The9

If that's reading between the lines, your lines are of a certain substance.

http://www.skysports.com/socceram , the video is currently sitting in the top right corner.

Spot on.

As the other (slightly less likely) thread got locked, this is as good a place as any to say "Niklas Bendtner uses number 52 because he wanted number 7 but Rosicky had it, so he chose 5+2"... which still sounds pretty dubious. http://arsenal-mania.com/articles/3107331/Bendtner-Why-52-and-my-targets-for-the-season.html

As the Barcelona model includes fan ownership, an elected club president, and getting £200m into debt, I'd be surprised if the Barcelona model featured too heavily. Though they were also sponsorless by choice until recently...

That's the Matt Mills who conceded the penalty last weekend that Kasper Schmeichel was hilariously sent off for firstly delaying and then lobbing the ball into the crowd after conceding from ? Both of whom are in my FF side...

I'm still convinced that "possession" stats are corrupted by marking the defensive side as "in possession" whilst their goalkeeper is taking goal kicks. I have no specific proof of this, but it would explain why some matches where attacking sides have utterly dominated possession and created lots of chances show them only having slightly better possession. At the VERY least the defensive team has the ball for the time the kick is taken before it lands, as it counts as a pass from the goalkeeper. If you're taking a lot of goal kicks you get a lot of that time, when actually long goal kicks are at best "neutral" posession. I'd also like to see what happens with possession stats when the ball is out of play.

I'd love to know how you know this, as I know for a fact Bendtner's given reason for changing his number to 52 (from something sensible) was "because it is a special number for me" and no more detail than that was given. It does seem feasible though, he is his own biggest fan, and really not very good. I think Kenwyne's a better striker for a start...

I agree entirely. At the time there were so many on here basically saying "but he does RUGBY" and not even sparing a second of thought to look at what Woodward could have done. Having said that the manager was the wrong kind of person, the situation was wrong, the timing was wrong and the money being spent was wrong, in this specific case.

Not the Ipswich performance from Lambert, no, but on the back from the game thread for Barnsley I was asking the question "what did Lambert do?" without any answers. We'd played great football but he was by no means as influential as Cork, Connolly or Lallana. It was pretty obvious from the highlights what he was doing at Ipswich though, one long ball for him to bring down and bury and one through ball that he got to as he'd already started his run from deep - neither were the kind of passes he'd been getting or movement he'd been making in the first two matches of the season. Edit : from post #31 here : http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?31939-Was-there-a-(just)-back-from-the-match-thread-for-Barnsley

Worth pointing out that Darren Campbell played semi-pro football for Weymouth in the early/mid 90s, so he had some relevant "inside" footballing knowledge already to a certain level (though last time I saw him circa 1998 he was playing Newport & District Premier X, which is below the 3 divisions of the Gwent County League, the 3 divisions of the Welsh League and the Welsh Premier League, which itself at best is probably on a par with the English Conference South at tier 6 of the English Pyramid). You wouldn't expect him to be able to manage a professional football team though.

Ok, well thanks for your insight - I've seen some of it on Eurosport but didn't appreciate the nuances. I probably still don't, but at least I know they're different now. Also, did he say SEVEN touches a minute per player versus about 2 ? That's got to be due to the need to micromanage the ball when in possession as opposed to actually having more spells on the ball, hasn't it ? I can sort of see how a smaller ball which couldn't be ricocheted past someone would improve close control, we had footballs banned in school and played with a tennis ball which probably improved me more than I ever gave it credit for - especially my heading !

Right, so it IS the same then. Phew. I'm now assuming I misread the tweet, and what Clifford was comparing was the number of touches per minute in Futsal/Futebol de Salao compared to something like 5-a-side (or maybe 11-a-side), as opposed to Futsal v Futebol de Salao, which are the same thing. Come to think of it, if they were mostly playing Redknapp-approved 5-a-sides that would make sense...

Whilst I'm no fan of Redknapp, and most of this is feasible, Redknapp had also created his own "out" in the immediate aftermath of relegation when he started saying he wasn't sure he wanted to come back for the Championship and similar comments, and implied he could have gone at any point. I said at the time on Saints Forever (or maybe TSF) his prevaricating mere days after relegation should have led to his sacking, allowing Saints to start the rebuilding process in Summer 2005, and not waiting until he finally went in December 2005. Redknapp's Championship spell ruined Saints' chances of bouncing back, as the lack of mid-season managerial stability removed any trace of loyalty the likes of Delap and Niemi had, and also weakened our chances of holding onto Walcott, and saw Matt Mills walk out of the door. All of this undermined the best chance of bouncing back, as instead of launching a "re-promotion" we spent 4 months sliding down the league as Burley struggled to replace the 17 players who'd left before rallying at the end of that season back into mid-table. We either had to "go for it" and push to keep together the majority of Redknapp's side (as opposed to spending a piddling amount on Fuller), or we had to downsize immediately and rebuild on the cheap using our youth talent and some shrewd signings. What we did was half-assed and with the Burley play-off failure too, it's taken us 5 years to even get close again. On the bright side... look at us now !

Thanks for bothering to read it - also nice to see one of your posts in context. Sturrock was also a UEFA Cup runner up and Scottish Premier League winner as a player with Dundee United, also went to two World Cups, is an extremely highly qualified UEFA coach, got his first club promoted, took Dundee United to their highest position in 30 years until their striker was sold, and took Plymouth into the Championship from the fourth tier. Even since leaving Saints has got Sheffield Wednesday promoted to the Championship, Swindon out of League Two and Plymouth to 10th in the Championship (within the last 5 years, and they're currently 2 divisions lower) which always seems to be forgotten in any debate of Sturrock's merits.

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The "financial awareness" of SCW is pretty evident from the biography of Woodward I read as well. He wanted the experience of working at a club to get his footy coaching badges, and offered to bring his "exec services" - evidently at a premium - in the meantime whilst he got his badges. Fine for a Prem side, but by the time he started we were relegated and should have been cutting costs. With hindsight the cost of SCW, no matter how beneficial his services might have been, wasn't worth the money - but there was no reason to think his advice and even coaching abilities wouldn't have been beneficial to Saints alongside more conventional coaches who had the football experience he was lacking. But paying him a huge sum whilst giving him that platform too looks too much like a one-sided deal that bought into Lowe's ego and need to be seen to be revolutionising (see also the Dutch Experiment). Cortese clearly has similar foibles, but it's a fair point that looking like a tit on the cover of the programme is significantly less detrimental than undermining your club manager (even if it was Redknapp) and wasting loads of the club's cash on trying to look revolutionary. Clifford's comments are interesting. There's a ton of stuff to get through though... Offering Clifford and Woodward any kind of TEAM MANAGEMENT role in 2005/6 (relegation season) was extremely ill-advised, but as Redknapp only came in in Dec 2005 it's at least logical that other manager options might have been sought back then. From Woodward's bio (which is mostly from 3rd party interviews) there's plenty about him wanting to be a football manager gradually which makes me think Clifford's "only I refused this for 2005/6" is a little unlikely. The idea that they were to be team managers in 2006/7 is in line with other things I've read, Woodward thinking he could improve the training infrastructure and methods to help the club at first and then stepping up to manage when qualified later. There are also a few bits in the bio about Lowe trying to get Woodward in charge quickly - but as it appears SCW was getting paid the same amount either way, he smartly decided to go at his own pace. Whatever the situation, it looked like whoever the club manager was was being undermined, and makes the war of words between Woodward / Clifford / Lowe / Redknapp as it all fell apart a little more understandable. Realistically though the players would probably have responded to SCW's version of sports science ON the field in a manner that would have cut the "revolution" off at its knees. Just look at the Sturrock ousting - rumours of players feigning injury at the end of 2004/5, then unhappiness, the dreaded "losing the dressing room" stuff, a player power movement supposed led by Beattie and Dodd, Sturrock left, and then the players who'd apparently forced the changes responded by losing shedloads of football matches under the new manager, who was rumoured to be their preferred choice. If even half of the "player power" stuff around Sturrock's ousting is true, they'd have dug their heels in over Woodward(and Clifford)'s new ideas too. That's not to say Woodward couldn't have brought us something around organisation and sports science, though his methods of using drills ad infinitum to achieve perfection certainly wouldn't have been popular - but you can see how that could have worked for set-pieces, or the psychology of penalty-taking, for instance. The Woodward bio indicated that he did a ton of behind the scenes stuff regarding design and planning of the Academy, relaxation rooms (to aid recovery and to ensure players stayed on site between morning and newly-introduced afternoon sessions), and implementing Prozone for analysis. We can all recall Redknapp's p155taking about not knowing how to use the even then widely-used Prozone to show how well he and Woodward were suited to working together, I assume ? There seems to be a lot of honesty in Clifford's tweeting, but I absolutely question his appraisal of the other coaches, and also the "look at the players in Prem and CCC" argument to justify it. The standard of 2006's coaching is irrelevant to the number of ex-Saints senior players still in the top TWO divisions anyway; you can only build a case that the coaching was flawed if loads of those players are back in the Prem and the coaching helped relegate them out of line with their natural ability. A crop of still-current Championship players in a "relegated to the Championship" squad in 2006 it doesn't really tell you anything about the coaching that got us relegated, just that the players weren't good enough. A LOT of the 2005/6 side didn't play in the Prem again; Niemi, Delap, Crouch, Phillips and Camara did, but most of the defence and midfield didn't, Beattie had already left, and Quashie and Ormerod barely count as Prem players since. Good players will overcome a short spell of poor coaching anyway. Similarly, at youth level, where the FA Youth Cup Final class of 2005/6 were all developed before Clifford arrived, I'd say the methods have been proven to be successful from player success since, so Clifford's comments are curious. All the Prem and Championship level players coming through since 2006 but playing elsewhere now just says the youth coaches did their job but the club wasn't able to offer first team places regularly, not that the coaching was poor. Don't forget the first team coaches while Clifford was there were operating under Redknapp's direction, and Dexter Blackstock's father was highly critical of Redknapp's lack of training of the players at the time. Redknapp is also known for his "all 5-a-sides" coaching, and it probably didn't paint a good picture of the coaches at that particular time. Also, for Clifford to say Hugh Jennings wasn't aware of this player or that player just makes Clifford look like a wacko bringing up unsuitable players (viz St. Juste), rather than making Jennings look incompetent for not knowing who they are. Also, am I the only one who thought Futsal was just an abbreviation of Futebol de Salao, i.e. they were just alternative names for the small sided, Brazilian indoor game with a smaller ball, as opposed to two different games as suggested by Clifford's stats comparison ?

Having the ball a lot of the time means you're a lot less likely to be making tackles.

I took a photo at the Warhol exhibition of a security guard sat in front of a print of this looking really bored. Shame I haven't got a copy to hand, the irony was superb.

Weird, I was in Bishop's Waltham today behind a Socatots van as well...

Pretty sure it's in the Clive Woodward biography I bought for a quid from one of those discount bookshops in Eastleigh about a year ago.

Harsh, no-one is that bad. I mean Ipswich Cwathee bad, not MLG bad, which I am suggesting is less. Anyone who is THAT sarcastic in speech that often with no-one around has problems. Plus MLG would have known how to pronounce all of the opposition players' names.

I'd just be happy if De Ridder got a start at home on the right, instead of playing up front for 15 minutes late on. But I'm not suggesting he starts in front of Guly at the moment, what with everything going so well and all...

You have to spell it out. The number 20. I can't pronounce his name so I'm not even going to try.