The9

You missed the 30 successive passes leading to the chorus of "we're taking the p155", then ? Lallana's "rabona" through ball ? Cork dragging back and protecting the ball every single time there was pressure on him ? The brilliantly worked openings ? Absolutely the best performance I've seen - bearing in mind of course it's "only the Championship". I still don't know how we're going to do against the likes of West Ham, Reading and Leicester, but you can only beat the teams in front of you and I thought Barnsley were a pretty competent defensive unit to keep their shape and stop us scoring more, which we would have done on plenty of other occasions.

Will definitely be a three match ban as it would be violent conduct.

As opposed to pulling out of the tackle and getting clattered by someone running straight into him.

Rubbish poll, it was both a deserved red card AND he was unlucky to be sent off. Letter of the law says it was reckless, but he clearly got the ball and it takes two to be reckless in a collision. The opponent deserved at least a yellow for simulation given his rolly-aroundy jumping up and carrying on after the card behaviour.

That was the least ugly win Saints have ever had. It was beautiful in places.

Every time we had the ball it was fantastic to watch. Just brilliant. Slightly worried that we started to fade just before the sending off but Adkins had it in hand with a change pending, and then late on with 10 we stopped passing it and Richardson became "Mr Chippy" to Lambert again, which just led to us giving the ball away too easily. Not keen on De Ridder getting on up front again, but a least he got a spell out wide when Chaplow departed - though hardly in circumstances where he could shine. Nevertheless, a couple of edge of the box touches that gave us another dimension, creating space, again, for that short through ball to the nippy striker we don't yet have. Connolly is close, but he's not going to find that yard at this point in his career even though he looks as sharp as possible, and Barnard just doesn't have that sharpness. Lallana's trickery and effectiveness went to new levels yesterday, every time Cork got the ball under pressure he protected it, moved it and we sprayed it off somewhere else. There was a spell of 30+ passes at one point when Barnsley couldn't get the ball, which ended with us playing a through ball half a yard from Connolly going clean through. Three or four times we played it around and opened up space, and made a solidly defensive Barnsley side who'd got a point at Forest last week look under a ton of pressure. We are one pacy finisher who can get on those through balls (and maybe a little fitness) away... so impressed. Two weird things : Connolly having number 23 on his shorts and 22 on his shirt which caused all kinds of confusion when "23" (which is Ryan Dickson's number) was held up to take him off, and Kelvin wearing a grey shirt in the first half and the lime green shirt in the second...

...because I can already see from a few of the posts on here that the "wasn't there, taken the commentator's word as gospel" crew are out with their opinions. I should think there are plenty of things that were missed on the radio that are worth noting. For a start, we were fantastic for 90% of that match. Barnsley went minutes at a time without getting a kick, our build up play, possession and the way we moved the ball was exciting, attacking and with purpose - and until about 5 minutes before the sending off only one team was going to win in, and comfortably. I have never in nearly 20 years as a Saints fan seen a performance like it. We were tremendous, had flair, and there was some excellent, exciting play. Just before Chaplow's sending off Barnsley started to get more possession (Vaz Te did well when he got on, hitting some strong shots from the left side of the box after cutting in front of Richardson, and Noble-Lazarus started running at us too). Adkins had the swap planned before the sending off, which at the time looked like a nothing challenge. Chaplow got the ball, whacked it clean up in the air and his follow through caught his opponent on the thigh - he went down clutching his stomach, rolling around, saw the red card and popped straight back up onto his feet. Letter of the law, it might have been seen as reckless by Chaplow, but after committing to winning the ball he had to put his foot down somewhere and the collision was inevitable. More annoying as we repelled wave on wave of Barnsley lobbing the ball into the box in injury time, was the one additional minute that the ref added from absolutely nowhere. I've long been suspicious off "added time" and always set my timer to count it down. When Kelv went down injured there was one minute of added time left. When play resumed there was about 3 seconds of added time left - so the ref could genuinely and reasonably have added that minute on, to give 5 minutes of added time. Yet he played fully 6 minutes - adding another minute for absolutely no reason at all. Worse, when Fonte cleared the ball 5 minutes into (the 4 minutes of ) added time, he had the perfect chance to blow - but chose to carry on for another minute. We defended that 10 minutes of relentless hoofery extremely well - haven't seen the goalline clearance yet but half the ground thought it was in, but let's not let Barnsley's brief spell of hoof-ball desperation and the failure to get a second goal from the numerous near-chances we made without actually getting anyone on the end of the final ball overshadow what was an absolutely sublime passing performance from Saints, who put on absolutely the best Southampton performance I have ever seen, completely dominating in an unprecedented manner. In short, I absolutely loved it.

I see what you did there.

Marians PaHORSE ?

Both were with Saints as youth players.

Can't you read the date of the post in the red bar then ?

The other issue of course is that we're much more likely to get an improved home attendance if we sign a player fans are excited by than away attendance, because for most people it's just easier to go to home games, hence the name.

Actually there was a chart drawn up pre-season showing mileage for travelling fans last season and we were right at the top of it with the likes of Carlisle and Plymouth. There were quite a lot of southern sides in League One last season but nevertheless we didn't have the luxury of near neighbours in the division other than Bournemouth, and the second nearest matches were 70+ miles to Swindon, Brighton and Brentford.

You haven't been paying much attention to Adkins' numbering scheme either then ? Fox will be 13 unless he decides he doesn't want it. Then he might possibly end up with 11 or more likely in that situation the much coveted number 43 - or one of the numbers out of step with "the plan". Ideally De Ridder would have got 11 leaving 33 for Fox, but the timing obviously didn't work out for that option. As for the "teen" numbers, there are only 13 and 19 not taken, and under this season's squad number system 19 is almost certainly reserved for a striker.

I'd expect Fox to be 13 though it's not been confirmed anywhere yet.

Isn't part of that argument that we're more of a "draw" to Sunderland fans than Sunderland are to Saints fans... ? I think we've got a pretty decent away following most places south of Birmingham, but our lot don't like to go too far. I still haven't been to Carlisle, Newcastle or Sunderland (though I've been to Hartlepool twice and Boro at least twice too). It might be linked to the distributed fanbase we've got, some people have to travel a fair bit to get to home games and that takes up their costs not away matches. I go to about half as many aways as I did in 2004 when I was based in South Wales, but I also go to about 15-20 more home matches a season. It could also be linked to Saints having an older fanbase who don't go to aways at all nowadays - or the fact that having yoyoed through 3 divisions in 8 years we've been to most of the places on offer before.

To quote Brian Moore at the end of the video, "Offside against David Armstrong". He was beyond the last defender even though the ball went well over his head and he was never going to be able to influence it - and even arguing that he was in the keeper(Paul Cooper presumably)'s line of sight (which is relevant to offside now and has been for nearly 30 years) was neither here nor there at the time. This was back when anyone beyond the last defender even on the opposite side of the pitch could be flagged offside, before the whole "interfering with play" thing was made relevant in the early/mid 80s, and then in 1994 expanded beyond all sense with the introduction of phases of play which basically allowed goal-hanging until the final ball (viz. Romario World Cup '94). Back then managers could get away with nonsense such as "if he's not interfering with play, what's he doing on the pitch?".

Indeed, in order to be like Barcelona we'd have to let him go for free and then spend daft money getting him back 5 years' later.

7 and a half, it must have been after March 2004 because of who went there with me. Actually I found the match programme 2 weeks ago as well.

Hah, well you agreed with the last comment, you probably won't like me pointing out that Lambert basically did sod all in that AFCB match that wasn't on the highlights. The pressurising the defender was the only time he ran to do that all game, and his free-kick and pass to Barnard were two of the few other occasions he was instrumental that day. Mostly the game passed him by - but I guess if you're going to minimise effort you may as well maximise your return on it ! Does anyone remember my screen grab of the acres of space he could have put his pass into to Barnard for the 3rd ? As a lazy, past it centre-forward myself I recognise the shift in his game all too well. Mine coincided with ruining my knee and us signing a fast young bloke to go in for the chances I used to run for. So instead of scoring those goals, I was assisting them.

I can only assume you're taking the p155 as after making over 200 appearances for Southend, his last two clubs since the start of 2010/11 are Portsmouth and AFC Bournemouth.

We've had this one before, went to Bohemians in Ireland, then onto Skonto Riga. 2 games on loan at Derby in 2008/9 and is now playing in Uzbekistan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrejs_Perep%C4%BCotkins

The ex-Mr Anaclet was very popular at Newport until he left recently.

Jake Thomson was at Exeter last season (came on as sub against Saints in the 4-0 home win against them), he had a one month loan at Cheltenham in March but was released by Exeter in the summer and AFAIK hasn't been picked up by anyone else either. Edit : he's on Twitter : http://twitter.com/?q=jake+thomson#!/Jst_89 and played some pre-season games (as a striker!) for Southend, but he's not on their website in the squad.

Unfortunately my laptop finally went bang about 3 days ago so I may need to do some installing of various editing tools on the missus' PC first...