Alanh

I can't see how that would work. Clubs in all leagues need to be playing matches every week to maintain revenue from all sources. That wouldn't happen if knockout cup competitions were the main competitive football arranged. If the conclusion of this season delays the start of next season then next season has to be changed in some way and the most likely way to do that is to adapt or remove the cup competitions perhaps so that there are many fewer rounds.

Just been to Tesco which was fairly empty of produce but pretty full with customers given it was late morning on a Wednesday. Quite a few over 70's in there who seemed unconcerned with the advice regarding self isolation. It won't be long before we are in the same situation as other European countries where we are forced to be isolated and the police / army have powers to stop people in the streets.

VAR is fine for line decisions - essentially offsides, but for subjective decisions such as handball or serious foul play there is always going to be interpretation and therefore a sense of different decisions and potentially bias. The VAR will not be able to see every piece of action from the same set of camera angles so some similar actions (fouls, handballs) will be treated differently in different parts of the pitch as the camera shots will not always allow the VAR to see clearly what happened. The other factor is everyone - fans in the ground, viewers and players want the decisions made very quickly so there is always a time pressure in getting the right information to assist the ref on the pitch.

Djenepo's was a clear red and if the tackle had been on a Saints player everyone on here would rightly be demanding a red. I had a guy next to me in the Kingsland who was booing VAR because of the red and the penalty, but was then chanting for it when Bertie got clattered. No perspective some people.

Correct, Sunak's a puppet. He toed the line and parrotted the 'get Brexit done', 'Level up' catchphrases well enough during the election campaign to demonstrate that he is a nicely pliable character who will do exactly what he is told by Cummings. Remember - Fascism arrives as your friend.

I read that as saying there is no future transfer agreement in the loan deal. There's no reason why we can't try and negotiate a deal in the summer if we like the look of him over the remainder of the season.

What you describe sounds like a simple idea, but in practice when a side come to St Mary's and park the bus there is very little space in which to hit the channels, press hard and hassle their defence into a mistake. Far better IMO to try and get behind their fullbacks. When Djenepo came on against Palace we started to be able to do that and it transformed our attacking play.

IMO you can't keep it to feet exclusively. What if the player's head is offside, but his feet are on and he then scores with his head. Just check the parts of the body that were used by the player after the pass was made.

Then they are outside of the permitted tolerance and are judged offside. In my view the tolerance just facilitates a quicker decision because a thicker line can be drawn on the screen and it is easier to make the judgement with the naked eye.

The 10cm tolerance - effectively drawing a wider line on the freeze frame - would ease a lot of the frustration and speed things up a lot. I also think they should only focus on the part of the body that was used after the 'offside'. If the player only plays the ball after the pass with his feet, just check whether his feet were offside. If his head/shoulder was off, but wasn't used to control the ball before scoring then it shouldn't be given as offside.

He reminds me a bit of Michael Antonio when we had him in League 1. He was raw then but you could tell he had the physical attributes to work with. Obafemi could probably do with a season at a lower level to learn his craft a bit and develop a goalscoring habit.

Their new owner will be 'showering them with money' to cover the record losses and keep them going. They might not be in the Man City bracket but their owners are funding their spending as it is in excess of their income.

I think they should only judge the offside on the part of the body used after the pass is played. That way a the concept gaining an advantage is paramount. For example, if the players feet are onside when the pass is played and he only uses his feet after the pass then he should be onside.

In theory that works, but if we are at home against a team defending deep i.e. West Ham, the space to play the ball up front wide of the central defenders is very small. Imagine how difficult it would be to play the ball Redmond played into Long for our first goal on Saturday if the opposition are parking the bus. Our second goal on Saturday came from Bertrand running into space behind their full back and winning the corner that Stephens scored from. If the oppo are defending on their 18 yard line there is no space for Bertie to make that run. Its fundamentally more effective, with the players we currently have, to play Ralph's way away from home. Just means we have to find an alternative way to be effective at home.

We are set up as a counterattacking team. That's the way Ralph plays, so he doesn't want his teams to retain possession for the sake of it and prefers a quick break. This is more achievable away from home, where the home team generally have to attack to satisfy their fans, and we can hit them on the counter. In contrast, our home games see teams sit back and do the same to us - West Ham being a great example - while we struggle to do anything with the extra possession that we have and the lack of space to counterattack into while the opposition sits deep. I don't think this will change much until we can buy a midfielder who can break the lines and carry the ball through an opposition midfield and defence.

I run a business that gets orders through an online booking system. There are two fees to pay for running that system. One is for the system which captures the data and processes the order (ultimately that is what delivers the ticket in whatever form). The second is the cost of processing a secure financial transaction. The system that I chose to use comes at a cost of approx 3.7% of the transaction cost. I have no idea what costs Saints are incurring but if it's similar then selling a £40 match ticket could cost more than the £1.25 that they are charging.

It's the cost of running the booking system / processing the payment. Saints are being relatively transparent, and probably helping in their accounting, by adding a booking fee to each transaction. They could wrap it up into the ticket price as many companies do but they won't be making any significant profit on it.

IMO the problem Liverpool have versus City is they have an additional rival club to play twice a season - Man U and Everton. The vitriol in those four matches means that often form and quality go out of the window resulting in less predictable results. City only really have any sort of rivalry with Utd and even then I don't think it creates the same sort of impassioned derbies that Liverpool encounter four times a season.

Agreed, he would fit our system perfectly, as would King, Brooks and Fraser. Have to coach them not to fall over at the merest contact though.

https://southamptonfc.com/news/2019-04-10/season-tickets-information-and-on-sale-southampton-football-club-201819

Curious article. Looks like a lot of speculation along the lines of should he stay or go, apart from the line about RH wanting Sam in the first team. Perhaps that means in the squad, with a view to proving himself worthy of a place in the matchday 18. I think RH has done enough for the fans to trust that he knows when a young player should be given a chance.

Oh yes, I agree with both of your comments, but when you are presented with a challenge like the one that Palace set us last night you have to try something. At least RH was brave enough to change the shape and put an extra attacking player on. I can't see him starting with 2 CBs until he finds a paring that he is confident with either from the current group or by buying new. An upgrade at LWB comes when Bertrand returns. I'd like us to buy in an upgrade at RWB today, but if that's not possible then it's got to be a priority in the summer.

Roy got his tactics right pretty much throughout and we couldn't find a way past the way they were set up. We rode our luck a few times losing possession when we were looking for the right forward pass, but I would rather see us try to find the passes than revert to the negative play we saw under Puel and MoPe where we just passed it back and forth across the back line. Palace were organised and their full backs (with support from midfielders) managed to nullify our wingbacks. This made it impossible to set up the sort of pass and move plays involving Redmond and Targett which we have been successful with recently. They were happy for our CBs to have the ball fairly safe in the knowledge that all of the dangerous passes were blocked off by man marking our attacking threats out of the game. We will face this sort of defensive performance again and need a strategy to counter it. That probably means using 4 at the back to release another player further forward and in the summer bringing in players who can offer us alternative options - a bit more pace, power and creativity.

I disagree. I don't think it's beyond our means to structure a deal for the transfer fee for the main targets we re being linked to. I think that shifting the players on high wages who are still here (i.e.Foster) or out on loan is the top priority, but not just to bring in transfer funds, rather to ensure that the wage bill doesn't cripple us if we can't sell them.

We might not be the richest club in the league, but I don't think funds is the key concern.It's about having so many players out on loan who we are still paying a percentage of their salary. If we can shift them permanently for a fee that obviously puts funds in the pot and reduces the salary bill, but also means we know that they won't be back again in June posing a problem for us in terms of squad places.