The9

If we sign a "Griffen" I'll be furious.

It's midweek and we were below average for 60 minutes on Saturday, why would anyone expect anything else ?

The article says they're still negotiating for highlights.

I'm surprised they got that much for the rights, Sky must have worked out that the BBC wouldn't be able to bid... I don't think the Sky money is anything like as big a proportion of income for some lower league clubs as it is in the Prem, and there's almost certainly not the reliance on the tv money because it's more rare that teams get a live game and isn't to be relied upoin - but it'll probably hit the smaller sides badly.

I've now seen that goal 6 times as well as live from right in front of me (when I didn't see any deflection either), Butterfield was absolutely at full stretch with his studs barely getting near enough to affect the ball at all, and with the pace of the strike it's impossible to see if there was even a deflection - if there was one it barely changed the path of the ball and it certainly wasn't a factor in Kelvin leaving a yard gap at the near post to begin with. But it is a handy way for Butterfield to say "I closed him down tightly enough" and Davis and Adkins to both insinuate that the keeper did his job, when actually it was a complete non-factor in the goal.

Chaplow, yes - poor, though a bit out of position. The lack of pace to exploit Lewington, yes, obvious - and it was even more glaringly obvious to us based on what Antonio had done to Lewington last season when we beat them 4 times, but Adkins wasn't the manager then. Butterfield played pretty well though. You can't expect full backs to be able to catch strikers when the ball's played inside them, most of the time the CB should be responsible as he SHOULD be between the ball and the goal even after the through ball. Having been critical of Lambert over the last few weeks for his performances in the last few months, I think his touch was pretty good on Saturday and unlike a lot of our players his passes weren't going awry. But he really does need to stop being the bloke crossing it, and when he IS in the middle, he needs to attack the box much more instead of hanging around in positions outside the area where the ball isn't going to come to him. I can only assume that's lack of fitness.

Kelv's positioning was poor for that second. He gave the guy a yard to aim at near-side and just didn't come out far enough to narrow the angle - he got it all wrong. Even more annoyingly I actually called the goal as the ball was played into the box because I could see (from a not particularly great angle in the Northam) that the near post was open. On the tv the gap looked much bigger than I was expecting too. If there was a deflection it was minimal, he should have at least got something on it even if he was expecting it to go across his body and it didn't. Can't blame him for the first, the corner came in so fast he wouldn't have had time to judge it.

That's why I said "no". Because if *I* don't care enough to look it up, NO-ONE cares enough to look it up. Having said that, if I'm at a loose end later...

Puncheon got dropped this weekend to enable Holloway (amongst other things) to pick Beattie and Ormerod up front in a three, so you might be right yet - his honeymoon period usually lasts about 2 months so we're probably seeing his Blackpool performances tailing off around now.

So what you're saying is that our right-sided midfielder (Chaplow) was poor, and that's Guly's fault ? I'd pick Guly and Barnard together every day of the week, even at the expense of Lambert, as I've been saying for a few weeks. Guly has vision, Barnard has enough pace and makes runs past the back line. That's an ideal combination. Though I have to say to be fair to Lambert his touch was much improved on Saturday, even if he still wasn't getting into the box because he was out wide crossing too often (or just ambling around on the edge of the area thinking about running, much less impressively).

No. HTH.

About fcking time too. I was there, we weren't good but we weren't "2-0 down" bad, which was one of the reasons it was frustrating. Our final ball was cack, and Lambert and Barnard seemed to have penaltyboxitis and never threatened any of the crosses, though they mostly weren't good crosses. I thought Lallana was his usual brilliant self throughout though and he always looked a threat. I spent a large chunk of the match up until Forte came on wondering why, when last season Lewington got murdered for pace in all 4 matches in which we beat them, didn't we throw the only fast bloke on the bench onto the pitch instead of Chaplow, who was playing a bit out of position on the right of a arrow midfield and having a mare. We needed width and we needed pace - the idea that Butterfield could overlap down that side (standard with a narrow midfield) just wasn't happening, and Chaplow had an off-day and a half. It certainly necessitated a bit of a positional change and certainly wasn't a wide 4-4-2 suddenly (or a standard 4-3-3), but somehow, despite Forte not actually running past Lewington much, it still made all the difference. There was some booing at half time (not surprisingly, though on balance a tad unwarranted, we were below average but still could have been ahead with a few breaks), but the booing for the Forte substitution was because it looked like Barnard was coming off which would have been pretty inexplicable (the MK Dons 9 came off instead).

I think we're going to sign a new left back if we go up. Harding's been on a gradual downward spiral since the start of last season, Dickson's always looked better going forward than backwards, and Mills doesn't look like a defender either.

Excellent article, much like all of Paul Fletcher's coverage of the Cheats' court cases last season.

If we win the next 8 games I'd like us to be top, to be honest. We need 19 points to be guaranteed a Play-Off Place, anyway. That total will drop every time Leyton Orient (or the teams around them) drop points or we gain them. That could be sorted within 2 weeks though.

Is there any particular reason why there is a picture of a Chelsea (away kit) player in the left pane ? Let's not forget this was a Norwich side that had a hell of a run in Europe as well...

No I'm not, he explicitly said "Heskey". If he'd wanted to make a point about generic donkeys he should have done so. Venables seemed to do pretty well with the side he had in '96 (Sheringham, FFS)...?

Saints 4-3 Norwich in 2004/5 (spit) for me as well, just for the atmosphere and the hope.

Despite being an ST holder, I can't remember ANYTHING about that season except the Play-Off Semi-Final away, Baird's hammered free-kick, Bale hitting the bar endlessly with his free-kicks and drifting past entire teams ( until Xmas), and Chopra being an absolute penis when we played Cardiff.

I don't know what a "pivitol" is, so no, I don't think so.

The "give it to Theo" half-season. Difficult to know the direct impact it had, given that we also got shot of 14 others and had a new manager within those 2 months, but we spent the rest of 2006/7 looking at the line below, not the line above.

Thereby completely missing the point of it.

Reminds me of 2005/6 for some reason.

No-one actually posted that on here at the time though ? And we've had someone from on here at all of them as far as I'm aware ? Not that I'm arguing with the rumour... the outcomes were all too evident, though I still have no idea if the consensus is that Pardew overworked them or if he didn't work them hard enough... and even so, the rumour was out there that Pardew was going long before he was actually sacked.

No, your memory is just shot to hell, Heskey's England debut was in April 1999, Le Tiss' last England appearance in 1997, so there are at least two years there where it definitely wasn't Heskey keeping him out AFTER his last appearance (never mind in 1992 when Heskey was an under 16 !), and I think you'd struggle to make a case for Le Tiss for England after 1998 anyway.