The9

Harte is a bit of an exception to be fair, he's protected by McAnuff who works hard, and he still has excellent set-piece delivery. Actually now I think about it, he's like a much less agile - but equally likely to run forward - version of Danny Fox. I don't think Fish is a bad player, he's probably a reasonable lower-half Championship full back in a side with the experience he lacks. I just think a lot of his energy is misplaced and he always does exactly the same thing with the ball, which is attempt to enthusiastically whip it towards the target, which some of the time results in spectacular miscues, and isn't always what you want when the team is under pressure at full back. Fox may not always pass the simple safe ball, but he CAN and usually knows when to.

Reading have replaced him with a 38 year old who can't run and their results have improved.

He was the ref for one of the worst reffing performances ever seen at St Mary's about 3-4 years ago - can't remember who we played but I'm pretty sure we won and all anyone talked about was how bad he was nevertheless. You really have to be a terrible ref for WINNING fans to be slagging off your performance.

If this match was a chocolate bar, it would be Crunchie.

Peacey is a mental, excellent responses, especially the one about Fish being any good and Dickson being better than Harding or Fox...

The reason is that the City council won't allow more than 2 concerts there a year which along with the football season limits availability to 2-3 months in the summer, and for a venue that size, probably only weekend dates are viable. So that's down to around 20 possible dates to hold a concert. Then you have to have that marry up with touring acts and whether the dates suit them, and competition from other venues could be a bit of a factor as the stadium doesn't have much of a reputation for events. Then consider that club usually choose to re-lay the pitch instead so that restricts the use of the venue to maybe a couple of weeks in May/early June, and they might not get much revenue for the hassle it causes anyway. Personally I'm more in favour of gigs at the Rose Bowl.

Yeah, that cat never should have been investigating the ropey Dell electrical wiring.

That Colchester goal is a screamer, who the hell is voting for the Accrington goal the keeper must have dropped ? Also amused to see Barnsley's training pitches on there, we had a good view of them earlier in the season from the balcony at the Leisure Centre overlooking the ground.

He was shat when he was at Watford in 2003, never mind now.

If you like that kind of thing. He's like David Beckham lite without the effort.

:O/

You mean it's the difference between head mental and leg mental ?

If you got halfway and stopped you probably only read the consent questions !

I honestly can't imagine what useful stat could be produced from that, given the micro level of differences - there's nowhere that asks if you watch your own team all the time or if you pitch up at random matches (used to do that, going 300 miles on occasion just for the hell of it). No mention at all of the cost of transport, which is the one thing that's currently stopping me going to a lot more more matches. There's a recession on, how about "how far do you live from the club you support" and "how many away matches a season would you attend if money was no object?" - without those you can only assume the reasons why people aren't travelling - if you can work out that they're actually travelling at all. I was also somewhat bewildered at the 8 research governance questions you had to answer before starting. If anything's going to put people off responding it's that, and I say that as someone who's recently been involved in a piece of national research on information sharing between health and social care, for which the governance is enormous.

I think the most recent Nike shirts feel plasticky, not surprising when there's a load of plastic bottles in the process - also Barca players discovered earlier this season that their shirts doubled in weight because the shirts were holding the sweat in them, which isn't something you want from your athletic performance garment. Some of the current Nike designs with the diagonal / wide narrow striped effect are bloody horrible too. The biggest problem with adidas is their adherence to basically 4 templates with very few tweaks. At least Nike (ugly designs) and Umbro (subtle tweaks) manage to make their templates different - though the current Saints socks are the same as Wales'...

I think I read something this week about Sunderland going to adidas soon actually. To be fair, we both have pretty plain kits this season and they don't look the same. There are about 4 major options so we don't look the same without even having different stripes : striped sleeves, white sleeves, red sleeves, hooped Man City style away sleeves. Plus there are at least 3 cuff colour options and various different types of collar. This season we've got white sleeves and they've got striped, they have a V-neck and we have the "Y" collar, they have black cuffs and we have red. The body of the shirt is similar and the shirt still look plenty different enough, though they also have a vaguely ugly diagonal stripe across the back of the shoulders.

Oh tits, a combination of probable injury, the cost of getting there and back, and having to faff arse around a load of plans and not seeing any of my usual lot at the match means I'm not going to be there after all. Sorry fellas.

Saints gave him two contracts and never played him too. I think Reading have just realised they have a 38-year old in that position as well, and he won't be playing in 2 years.

Actually Mills is a regular on the bench at Reading. He's only started 12 matches this season and hasn't been involved in one since November (though he has also been injured). Oh, and according to Adkins on the OS Butterfield is injured as well as lacking a bit of pace. Fox definitely makes us too predictable, he never, EVER runs with the ball, never overlaps so Lallana doesn't get enough space and usually has two people marking him, and hits Hollywood balls all day long from which we often lose possession. I still think Harding is a more solid defender, and works better with Lallana, but Fox does give us some excellent set-piece delivery.

Umbro shirts are by far the best looking shirts of the major manufacturers at the moment, and the quality is comparable to anyone, and the soft flock-type material they usually use is better than plenty of the horrible polyester weaves out there this season. Having said that, Saints kits usually having printed stripes on them tends to make them look less good compared to plain colours. Based on early leaks of Man U (tartan checks) and Barcelona (ugly blended colours) shirts from Nike, and the boring adidas templates (again), Umbro shirts are going to be some of the best again next season.

Not for the forthcoming season, but from 2013/14, yes. The aap3 sponsorship deal then runs out in 2014, so the next TWO season's kits will be for one year whether we renew with Umbro or not. Also worth knowing that Errea, Diadora, Lotto and Legea are all italian kit manufacturers, and most of their kits are of terrible quality and they have some pointlessly faffy designs or ugly branding.

Butterfield was getting done for pace at the end of last season and with Richardson's huge improvement and Jack Stephens' potential I'm not surprised he's not getting a look in.

More accurately, just under 1 day.

Done. Those "how many matches do you attend" questions are terribly worded, by the way.

Just to bring this back to reality, here are the latest odds from Skybet : Harry Redknapp 2/7 Stuart Pearce 5/1 Guus Hiddink 11/2 Roy Hodgson 12/1 Alan Pardew 14/1 Jose Mourinho 14/1 Arsene Wenger 18/1 Rafael Benítez 20/1 Martin O'Neill 25/1 Pep Guardiola 25/1 Roberto Mancini 33/1 Sam Allardyce 40/1 Brendan Rodgers 40/1 Carlo Ancelotti 50/1 Sven Goran Eriksson 50/1 Tony Pulis 50/1 Ian Holloway 50/1 David Moyes 50/1 Marcelo Lippi 66/1 David Beckham 66/1 Paul Lambert 66/1 Alan Shearer 66/1 Mark Hughes 66/1 Alex Ferguson 66/1 Steve Bruce 66/1 Frank Rijkaard 100/1 Phil Scolari 100/1 Steve McClaren 100/1 Gianfranco Zola 100/1 - - I haven't left anyone out.