The9

Ah but this was off-camera shenanigans.

Fox for me, one very important clearance from right in front of the goal, got forward a couple of times when we weren't playing well to create half chances and defended well too, nothing much he could do with the goal, and it wasn't until Kebe came on in the last 10 minutes that he had anyone go past him. Heavy involvement in the few nice short passing moves that were successful on the left in the second half, which had Reading not been working so had that would have created a bit of space for us. If De Ridder had been on the pitch another 15 minutes I'd have probably given it to him.

I think given the tendency of central midfielders to be more combative and to pick up more suspensions that cover in that area should be deeper than just two per position - i.e. teams need two starters, two cover and another one just in case. Ward-Prowse is our fifth man behind Hammond, Cork, Schneiderlin and Chaplow.

"Josathan Forte Font".

Agreed. We've got a few of them around...

Nothing wrong with the song if you assume we meant "we can play crap and still sneak an undeserved point with a flash of brilliance".

Not sure why he'd leave anyway, same sized stadium, same league but we're higher, a squad of players here he already knows, plus he knows what the expectations are at Saints, already has what you can only imagine is a strong relationship with the Chairman, and potentially just as much if not more money to spend. Plus Cortese doesn't seem to be backward in improving contracts if necessary.

Really ? All I heard was a ton of "we're top of the league, we are Southampton" where I was.

Makes sense for Ward-Prowse to step up with Hammond suspended, will be nice to know if he's got any chance of being up to standard before we run out of central midfielders through injury and suspension again like we did last year. I can see him being in the "Gobern Role" this season, though obviously only 5 subs limits his league opportunities even more than that.

The key here is to (somehow) get the flag back and start taking it to away games, where it might at least occasionally get an outing.

Geography helps with this. Also, no-one sang "that's why we're top of the league", the usual journalistic license.

Born in Monmouthshire, don't get me started.

Having seen you giving it the large one against your own fans at various matches I don't think I'll bother. I liked you better when you were a website football gimp with the rest of us against Fulham about 5 years ago.

ITV repeated this nonsense for BOTH the Saints v Man U FA Cup ties in recent years. It has become a thing of legend, in folklore the 3-1 doesn't exist and the 6-3 was the grey shirt match. Utter cobblers, but if you repeat a lie often enough some people will believe it - like what Puncheon wore to Liebherr's memorial, or that Kevin Phillips said bad things about Saints after leaving.

Or QPR, for that matter.

How about this ? http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/Gallery/0,,10280~2465009,00.html Though to be fair, it was actually 27th September, so not last week.

Funnily enough Reading was where they took my tenner and tried to close the shutters with me leaning across trying to get it back after queuing for 25 minutes to get a pie at one of our preseason friendlies, so they don't always get it right. And a few of my mates were waiting for ages yesterday too. Saints need more staff, better organisation, more pre-loaded beers and temporary ropes to sort out getting in and out of the queues as well.

Having stood behind Dodd at Withdean last season I can assure you that he's more Saints than Brighton, even if he did sneak off just before our winner (and CFSFC's mongy and cringeworthy running track invasion, almost as bad as him watching the crowd for half of the Barnsley game).

Dear Marsdinho, what's England got to do with the British Olympic Team ? Oh, and Wrexham are in the Conference, with Newport County. There is only currently one welsh Football League team, and one welsh Premier League team. For the record, this is the first time since the foundation of both of these Leagues (1888 and 1992 respectively) that there has only been ONE welsh member. Regards, Me.

What a patronising award that is - would be nice if we won it when we were actually playing well, like against Barnsley or Ipswich.

It's something I haven't even thought about since the last time I was on this thread, but 32,150 it is. None of this "recount" nonsense, attendance figures are empirically verifiable from tickets counted (they chuck the ST stubs away, but they keep the cardboard by-match tickets from what I've seen at the turnstiles) and used for tax purposes, they should not be down to some marketing bloke making them up to create an artificial record.

Cork or Butterfield at right back, Richardson at CB alongside Martin... could be worse.

The interesting thing I find about this stat is that just before we played Cardiff about 3 weeks ago we hadn't beaten ANY of the sides in the top 10. Now we've beaten precisely one of the teams which was in the top 10 back then, but Leeds and Ipswich, who were both missing a few of their current side when they played us, have shot up the table. So the stat is misleading, we beat a Leeds side with a bunch of new players and missing Becchio, and an Ipswich team which signed half a side since Peterborough stuck 7 on them immediately after we beat them. You can't argue with our league position or the West Ham result, but you can look at the Cardiff, Derby and Leicester results as a warning that the margins of success are still slim. Actually, you can look at the cross getting flicked onto the post and Kelvin diving onto the loose ball late on in the West Ham game as a sign that the margins are extremely slim !

He didn't win many clean headers, but there were plenty of times when he won contested headers, put the ball in the right areas and West Ham's tactics didn't allow anyone to pick up the loose ball (as Baldock was out wide). Ask my wife, she had to put up with me saying "eek" every time he did it and was sick of it by half an hour when nothing much came of most of the knock downs. From seeing him absolutely run the game on the deck and in the air against Brighton last season I assure you he is much much mobile and skilful than Lambert has ever been, but if he's the target man in a 4-5-1, "going to look for the ball" is just going to get him a bollocking, especially if their only tactic is to hump the ball up the pitch at him and suddenly he's not there to challenge for it. As for Schneiderlin picking up the loose balls, that happened more and more as the game went on, presumably as West Ham's midfield tired from the constant 40 yard sprints they needed to make to get into the "second ball" zones after the hoof. As yet I haven't figured out what the point of bringing Piquionne or especially one foot hoof donkey O'Brien was, but then I don't have The Stats.

I think the midfield not supporting the defence is the issue, whichever way it manifests itself. And yes, there have been some CB errors, but it's a lot harder to look like a solid defensive pairing if you're the only two actually defending.