The9

They're not "exposed", they're usually on the half way line attacking.

"England's number 3" Which became "England's Number 14" for a week or so before the World Cup in 2002.

Presumably with the exception of Lallana earlier in the season and Richardson when he came on that one time...?

Pretty sure the penalty save was the only thing he did wrong on Saturday, as a striker you can't do much if you're not given the ball, and he's not going to win loads of headers if we chip it up at his head. He made a few decent space-creating runs for others early on but I'm not sure how anyone can have a go at a striker who was barely within 20 yards of the ball for 70 minutes of the game despite his best efforts ? I saw Guly coming deep and picking the ball up from the centre backs but that's never going to be Sharp's role. Didn't do Guly much good either, come to think of it.

I think De Ridder still has the potential to achieve something, but he's not going to do it by running past the ball all the time and losing the ball to divots. Also seemed to have 2 on him a lot of the time, not surprising given the natural positions in a 4-3-3, but we didn't seem to get anything going no matter what the formation was.

Quite. It's when only one half of the pitch is being watered that it's particularly dubious though. As a basic rule attackers benefit from a damp pitch as the ball moves more quickly and defenders suffer from it because they prefer the play to be slower and predictable so they can organise themselves. None of this explains the 2nd goal though, Hooiveld lost a routine-looking header 50 yards from goal in an area where maybe Fox should be attacking it, Kelvin drops off the flick-on instead of coming out and probably clearing, Fonte's starting position was a couple of yards off and he can't get there, the striker hits it the only time he can, the only place he can, and scores. Even so, far too easy - and if anything the bumpy pitch was against the striker there.

You don't need a decent pitch to play a ball into space and knock it past a defender, the odd bobble actually helps with that sometimes as it lures them in. Having said that, the pitch didn't seem as bad out wide. The real issue with the wings was that Lallana was operating in the same area of the pitch (at least to begin with) and barely got the ball out there to go at them in return. De Ridder and Guly seemed to be having loads of problems overrunning the ball, De Ridder in the same bit of pitch that Ince wasn't having any problems with. Anyone there know if they dug that wing up at half time ?

You do have to set those at the start of the competition and not change them for matches in that competition though. Not quite the same as carving up the pitch before kick off to ensure it's bobbly as a one-off, for instance. Blackpool weren't playing a short passing game, they were shifting it quickly to their wingers and running at us before crossing it (usually a cut back). A lot easier to do that on a pitch that's bobbly in the middle - as the ball's not in the middle for long. Can't really complain about that though, we were poor all over the place, and lost more due to bad defending than anything else. I'm mostly annoyed that we went into a game knowing Ince and Phillips were on good form and had Butterfield and Fox defending against them - well, Butterfield at least did some defending, Fox was doing his usual thing of getting the wrong side and forcing the centre back to cover. As for "whack it up to Sharp"... we should have had a man over in the middle of the park but never passed it in there.

As I mentioned earlier, there's a "50/50" results button on there which takes all of that out of the equation as well, no opinions, just probability based on the existing table and no projection of form.

Yeah there would, they just offer worse odds to the punter than the probability of any of these things happening and they win all ways.

Actually having re-read it, with the exception of his paranoia about "tightening contracts" (which is just writing off the debt within UEFA's monetary rules) and the failure to accept that our owner has the money and none of Portsmouth's did, most of it is just about fair comment, albeit with a bit of a flapping spin. As far as "rocking the boat" goes, nothing to do with being a successful business (which we're not at the moment, btw - that's what the "LOSS" stuff is about) all to do with the timing of announcing the accounts.

Nope, I think that's completely out of order irrespective of his sometimes half-baked criticisms, though as a privately-run business they can basically do what they want.

Jeez, and I try and give someone the benefit of the doubt. Assuming that's him and not some other Nick.

It's not "a football match", it's "a season" based on statistical evidence of 39/46ths of the season so far.

Doesn't sound like something Illingsworth would say to be honest. Is also lacking the basic logical understanding that we have an ownership which pays all the debts the club accrues, they never have had. Pretty simple really. Their only crime was over-reaching and continuing to do so long after it was obvious they couldn't afford it and not making any effort to cut costs accordingly. We CAN afford it with the current ownership. Every club would be in trouble if their funding was pulled, most try to adjust - they didn't, when it happened to us, we did. The stuff about "tightening up the contract" sounds like it's been written by Corp Ho if anyone.

Good question, and why do the hundreds of people who've stopped doing it since they took the p155 at Fratton care as well ?

How about "you'll have no history" ?

I don't have a problem with it if it works and I don't have to load up the card with excessive amounts. I also think if they're going to do it they should go the whole hog, having dual systems doubles your support overheads (and staff training requirements) and it wouldn't be an incentive to use the card at all if you could still use cash. So either have dual systems or give card users discount. Can't see either happening based on the car park and ticketing decisions. It'll be "charge cards or nothing" and like the other decisions, the club will probably lose out on extra income due to the inconvenience. RE: Oyster, I still hate them even though they're more convenient.

I could care less about his private life, or people chanting about it (short of death and personal grief, which you'd hope is off limits), but I am seriously bothered about anything which gives opponents any motivation.

So boring there have been about 4 threads about what the best result of that match is for Saints. You can't argue with pure probability data. Though admittedly these have weightings for previous results and probably don't take teams fighting relegation or derby matches into account. The website also has a calculation based on 50/50 results for this reason.

That's why this is the definitive answer. Blame this lot, only took me a minute or two to cut and paste the screenshots : http://www.sportsclubstats.com/England/ChampionshipLeague.html

No need to discuss it any further, thanks to this frankly mental stats website : http://www.sportsclubstats.com/England/ChampionshipLeague.html I've compiled a screenshot showing the effects on Saints of each of the 3 results : Basically, the draw is best for us in terms of promotion. What a shock. . Though actually it's a pretty slim difference, only 0.3% swing between the 3 possible results. On the bright side, as it stands today we're in with a 98.4% chance of promotion, 86.6% chance of winning the title. That's pretty good odds. A Saints win on Saturday takes us up to 99.6% of promotion and 93.4% of the title... Only a West Ham win REDUCES that.

Here's the quote everyone seems to get so upset about : http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/a/aston_villa/4636529.stm "I'm glad I was able to get away from Southampton, I never really felt happy about joining them. "It was a move that never really felt right for me and I'm glad I can resurrect my Premiership career." "My partnership with James [beattie] never really got going. "But I know I can make my mark and still score goals in the Premiership. "It's too early to talk about targets but wherever I have played I've always set my sights on 20 goals a season. "When it became clear Villa wanted me, I didn't want to go anywhere else." Big deal.

I've never hated him. Decent for Saints, always gave his best and didn't say anything particularly bad about Saints when he joined Villa other than "it didn't feel right", despite what the torch-wielders on here would claim.

I hate this idea, I can't stand "single use" credit cards as you end up not having liquid cash because it's stuck on the card. Same goes for parking cards, Oyster, all rubbish. It's not as if the credit will make service any quicker, it's just a scam to ensure you waste your money at St Mary's. I also don't have much confidence in the charging system taking the right amounts, or there being sufficient places to check how much credit you have. Can you imagine queueing for 10 mins at half time only to find you don't have credit, or having to queue at a machine for 5 minutes to check or add credit ? The feedback I've seen from German clubs hasn't been particularly positive.