Ted Bates Statue

Best case scenario we pick up a draw plus a couple of wins against Palace and Fulham between now and the end of the season. After last night however, I would happily downgrade that target to a draw and a win against one of those two to scrape 40 points. Sadly my optimism is dwindling away. We may be safe now but this does not bode well for next season and at this rate, Hasenhuttl will be lucky to reach three years here. He has turned it around before so I very much hope he will do it again. Can she play in midfield ahead of Diallo or Jankewitz?

We will walk this European Super League

At the start of the season there was a thread on the expectations for the season, and 7th-12th or 8th-12th was the clear consensus then. Can't seem to find it but it would help a bit now, for perspective. That 12th place trophy is still within our grasp.

It doesn't look great, but not sure it tells the full story. For all the talent we've produced, we haven't exactly won many FA Youth Cups. As a club we tend to promote young players early so they're playing in much higher year groups. If we lost all our season's games for a youth side, but one graduate made it through to the first team and was able to contribute well, I'm not sure we'd be that bothered about the defeats. Unfortunately we're in a fallow period. What I'm wondering is when did that begin...? If academy players like JWP join at the age of 8, that would have been with us pre-administration, so have we actually produced anyone of note in the Liebherr era and beyond? Maybe the situation isn't just something we can blame on Reed/Jaidi/Dodd et al.

Kill two birds with one stone, get Rodgers in and destabilise Leicester like they did with us and Pochettino. You can see how highly they value the League Cup as an indicator. They clearly couldn't contemplate a future with Mourinho getting the sack with him claiming immortality as Tottenham's greatest manager since Juande Ramos.

Expunged from history in 1992 unfortunately! I thought the Champions League reforms were enough to destroy football on their own - 'wildcard' qualification so teams like Arsenal can finish 11th and still be guaranteed CL football. Suspect this is a power play and the closed shop will happen on the quiet anyway. Pleasantly surprised at the depth of feeling even from supporters of the 'big six'. Feels like they finally see the writing on the wall - it's an MK Dons moment en masse, although not sure how effective it will be if there are enough overseas 'fans' to fill the void.

We have a chance of winning that game. Therefore it doesn't count.

I'd agree with this except we should keep Forster in goal.

Expecting Comfortable Win My rule for following Saints these days is that you may only pick one of the above words to describe a match.

I could be wrong but I thought that the margin of defeat basically killed our confidence before the final began.

He's had his howler. Maybe if Leicester have a pen at the weekend he could just stay put as everyone hits it down the middle against him. Christ. We could be 5-0 down here.

Not to worry. We will get another chance to call for Hasenhuttl's sacking very soon. West Brom can still overtake us.

Like the seven sides they were unbeaten against before today? Like Everton? Like Leicester? Arsenal?

Yep, the noble folk of Chelseaweb will be asking serious questions of him. He's only as good as his last game, guys! On that note, "Poch out" is trending on twitter. Something to do with Jose Fonte's Lille (TM) going top of Ligue 1.

I think you're onto something, this must be why Ralph doesn't wear a suit any more.

Glad I'm not the only one who would prefer to discuss Saints v Leicester rather than debate endlessly whether something is racist or not. I think there is a ready-made thread in the Lounge sub-forum for that.

It just dawned on me that we could end up signing Walcott permanently as our supposed Ings replacement. It's like 2005 all over again.

Any team that considers their manager to be competent enough to keep on track for the absolute minimum requirement, i.e. stay in the top division - so that would be around 14 clubs in the PL who wouldn't react to isolated dreadful results in a knee-jerk fashion. I was going to cite Watford as a likely exception, but then again they only sacked Flores after losing against us, months after they lost 8-0 to Man City. Maybe I'm self-centred in my ignorance but I think the reason why nobody banged on about teams like them getting thumped is because they were shit for the whole season and they have a reputation for serially firing managers. On the other hand we get talked about because as a side Hasenhuttl has us capable of blowing hot and cold, as opposed to just cold.

Wigan have beaten Man City three times in the FA Cup in the last ten years - 2013, 2014 and 2018. I thought it was "only" twice. And only one of those times was as a PL side. The footballing gods must have a sense of humour when allocating bogey teams. I wish we were Wigan

It's getting there, think we have a couple more games to go before we reach those depths. The difference is that Hasenhuttl has shown he can get a tune out of this side, whereas Hughes never did. That's why we have the odd scenario of goodwill towards a manager having presided over two massive defeats. A defeat against Bournemouth would be a major turning point.

Had a quick look to double check. "He's not much better" apparently. To even consider comparing the two managers is insanity.

Hasenhuttl just as bad as Hughes, is this for real? Happy to revise my opinion of Puel but had to check the win percentages, as my memory of recent times must be very different to others: Puel: 37.74% Pellegrino: 23.53% Hughes: 18.52% Hasenhuttl: 37.25% So if the above is correct, Hasenhuttl could fail to win his next 98 matches and his win percentage would still be better than Hughes'. Feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Let's see them do it for the whole year. Prestige awaits before a plummet down the table

Yes, happy to eat my words over some of the garbage he signed that ended up alright. Perhaps he might be viewed a little more kindly on here had he not banged on about what a mastermind he was, only to disappear from view once results took a turn for the worse.

Les Reed