The9

Won't take long... I just need to find the number of matches per category. Something else has just occurred to me - will ST holders who buy additional tickets get additional loyalty points, or are they capped at the maximum of 10,15 or 20 for that match ?

To break it down to something easier to digest : Northam CAT A £38 CAT B £35 CAT C £30 Itchen Premium CAT A £48 CAT B £44 CAT C £42 I honestly think that's about £10 cheaper than I was expecting. The Cat C "per match" ticket in the Northam is £2.50 CHEAPER than the per match cost for my ST renewal in there !

Agreed. As someone who played pre- and post- 1994, I was delighted with the straight red card for the tackle from behind, and the fact it was a specific directive. The rewording of the laws to penalise [EDIT]"excessive force" challenges with a red has make pretty much everything a potential red card, and the sudden desire from referees to punish the injury not the challenge is the biggest problem. Now, you can make a perfectly "fair" challenge, completely controlled and no danger to the opponent, but if he falls flat on his face tripping over you as you get up, you can get sent off. It's just all round poor refereeing - just as not penalising obviously excessive and painful challenges like the Senegalese one on Bellamy is also bad refereeing. Of course the irony for me is that my knee got wrecked with a two-footed knee-high sliding tackle from behind in 2000, for which the offender wasn't even given a yellow card, because 6 years after it was known to be a statutory red, the refs had all but stopped giving out cards for it at all. I think we got a free kick as I crawled off the pitch. All you can ask is that the refs are consistent, and letting leg breakers go unpunished is not consistent.

Nope, watching it on the box to save the money to go to away Prem matches we will lose.

Strictly speaking it's gingham, as created in Manchester. But as that's a girly kind of pattern, and the kit is indeed bloody awful, it's a minor point. Keeper kit is blue gingham and the away shorts are also black gingham.

The secret to that is never reading the HCDAJFU thread. Mental to think Olsson's been at Blackburn for 5 years, and made 88 Prem appearances basically without me noticing.

First thing I thought, they seem to be accepting blame for about 50% of it. Also, no players?

I think Harding's more solid in 1:1 defensive situations and has a higher workrate, Dickson is a better dribbler and marginally more astute positionally in that he doesn't get hugely out of position - which Harding does as play develops sometimes even when his starting position isn't that bad, but Harding opens up Lallana's options better, and his short passing and link play is slightly better. Not much in it pace-wise, both vaguely competent headers of the ball, they both got forward a fair bit and not much in it regarding crossing. Harding, I suspect, has a higher fitness level. The limit to 5 subs would have hurt Dickson last season, as Adkins rarely used a specialist left back as cover, preferring to use Martin and have Cork to cover right back with the option of pushing the RB across if needed. Of course he did use Harding for Fox at Fratton...

Only until someone disagrees with me.

I'm not sure Dickson is better than Harding though it's all academic when Fox is clearly ahead of both and we're looking at signing another player. I did notice against Arsenal that Fox looked leaner, and was playing a lot of short passes (only one over 20 yards). Though he still didn't run past anyone, which to be honest isn't the end of the world, but will add a new dimension to his game if Lallana pushes inside to open up the wing. It's as much about whether we think we can score with deep crosses in the Prem as anything, I'd expect Fox's 40 yarders to be a lot less effective against better defences, and his positioning will get exploited more often. I don't have an opinion on Olsson (or Buttner for that matter) though, hardly seen him play.

It was the apology I was interested in.

I'd like this stickied.

You're talking about Dickson (or possibly Harding), I'm talking about Fox.

I think Lallana is pretty effective defensively, but Fox appears to be weak because he's always on the half way line when we turn over possession, usually because his Hollywood balls are our highest risk passes and the most likely to turn over possession. Richardson had the same problem for a while, but from further forward because his delivery was usually a cross from 15 yards further down the pitch. Chaplow covering him sorted it out for a while, cutting off the source of breaks in behind Richardson - come to think of it, might have been a simple explanation of why we missed Chaplow so much in December and seemed to concede a fair few goals to teams with quick wide players (notably Bristol City).

For rarely read "never", it was amazing to see the drop off in Lallana's game out wide at first when he didn't have Harding bombing on past him opening up space.

Because he's fairly slow, not as good on the ball as Fox, isn't a strong enough passer, and most important has already made a dodgy decision under pressure against a Prem side (pass v Man U in the FA Cup which they scored from).

That's because the person he's marking is usually past him before the ball gets there. I had to laugh when I read the Daily Mail Championship Team of the Season, Fox was in there, with his "surging forward runs" named as one of his qualities. I don't think I saw him cross the half-way line with the ball all season, he always hit a long diagonal to the right side of the pitch or a low ball into midfield and never, EVER ran with the ball. http://footballleagueblog.dailymail.co.uk/2012/04/the-pfa-championship-team-of-the-year-amended.html "Left back: Danny Fox (Southampton) Harte may grab the headlines with his free-kick and penalty-taking exploits, but Fox is a far better player in open play. His surging forward runs have been a feature of Southampton's play this season."

18 squad members, all non-starters are on the bench.

If this was Ice Hockey, his +- stats would show an unimpressive -1.

And no-one said it did. But plenty are saying a bit more experience might not be a bad thing.

As with every other thread featuring the usual suspects, I can't be fcking bothered any more.

I don't even understand this post.

That's frankly hilarious and a fine bit of characterisation. There's a lot of self-parody on here recently.

You see, this is no longer the "why aren't we signing players with Prem experience" thread, this is now the "pick holes in Michael Turner" thread.

Trying to facilitate a move to Saints.