The9

Good knowledge, that explains the existence of Brian Murphy in QPR's squad then. I was surprised how few teams managed to use all 25 until I saw how many U-21s most of them had listed. http://www.premierleague.com/content/dam/premierleague/site-content/News/publications/squad-lists/squad-lists-february-2012.pdf I look forward to the ill-informed rants about us not having filled our 25 in a few weeks' time...

I first heard them about 2-3 weeks after Markus died. There's still no more substance to the rumours.

Another rumour from months ago in it's second or third incarnation going around the internet as new news by the looks of it.

Nice to see the question I asked a few tens of pages back about Birch reallocating parachute payments was answered anyway. He can.

They will start with 23 clubs, as I've already said a number of times on this thread. They did that in 1992 when Maidstone and Aldershot went pop within 6 months of each other, and they actually abandoned expanding to 94 clubs (inc the Prem teams) as a result. They are already at least a month over the line regarding replacing a team in the division, there are all kinds of complications involved, and if they don't take up the golden share OR if they go bust during the season, the division will finish with 23 sides. Also, I'd be inclined to think the 10th IS the FL's deadline.

Both of these ^. The switch from 4-3-3 to 4-5-1 is pretty easy, and against Arsenal we played with Chaplow at the point of a midfield 5, pushing so far up that it was 4-4-2 at times. It's not too tricky to switch between any of them - I could see Lambert at the point of a 5 man midfield with a pacier striker in front of him - or indeed as a "false 9" with Sharp and Rodriguez as the wide strikers in a front 3 at home, or Guly and Lallana/Lee as the wide midfielders pushing on past Lambert when away. Though I do also think Rodriguez is a natural longer term replacement for Lambert... once people are weaned off him as some kind of talisman.

Last year, when I went in there before the Liebherr Cup match, it was the same stuff as in the concourse, plus they had a few other drinks in there too, including Worthington branded as Worthington, alongside "Saints Ale" - which numerous people have claimed is exactly the same thing.

The blanks would be that if we weren't conceding ANY long range goals we'd be "susceptible to letting teams in behind us" or some such gash.

Man City conceded 27% of their goals from outside the box last season. http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/clubs/profile.statistics.html/man-city#clubsTabsDefending Wigan 26%. Which says to me it doesn't make a lot of difference where you concede them, just if you concede them.

Charles William Miller. To see if he really did take football to Brazil and the rest of South America, and see if there was any link between Southampton YMA's sash kit and Peru and River Plate's shirts.

We don't. Problem solved.

I wouldn't expect Peter Rodrigues or Lee Sharpe to be much use for us either.

Any opinions on whether people would rather this new Ajaccio kit than the current home kit ? It's pretty vile, but it IS red and white stripes, and for that reason, yeah I prefer it.

Or able to make a coherent case that he's not mobile enough to create chances for himself as a very isolated lone striker, maybe.

Good question, I'd say Rodriguez by the end of the season, but maybe not quite yet.

I think pre-season has made it pretty clear that we'll be playing some variation of 4-3-3/4-5-1 this season. How are 2 banks of 4 better at defending than a bank of 4 and a bank of 5 anyway ?

Funnily enough my assertion that he'll play more Prem matches than Lambert next season was based on this - though there is the possibility Rodriguez will take over Lambert's mantle as well. Or we might persist with Rickie, will be interesting to see.

He got there because some idiot decided people with springs instead of lower limbs should be allowed to compete in an event where even leaning forward at the start line leads to disqualification, and somehow not regard that as an advantage. Anyway, mine's not even an argument about "advantage" its an argument about eligibility. My argument is that he is eligible when he doesn't use artificial aids. It's pretty simple, just as him breaking that rule is easy to detect. However, if he's so elite, what are his times like without the prosthetics?

Because they're not elite athletes in a lot of cases?

Oh yeah, thanks for reminding me of those useless cvnts. Once took 2 weeks to "next day deliver" me a new mobile phone, twice claimed to have delivered when I was in all day and didn't even leave a card, also failed to deliver to my work address, had a website which only allowed changes to delivery 24 hours in advance (hence missing another delivery on my day off when I was home waiting for the parcel and they were not delivering to my work) and eventually when I decided to cut out the actual delivery part, they told me at the depot after a 30 minute wait with no queue that they had returned my parcel - until I pointed out that I could see it on the shelf - and how lucky was that? Virgin Media mostly peed me off charging a £50 disconnection fee when I moved to a different house which already had their service - even more annoying that we'd moved onto our own place within 6 months and as the wife now works for one of their partners we got a ridiculously cheap package so we re-signed up. Oh, and Enterprise car rental phoned me the day before I was moving house on a weekend to tell me the van I'd booked a month previously wasn't available and they didn't have another one. As it was too late to book anything else I kicked off (not harmed by me being drunk on my leaving do) and they ended up getting one for me through a rival which they promised to honour and then underpaid me for twice. On the bright side I had a van for my 2 250 mile round trips.

I'm deaf in one ear, can someone sort me out with the opportunity to join some of the bands at the Closing Ceremony?

Fwiw I wasn't entirely convinced Butland's effort at Ji's shot was all that bad, it went like a bullet and moved right in front of him. Interesting choice to punch though, seem to be a lot of keepers just deflecting away due to modern balls shifting about. I was more concerned at the one he batted out straight to the striker when he missed the unchallenged open goal rebound tbh. I still think his all round game is excellent and he'd be a great signing for about £5m, he's already better than Kelvin in a lot of areas.

The numbers were all over the shop again, Sharp's worn 25 and 26, it's also quite likely that they numbered up the preseason kits when Forecast was still there and just made the keepers 1 and 31.

De Ridder was always good for a rapid booking last season, he picked up a load of yellow cards for chasing back and fouling people from behind, so I'm not sure his defensive skill is the area we should really be focusing on. He's not really fitted into our style of play until now, as others have said, we tend to keep the ball rather than play through the back line - Tadanari Lee also suffered with this early on, making a ton of ignored runs deep. But De Ridder is a good impact sub, like Walcott in the way you'd bring him on later to exploit tiring defences when there's a little more space. His delivery got worse during the season but we'll see if his 100mph game is more suited to a division where the tempo is generally higher. I haven't written him off yet but I don't expect him to start many.

Some creative accounting around the new Financial Fair Play rules maybe?