Alanh

He's a moneyball signing. His stats for defensive work like ball recovery and tackles in opposition half are up there with the best in the league. He's got great credentials in terms of what he does when his side don't have the ball, but we know that he isn't the best in terms of ceativity or using the ball when he has it. If a manager believes that his side needs to improve on the defensive side then PEH is a good option. I think that's why he massively appeals to Everton, who need to be better in that area. I guess for Spurs he is a replacement for the likes of Dier (now that he is a centre back) and Wanyama, although I still think Sissoko does the job better for them than PEH would.

Understandable performance given how many changes were made. Hopefully we can put out full strength teams in the remaining matches. The big learnings are that we have little strength in depth ourside the current first 11. Injuries to Djenepo and Boufal aren't helping and the youth players are still learning - Obafemi, Smallbone and Vokins - so will be inconsistent and may find the game passes them by sometimes, but they will develop with more game time. Obafemi reminds me of Antonio when he was with us - powerful but lacking ball control. If he develops as Antonio has we will have a great player in a few years. Vestergaard and Hoj looked rusty as they have had relatively little game time and Hoj was playing out of position. Perhaps it would have been better to swap him and JWP during the first half. Not surprising that we played like strangers in the first half as there were so many changes. Also Romeu's yellow would have clipped his wings a bit so we weren't as effective in the middle of the field. Excellent turnaround in the second half. Every part of the team seemed to benefit from the changes, not just the positions that the new players took up. Again that shows how important our settled first 11 is.

Decent game of football. Momentum swung from one team to the other throughout. Fair result really. A couple more wins are possible this season. Neville said we could do with a bit more quality in the final third and that was all that we were missing tonight for the win.

Perhaps it's a perk of being a Subscribed user, which both you and Cumbria Saint are, and which neither I nor alehouseboys are.

The new site is great. The instructions above work well on Chrome on my desktop PC. Any idea why the circle or star to the left of the thread heading isn't showing up when I view on the forum on my mobile or tablet - Both using Android Chrome?

The death rate is as low as it is because the lockdown measures have suppressed transmission (the R number) to between 0.5 and 1 so the NHS has capacity to treat the sick who need it. Without lockdown, the transmission rate would have been nearer 2.5 to 3 (according to early estimates) and then the NHS would have been swamped and unable to cope. The point of the lockdown is primarily to protect the NHS so that as many people who need treatment can get it.

I am pretty sure davefoggy is on a wind up. He's deliberately sticking to the simple - let's go back to normal - line without any recognition of any other issues. Either that or he's very simplistic in his outlook on life and incapable of seeing the bigger picture.

If you are missing it, there is an ePL FIFA tournament being broadcast on the BBC and Michael Obafemi is playing Tony Bellew now. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/football/52504381

Forster - He'd fill a 5 a side goal and has been a decent shot stopper. Fonte - Can play a pass and make a block Lallana - Tricks and flicks JWP - Energy and dead ball stuff Lambert - Great first touch and knows where the goal is.

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.