus has a few, including our second goal in full from the half way line (though only about a second of celebration). She also has the 1-2 with Lescott for the first Saints goal, with a gap of about 4 seconds between that and the following video and then a mental jumping around video rotated through about 360 degrees which ends up completely black but with sound for the last 10 seconds. Gutted she missed the actual goal because as Lambert hit it a mate of ours said "we haven't had a shot on target yet".

United are missing Rio Ferdinand, Phil Jones, Chris Smalling and Johnny Evans at centre back, if we were missing 4 possible CBs we'd have Hooiveld, Fonte, Seaborne and Stephens unavailable, and probably be fielding Richardson and Butterfield or Fox at CB... I wouldn't say that was "fantastic".

Just for the record we didn't have 2 goals from 2 attempts, we also had some long range and blocked shots. Schneiderlin's wide left from outside the box immediately after the maybe-pen tackle on Rodriguez, and Puncheon late on when his shot was blocked at source. There were a few other blocks as well. I mostly agree with the OP though. I've got to 40 mins of rewatching the game and Rodriguez worked his backside off getting up and down, Gary Neville said Guly was making run after run off camera and we never tried to pass to him. Would be interested to see Fox's pass %age as he gave it away a lot. Nearly everything went down the left with Rodriguez, Lallana and Fox linking in the first half, the only stuff down the right also involved Lallana who was all over the place intercepting and creating without needing to Cruyff turn anyone !

It wasn't linked, it was being sold alongside it for people to have priority to the Man U game until a particular date, which presumably has passed, seeing as BOTH games are on general sale. The fact Man U hasn't sold out yet is a MUCH bigger deal than Wigan, as it's after the September summer holiday cut off and the kids are all back in school, so that argument is moot - but of course Man U is on the tv and a Sunday.

Didn't work too well for Lee Bowyer and Keiron Dyer at Newcastle ?

Funnily enough based on the appraisal of all the other teams I'd have said Saints were blunt, defensive and uncreative for most of the match...

Dunno what that stuff about sucking poison out was, but having re watched the first 40 minutes, the reason we didn't create anything was, as I already said, that we didn't put anything into the box. Four or five times Lallana and Rodriguez got down the left and the only time the ball went towards the box Fox's cross was handled by Zabaleta and the free kick headed out for a corner then cleared. Gary Neville talked about Guly making 3 or 4 runs off the ball without being passed to, and the one time Rodriguez came inside he chested to Guly who was changing direction and unable to play him back in. What I have noticed was how many times Fox gave the ball away, and Ward-Prowse's really short passes were a fair bit off on occasion and by 40 minutes even in the ground I noticed he'd taken to whacking it up the pitch. Also noticed a cut to Adkins where he was saying passing it off the pitch was no good for us and we needed to keep the ball better. Anyway, re watched the first half and we barely had the ball up the right wing and NEVER tried to pass it through the middle, more smart tactics to keep Yaya Toure out of the game.

To be fair, if any Saints player ever had a game for us like Fellaini had tonight we'd be bloody delighted, he was awesome, won everything, got anything down and to a team mate that was pinged within 10 yards of him, was all over the park, and scored the winner. Superb performance.

As a former Sunday League manager I'm offended by this comment.

My favourite thing about that programme is that all of the women on it without fail are utter tools as well.

Christ no, mainly because if I met anyone acting like that I wouldn't give her the time of day to begin with.

Some sock pulling up to be done here please, I just came on here at 4am and this thread was only the EIGHTH most recently updated. Anyone would think we were back in the Premier League and wanted to talk about Saints or something!

I think one of Walcott and Oxlade-Chamberlain might get a round of applause from us in a few weeks, guess which? Not that there was much difference in their time spent at Saints whilst in the first team...

Essruu, apart from the fact you can see the players shaking hands on the big screen, you can tell that pic was taken in the first half because there's no one remotely near the segregation. We were near the back right next to the band of stewards second half and there was a block of about 10 rows empty by 10 seats wide slap bang in front of me. Of course we were enjoying ourselves rubbing it in at 2-1 by trying to act as disbelieving as possible next to the City fans. Was bloody funny doing fake "OMFG" faces.

As Clyne's upper body was nearer the goal-line than Tevez's leg, he would have been able to see Clyne quite well... and the stripes on the pitch were perfectly placed to help out with it. Besides, I've messed around with the freeze frame and you still can't make it so Tevez is actually offside. People just want it to be because we went past Fonte, but he wasn't the last defender.

So, what kind of cruddy reserve team do you reckon we'll put out? At least we'll get to see Tadanari Lee, Seaborne and Stephens and Gazzaniga.

Also bizarre, the article about Stevenage tickets is claiming to be 9 hours old, which would have seen it online at around 1pm. It definitely definitely was not there at 5pm because a couple of us checked. What's going on with the Content Management on that site ?

True, but as they can't be bothered to even sell tickets and won't be able to confirm who's got them, they don't appear to have allocated any loyalty points to it, which is frankly bizarre when daft-ass games away to League One teams are exactly the kind of matches to judge loyalty on. But it's not entirely unexpected.

1 million Euros.

Well as it's right from Ramirez' mouth I'd think it was pretty accurate.