The9

Me neither. But then I haven't heard of anyone new we've signed since July 2009 except Barnard, Puncheon, Forte and N'Guessan, so that's no kind of judgement.

You certainly can. I don't think anyone's going to argue in favour of Dyer's ability to win headers, defend or not stand on the ball.

Funnily enough at the time they were sold they were both equally as accepted, I even remember the Northam adapting the Crouch "used to be a Skate" song for Fuller not long before he was sold, the "Fuller sh!1it" stuff was long over by then. In a shocking turn of events, I actually agree with you regarding the problem with Puncheon. It's Puncheon. We haven't seen Bialkowski, Butterfield, Richardson, Jaidi, Seaborne, Martin, Dickson, Guly, Barnard or Holmes involved in bus no-shows or rumoured refusals to go on the bench or management team bust-ups, and all of them have had spells out of the team when not selected this season. I didn't think Puncheon got much grief last season either, but his efforts noticably tailed off by the end of the season. When it comes down to it, even if he's awesome (which he's not), if you don't know what you're going to get from a player as a manager regarding attitude from one week to the next, you have every right not to pick him.

Really ? "Disgusted" with signing a player who already had Prem experience over a bloke few people had heard of (albeit the division's top scorer) from Bristol Rovers ? I'm pretty sure a lot of us would have been delighted with signing a well-known player. Well that's cemented my argument, which is that just because a player is in the Prem or the Championship it doesn't mean they're necessarily good enough to play in it. For instance I reckon that Jason Puncheon from Blackpool would be useless in League One... .

As he's only played in 7 wins of their 37 league games all season, I'd be inclined to argue that he's peripheral to their success at best.

Interesting logic that by getting promoted to the Premier League you automatically become a good enough player to play in it, when almost all of the sides who go up spend massively trying to improve their side so they don't come straight back down. It was 2002 the last time all three promoted Championship sides stayed up, which means that in each of the 8 full seasons since then, at least one of the teams you've just implied which is full of players who are all "good enough for the Premier League evidently" has been relegated.

I thought he was too slow to play left back well and not creative enough or good enough at tackling to play attacking or defensive midfield well. He was pretty decent overall, but nothing special, which is why we got relegated when he was one of our best players. He'd probably get a game at left back or centre mid at the moment for us though, most of the time.

For those of us who don't actually live on here, can someone post the original thread title ? I'm assuming it said something like "Breaking News : Danny Ward Signs".

It's just a shame that he's only able to chase those kind of efforts down once a match. As for "We are no longer the one dimensional 'get it to Rickie' team that we at times were under Pardew and are all the better for it. If it means he doesn't look to be as prolific, fine, we now have more then plan A and thank heavens for that! " Well, no, when Guly doesn't play we're often a one-dimensional long ball team that doesn't even bother aiming for Rickie any more. We do seem to be still getting results most of the time though so I'm not too disappointed yet. Lallana absolutely dragged us through Saturday. I've lost count of the number of times a ball should be coming into the box and he's not there to put it in.

Useful enough to stop me buying a ticket and deciding to go to Wales v England instead.

Yeah, and I managed to identify New Zealand and Zimbabwe as two of the "culprits" - though the Irish U-21 wasn't on the radar ! http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?27982-Plymouth-Argyle-and-impact-on-League-One-(latest-appointing-an-administrator)&p=956395#post956395

BBC hasn't had it on their fixtures since we announced the rearranged time, and LAST season they completely failed to put our away match at Brighton on the fixtures when we moved it forward a day, so I wouldn't read too much into that... it's been missing from the predictor for months, they obviously deleted it instead of moving it.

I thought we were less crap than them on Saturday and that's about it. Lallana aside there wasn't a lot of football, but we already beat them twice playing football as well. Oh and anyone who thinks Lungs has written a lot about a team the vast majority of Saints fans shouldn't care about should see his Meon Valley Football League match reports.

I thought he was terrible, again. He barely runs and one cross and one free kick don't make for a good performance. Every time there was closing down to be done or a through ball to chase he went missing. Angled non-jumping headers are only going to get so far. On the flipside, Lallana was immense and was the only Saints player to get the thing down and enable us to maintain possession or do ANYTHING in their half.

That is true, I should edit. Maybe I was using the idiot pundit version where they bang on about the utterly irrelevant "ball going forward" rule that they've all just made up in their heads to try and understand that law...

I'd be surprised if Plymouth call this off with the cash-flow problems they've got, international call ups that I mentioned about 3 months ago or not. The last thing they want is to delay money through the turnstiles for another month, and I'm pretty sure that at this kind of notice we've now only got April 19th left to play the fixture.

Um, you've just quoted "if it rebounds off an opponent", but the pass BEFORE it was also made by an opponent, which makes your argument irrelevant.

That is absolute garbage, if that had last smacked a Bournemouth player in the face it would have been offside. There is nothing at all in the laws OR the interpretations about the pass to the player in an offside position being deliberate or not. In open play the only issues are 1) whether the player is beyond the penultimate defender (he was) 1b) whether the player was ahead of the ball... (ta), and he was... 2) whether he is interfering - fortunately we don't need to get into the intricacies of that interpretation because he played the ball, so he was interfering 3) whether the ball was last played by a teammate - it wasn't, even before the rebound, therefore he wasn't offside. Had it hit a Bournemouth player, 3) would be different, and he would have been offside.

At the ground people were saying the lino already had his flag up before the clearance which bounced back to the Bournemouth player. This is tangibly cobblers, as the action immediately prior to the clearance was a Bournemouth throw-in, and everyone (I wish) knows you can't be offside from a throw-in. So what happened was the lino saw the Bournemouth scorer in an offside position, the ref clarified that the ball had last been played by a Saints player, and the goal stood. Crap though it was, it was definitely a legitimate goal, and both referee and his assistant did their jobs correctly. Unlike the penalty they should have had...

Actually I think we would be helped by an established Championship-level central midfielder who's currently out of favour at his club in on loan, if we can get one. As we identified in January, with the backlog of fixtures there was an increased chance of a central midfielder picking up a suspension for 10 yellow cards, and we're getting near the time when that could happen. Add in the injury to Schneiderlin and we're relying on Gobern to step up, which is the kind of hopefulness most other teams in this league have, and we don't really need to be affected by. But aside from that "emergency" additional centre midfielder to cover against us losing 2 starters, and a similar situation with the keeper, I think we're more than covered everywhere else. There's always the possibility one of the youth kids steps up or one of the existing players plays out of position, but why risk it if we don't have to ?

I know it's only the truth, and therefore has no place here, but the current England home white kit actually has a load of multicoloured crosses on the shoulders to represent exactly this multiculturalism. So well done, only 6 months late...

Any chance of the 6-3 ? The only link currently online is both foreign AND missing the disputed Ostenstad hat-trick goal.

He was trying to sort out the idiots who were booing him with most of those shots.

Mine are also blue. I can't believe there's a picture of a naked lady on them, hoho. I dare say it's a plot by Mitchell, or whatever his name is, to try and turn them into our real rivals - soon they'll be wearing blue, training in Eastleigh at some school's ground. refusing to pay for their players, selling their goalie to both Stoke and Spurs at the same time and pretending to win the FA Cup.

Lancashire was responsible for two of the worst pieces of play I've ever seen from any professional footballer last season away to Swindon. One step over dummy 10 yards from the halfway line under pressure from the striker which led to him accidentally stabbing the ball out for a corner (40 yards away). One unchallenged clearance with the ball on the floor, which went from the edge of the area to the 10th row of the stand near the halfway line without a hint of who it was originally intended for. In addition to that he was slow and got himself sent off too often, DESPITE having pros like Thomas and Perry around to give him a hand. Aaron Martin in contrast at least looks like he might be capable of stepping up. From the BBC highlights we had as many chances as we wanted, their keeper made some great saves. That doesn't say "excellent defensive performance" even if they did somehow keep a clean sheet.