Chez

you think relegation will bring change for the better? With a £112 wage bill, relegation is going to bring a financial meltdown...

funny, woeful displays like this normally see the thread filled with hundreds of `manager out' posts, yet today it seems to be the players who are at fault. Said it all season, this side lacks quality throughout and there is only so much a manager can do. That said, Hughes IMO has exposed our substandard centre halves by only playing two in front of them...

Will they leave Rose behind then, with Young and Bertrand selected? Personally I'd pick Bertrand to play the left centre back role and take all three toRussia especially as Young can fill gaps and Rose at his best is competent.

Out of interest, how many tickets do we get when we get to the final...yeah I know.

He's not as bad as some are making him to be on here. He has given our attack a focal point and he has won a fair bit in the air. The question remains though, does he have a strikers instinct? In some of the earlier games I thought he looked bright, but the chances didn't quite fall for him. In the last few he hasn't really got himself in the right positions. If he is a target man I expect him to be more of a force in the air when the ball goes in the box. I am assuming that there is a real talented goalscorer in there somewhere, otherwise we wouldn't have targeted him, but our desperate state and the fact he was probably a MoPo signing rings alarm bells. I am loathe to write him off. £20m is a shed load of money, not to mention the monstrous wage he is no doubt on, but if we are going to to hit the channels as we did on Sunday then we may as well play Long. I've watched John Marquis a fair bit at Donny over the last couple of seasons. He is about the same age as Carrillo. I have to say I don't see a great deal of difference between the two. The fact I've seen John score a few goals, all be it at league 2 and league 1 level, perhaps skews my opinion.

good assessment. the centre midfields and centre backs are very exposed and I am not sure either pairing is quite good enough to cope. Also if we are ti play two up top we are going to need a better return from them otherwise whats the point.

compared to the pitch at Elm Park in 92 it was an absolute carpet, but there were one or two huge bobbles, most notably one that their keeper did well to contend with in the first half. Overall though it wasn't that bad. I didn't see many miscontrols in the second half. Players just hd to be positive, which we were.

Just got back. Nearly 600 mile round trip and a very enjoyable one a that. Seemed to me that 4500 other Saints fans enjoyed it just as much too. The FA cup is far from dead. We love it. Best game since the Anfield Semi in terms of atmosphere. On the pitch we were absolutely woeful in the first half, with the move to 442 exposing several players (Boufal and Stevens especially), yet the crowd still got behind the players. We were lucky to come away unscathed to be honest, thanks largely to the ineptness of Roberts the useless Skate up front, but we were a completely different outfit in the second half. Sharp and with much more purpose. Taking Boufal off helped, but also Stevens getting a grip of his game too. I thought we controlled the game reasonably well when we went in front. Wigan tired, which certainly helped. I wonder if all those long ball down the channels turning them round caught up with them? Our direct play perhaps also didn't tire our players out as much also.

have you made trip across the Pennines yet? The trip up wasn't too bad, but a lot of snow in Sheffield this afternoon so wondered what journey across was and will be like.

Gary Roberts too. Skate.

I honestly couldn't give two hoots as to the outcome here as I don't watch sky or listen the pundits before during or at full time, but there was a very interesting article in When Saturday Comes last month that looked at the harsh punishments football fans get and the banning orders dished out by the courts (the article interviewed a judge and even he said at times the punishments were not proportional and that collusion between football clubs the CPS was wrong). I just wondered had this incident ever made its way to court, whether Carragher would face a football banning order if found guilty? All kinds of incidents occurring to and from grounds (often miles away from the game) tend to be considered as football hooliganism and the authorities seem to do everything they can to get extended bans that go way beyond the actual sentence. Not that I think its right, and it wont happen, but why shoudn't Carragher face similar punishment? Imagine Carragher getting a three year stadium ban, have to visit the local police station when Liverpool are playing and hand his passport in when England are away...

are there no replays?

Lets see how good these players really are. If Saturday's performance is anything to go by then we will need a messiah not just a returning Saint to save us. I wish Hughes well. He has a great first game in charge with a huge following ready and willing to roar the side on. It could be a genuine turning point for the season. Get a good win and their could be tremendous positivity in the air.

Interesting. I too thought he should have been in the frame for the job at that time, and last summer and now too. OK, so he is in a job, but who gives a ****? Call Derby. Ask to speak to him, see how the land lies. Absolutely no reason why he couldn't jump ship at this time. Absolutely no reason why he couldn't replicate the amazing job he did at Brum at our place.

Realistically, the couple of training sessions the new manager will have between now and the game aren't going to be enough to change our whole style of play. I just wonder if anyone will have a word in his ear about the possible need to change the formation?

his compensation would be bobbins, but I think having uprooted his family to Sweden many years ago and subsequently having built a great life out there, they may be reluctant to uproot again and leave it all behind.

I think they discovered the concourses were not suitable for 5500 all wanting a pee at half time, so had to reduce numbers. Maximum of 428 left as I just acquired my ticket. just hoping it wont be another Brammel Lane debacle, and we come out and compete for every ball.

National Lampoons, Weird Science and Uncle Buck were his work too.

For the third time, Gary Rowett.

so as expected it reaches general sale. I suspect it will sell out though, which is fantastic in the current climate. I think this shows that the FA cup still means a lot to Saints fans.

The idea that Gao will easily get his money back is nieve in my opinion. Our wage bill is somewhere between £70m and £110m depending what source you choose to believe, but the TV/prize money income is going to drop from roughly £100-£125m to just £30m (parachute payment is £91 over three years). That is a huge huge drop. I dare say there will be some players with contracts that will reduce should we be relegated, but even the cautious Lowe struggled to get to grips with the post relegation finances. Only selling Crouch kept the wolves from the door. I just wonder if Nik Nak and those that followed have been able to get 50% reduction clauses into all contracts? You only have to look at Sunderland paying Rodwell £70k a week to see that not all contracts include them. If we go down the value of players drops significantly. Clubs know you need to offload big wages. Te idea that we'd get £30m for Bertrand for example is folly. The idea that there will b a clamour to sign Forster is madness. Go down and we face a potential financial meltdown unless the club has been impeccably run over the last three years...

anyone that thinks JWP can play in a two man central midfield (and the team to function) is clueless IMO. It's what, 5 or 6 years since he made is debut and I've still to see him get close enough to an opponent to actually have any meaningful effect on his play.

Get to SMS and do it then. No?

Why on earth didn't we loan him until the end of the season with a view to buy? Madness. Madness.

Long massive dive. **** off. As I said earlier, everything is annoying me.