mikec

It might be Saturday lunchtime anyway. That's when it was last time we played them in the cup.

His year in charge of the first team may not have been a massive success but it did include the famous 3-1 "grey shirts" win against Man Utd. He also turned up to manage that vital last-day 0-0 against Wimbledon that kept us up (just) while his wife was seriously ill in hospital.

Yes I remember being at that match as well. I've just looked it up in "In That Number" and it was actually 3-1 we came back from (0-1 Wark, 1-1 Keegan pen, 1-2 Wark, 1-3 Mariner, 2-3 Armstrong, 3-3 Moran, 4-3 Armstrong). Bobby Robson is quoted as saying he had "never been madder with my team in 10 years". Ipwich went on to finish 2nd that season (1981-82) with Saints 7th.

Do you mean kilometers rather than miles? Freedom-tour.com shows it as 960 km (597 miles) driving distance. Admittedly that would still have been a fair way in those days. I've just noticed the earlier posting where the seller claims the tour was in 1910 so perhaps it was a different tour anyway (assuming what he says is true).

I'm the proud owner of a copy of "The Alphabet of the Saints", a book that Duncan co-authored with Gary Chalk which contains profiles and some photos of all players that had played for Saints up until it was written in 1992. Scanning through looking for players from that era I came across this for Arthur Hughes (forward 1908-09). "...signed for the Saints in the summer of 1908 to act as cover for George Smith but, within a few weeks, Smith was to die tragically and Arthur took his place on a pre-season European tour. A series of outstanding games including a hat-trick against The Hague ..." I know that The Hague is in the Netherlands which is not Scandanavia but it would seem quite likely that they may also have included Scandanavia on their tour. Looking at the photos it's possible that George Smith (the one who died!) is the person shown on the badge in the centre of the back row but I can't be sure. The player with the moustache could be John Bainbridge (forward 1907-10) but again, it's hard to be certain. Of course, none of this proves whether the badge is genuine or not.

Almost right. According "In That Number" the first was by Kelly after 81 mins and the second from Sharpe at 89 mins.

Following up on the option to "lay" Leeds, the Betfair odds for that are currently 1.96. I think this means you would be betting on Saints to win OR draw at odds of around Evens (allowing for Betfair commission).

If you had bet on Saints to win the cup overall, the bookies would pay out. If you had specifically bet on the result of the final you would lose. As others have said, it's the result after 90 minutes that usually counts for betting purposes.

He got that wrong then. As you say it's only 1 leg against Norwich. If we win that we are not at Wembley yet. We would then play the winners of Hereford/MK Dons for the Southern final and that IS over 2 legs. If we win that (as we should), we then play the winners of the Northern final at Wembley.

Also if we beat Leeds 8-0 it would finally be revenge for that match in the 70s when Leeds under Don Revie beat us 7-0. It might even stop the BBC always showing that clip where the Leeds players just pass it around for about 10 minutes without us getting a touch which seems to be the standard "look how good Leeds were in the 70s" clip.

Only watched it from half-time but I thought Leeds were very poor, especially after Kettering equalised. Loads of mis-hit passes and no real ideas up front. They only ran away with it once the non-leaguers tired towards the end of extra time. Having said that, I don't suppose that game can be typical of their play this season, otherwise they would not be where they are in the league. Should be a good game week Saturday.

For comparison, our first 10 games under Strachen: Ipswich (h).....D 3-3 Fulham (a)......L 1-2 Blackburn (h)...L 1-2 Derby (a)........L 0-1 Charlton (h)....W 1-0 Everton (a).....L 0-2 Leicester (a)...W 4-0 Sunderland (h).W 2-0 Man Utd (a).....L 1-6 Spurs (h)........W 1-0

I think the only penalty shoot-out that England have ever won was against Spain in Euro 96 (in the quarter finals - before losing on pens to Germany in the semis). Venables was in charge at that time.

According to http://itv.stats.football365.com/dom/ENG/D2/attend.html our average league attendance so far this season is 20012 - the 3rd best in league 1 behind Norwich and Leeds. 10 Championship and 18 Premiership clubs (Pompey and Wigan being the exceptions) have a higher average. So by that measure we are the 31st biggest club.

You can watch the goals at http://www.itv.com/sport/football/news/facup/manualstories/videowatchfacupsecondroundgoals3726/default.html Click on the link for our game. This being ITV, you need to sit through a couple of ads before the highlights start.

There's been plenty of entertainment anyway. Apart from the 2-1 JPT win over Charlton, all of our last 12 games have had 4 goals or more. Don't the bookies usually offer an over/under 2.5 goals market? You could have won quite a lot backing "over" in Saints' games recently.

I doubt if there'll be anything for tonight but I see that Saturday's cup game against Northampton is being televised by the same SportKlub channels that showed the previous round vs Bristol Rovers so there may be some streams for that.

Am I right in thinking they are allowed to re-take it if the ball never actually crossed the touchline? In this case I'm pretty sure it did (although I was sat in the opposite corner so can't be 100%)

Did we not play Cardiff (or Swansea or Wrexham) before that?

I think it was Davies that scored in the 1-0 folowing the 6-3. Beattie did get the goal in another 1-0 win over Man Utd but that was much later at St Mary's (last minute winner).

But even if there had been no chance of them being relegated, the penalty would still have applied last year. It only gets carried over if the team finishes in the relegation zone without the penalty (eg Saints last year).

According to liveonsat.com, the game is being shown on a Polish and Romanian channel called SportKlub so I suppose there may be some streams available.

Great article! Can't argue with a top 4 of Davies, Paine, Davies, Le Tissier and Channon, although personally I would still have put Le Tiss at number 1 (and I am in my 50s). The McMenemy era rightly dominates the upper part of the list. Not sure that I would rate Steve Williams as high as 5th though - he had some great days but could also be a bit inconsistent. Armstrong at 9 is possibly a bit generous - higher than Case and Keegan at 13. I think Sydenham and Chivers deserve to be a bit higher than 22/23. Thanks for the link.

My first ever game as a 7 year old was a reserves match at the Dell vs West Ham in 1967 which we lost 2-1. Thanks to "In That Number" I found out that Norman Dean was the scorer of the Saints goal. It must have been towards the end of his career as he seems to have spent most of the season in the reserves, but as the scorer of my first ever Saints goal he's a legend for me as well!

I think the point is you need to look at how many points the team in 6th would need to get so that they would STILL be 6th. If the team in 7th got 70 points and the team in 6th got 75 points, then you could say that 71 points would have been sufficent for the 6th place team to get a play-off spot. The fact that they actually got more than that is irrelevant. It comes down to whether you are looking at it by inserting Saints into an already completed league table of 24 teams (your approach), or whether you consider it as a league that already includes Saints as a potential 6th place finisher (NickG's approach). Not sure if this makes any sense but I know what I mean