The9

Well, Pochettino and six different players.

Sounds like we're perfectly set up to play that way already to me.

Easy for me, not so easy for a couple of my friends.

*EFL not FA. Can't wait for that hearing... I'd pee a bit if they got fined more, but I suspect it'll last about 5 seconds with the appeals panel saying something like "do you have any grounds for appeal?" and them umming and ahhing before the appeal is dismissed with some snark from the chairman of the panel about wasting their time.

I have to say from various attempts at navigating around Prague, their metro system appears to be a load of toss for getting to all of the places we're going to want to go, and the trams seem far more practical for getting around.

Can't argue with much of that, this is an interesting sentence: "For contrast, Arsenal – who have scored twice as many goals – have created 15 fewer goal scoring opportunities.". We've created 15 more chances than the pin-up boys of creativity ARSENAL.

We've played 17 matches in Premier League, EFL Cup and Europa League and failed to score in 5. Those were Man U away, Be'er Sheva away, Leicester away, Inter away and Chelsea at home. You'll forgive me for not remotely caring about us not scoring in two European away games when we were playing for a draw from kick off, and not scoring against the current Champions and two teams who've won nine titles in the past 12 years between them.

The thing all along seems to be that the black box identifies a load of targets based on performance metrics and specific player need using streams of data, but it's the intangible stuff like personal relationships and how players respond to instructions which the black box can't give you. When it comes to that stuff, managers presented with a list of otherwise similar types will always gravitate towards players they're familiar with or have heard about from trusted colleagues.

The EFL are clearly clueless, you could see it from their awful rebrand. The logos and so on are nicely done, but adding the "English" to their name just to give them a copycat three letter abbreviation when they were "THE Football League" and their history over the Premier League was one of their big selling points belied a complete lack of understanding of what they actually have and what they should be promoting. Irrespective of what people think of the adding of U21 teams to the competition, it's the EFL not having the confidence to promote what they do well (the competitiveness of The Championship for instance) and endlessly make changes to things which generally work, which will be the death of the JPT. They just have to accept that people don't want to attend pointless cup games early on and use it as a marketing tool to kids (Saints' 7pm kick offs were a good example of that) to get them to bigger games, and push the community and regional aspects to build "brand loyalty" from a young age rather than just letting the Premier League steal everyone away - there are plenty of people who'll go to EFL games as well as Prem ones if it's embedded in them early enough. They could, of course, use their position to support Grass Roots via service provision, if not funding, as well.

Not if they had specifically placed us in separate pots so it couldn't happen like they did in the first round, and there were two pots for both North and South sections, so they would have. They also did that for Stoke and Port Vale in the northern section.

At least we know where they think we're going to be gathering...

Not necessarily - that might be one of the ones for a tv match after the club already had sponsors for non-televised games. That kit had three different sponsors - I'd say the previous one was the "last kit before we had sponsors" as it was never sponsored. Then again, we didn't have sponsors for all but one match with the sash kit either (Saints Foundation logo under the badge for one game), so...

I bought one from eBay from a deliberately vague listing on the offchance, and it sat in a drawer for 5 years... before I sold it on eBay. The new one is a lot better, but it's still a guff remake rather than an original.

If you're referring to your online ticket purchase history, it says that for everyone - mainly because they won't have known we needed a "collect in Prague" option when they updated the ticketing site.

Exactly, he's 6th in the entire league for key passes per game (i.e. passes which create an effort on goal), behind only Payet, Silva, De Bruyne, Willian and Firmino. He's also played more games than those around him, so he's 3rd overall in key passes total behind Payet and David Silva. He's up to 31 now. If he was playing with a striker like Aguero or Costa he'd have about 4 assists (De Bruyne has 6, Silva has 2). As it is Charlie Austin is "only" 9th in goals scored - and I bet he's top in goals per £ paid including transfer and wages (though Antonio has scored the same number from 4 more starts). https://www.whoscored.com/Regions/252/Tournaments/2/Seasons/6335/Stages/13796/PlayerStatistics/England-Premier-League-2016-2017 (Detailed, Key Passes, Total)

A cynic will look at the "Les Did It All" angle and think there's something afoot, maybe a pay rise, that he's decided he won't want to work under someone else after a takeover, etc, but most people will just see it as the BBC wanting to do something about Saints as we're playing the leaders this weekend and about half their team used to play for us... What I've taken away from it is that while we have a plan for everything else, we don't appear to have planned secession for the DoF role, and that holds the rest of it together. But I think I knew that already.

That's because it's a crappy retro remake which isn't particularly faithful to the original (though still better than the awful Score Draw cotton remake of the 2000s) - who wants to buy an overpriced unbranded remake when you can either get an original or have the club wearing it as their current kit? As you might have guessed, rubbish remakes of classic kits REALLY annoy me disproportionately. Original or don't bother as far as I'm concerned.

Quite, though they've got 7 years to release it at some point. I'd be surprised if we didn't also get another sash, probably in 2020 as a 10 year retro thing. They've already remade it as a retro kit without the Umbro logos after a whole 5 years!

I don't think the specific regulations for next season have been officially released yet, but as long as there's a plain area wide enough to fit two numbers on a bit of red or white at the side wouldn't be a problem. This season's Stoke shirt that's meant to meet the new regs has stripes at the bottom anyway. We could have exactly that design with a broad(er) white stripe on the back with red side panels and meet the rules.

Oh I don't know:

But what about my entitlement?

I'm not sure "really disappointed" is necessarily "honest" tbh. "Lots less than Everton offered" or "I went for the money" is honest - but his actual "disappointed" comments are open to interpretation depending on how much you think he was worth paying and how much you think we should have offered. Saying he knew it would be difficult to maintain last season's level is probably the most honest bit - and there are plenty on here who now expect that every year nevertheless.

I'm fairly sure we weren't going to match "top 10 manager wages in the world" no matter how much he wanted to stay. It was also fairly obvious we weren't going to get stuck with a lame duck manager so weren't going to allow him to run the last year down, so it was new deal or leave.

Which is fine if you don't have hand luggage only, but a pain in the jacksie if you're used to just rocking up and heading for security.

If it's got a barcode on it it's more than I've got! Mine's just a sheet with "this is your reservation number, take this to the desk in the airport".