Lazlo78

In the words of Offspring: "you gotta keep 'em separated" Btw: are cats+nuns called nats or cu... ah never mind...

Nuns and aliens, people. Nuns and aliens...

What if the question was - would you like for NA to give Puncheon another chance? We can easily agree that it's not worth discussing as long as NA (allegedly) does not want JP here, but what if they buried the hatchet - could JP add something to the team? Would the fans accept him back? etc..

Plus the whole "working routines" is my not-too-accurate translation of a Danish expression.

As I translated the piece I was quite struggling with the notion of "working routines" as I see it as the central term of the whole article. And maybe a starting point for a little NC-bashing? ;-D (not trying to misinterpret your post though!)

As some may remember I posted a thread in May 2011 about Jacob Friis-Hansen being appointed Director of European Recruitment at SFC. Since then there have been no official news of the appointment and some confusion reigned over whether he had actually been appointed or not. The news originally came from Danish footy side bold.dk (http://www.bold.dk/nyt/Friis-Hansen-skal-hjaelpe-Saints-i-PrL) and two days ago I wrote the journalist and asked for an update. He replied that by coincidence he was planning to call Friis-Hansen in the near future and promised an update. And today it came: http://www.bold.dk/nyt/Friis-Hansen-stoppet-i-Southampton Friis-Hansen is no longer at Southampton Having been apployed for 5 months, former national team player Jakob Friis-Hansen is no longer Director of European Recruitment at the Championship club Southampton. South coast Championship club Southampton hired Jakob Friis-Hansen as Director of European Recruitment in May. He only held the position for five months, before both parties agreed to end to cooperation. - I am not at Southampton anymore. I helped them get a good start but we couldn't agree on working procedures, so we decided to split up, Friis-Hansen tells bold.dk Friis-Hansen who previously scouted for Liverpool, now works as a pundit on tv, but he has another job lined up. - I'm close to landing another job but I have to keep my cards to myself for now, Friis-Hansen adds. Southampton were relegated from the Premier League in 2005 after 27 years in the finest league and after two relegations they ended up in League One. Now they are coming back stronger. As a newly promoted team Saints are topping the Championship table after more than half of the season has been played.

バスで得る

D'Urso is as incompetent and inconsistent as they come and it was a real travesty that we had him referee this particular match knowing how Gus likes his team to play. That said, I'd like to comment on 3 of the 4 incidents you mention (I couldn't see the pen incident in the highlights?!) I'm not sure if you are bordering on the common misconception that as long as you even fractionally touch the ball you are allowed to do anything to the opponent (as in "Yes, you touched the ball but you also broke the other guys leg in three places"). Hardings challenge was too dangerous even though he did go for the ball. He carried too much momentum when sweeping towards CMS' legs - even though CMS over-reacted the yellow card could certainly be defended. Great to see Adkins pull him off when Wenger couldn't do the same for Djourou even though he later admitted that he saw it coming (and blamed Fulham for provoking it)! Seeing the highlights from the Saints player it's inconclusive to me whether the ball crossed the line or not - simply too few frames in that lo-fi video to see how far in the ball went before getting cleared. Does anyone have any other video or picture to judge by? My gut feeling is 75% chance it was in... This incident I was quite surprised with having read various comments on here. They tangle, get annoyed with each other and fall to the ground. I don't see how El-Abd should have not fallen on Rickie and I don't see how he could have gotten off him any quicker. Again he made a meal of the push, but it was a hard push to the face and the red was IMHO deserved. 100% Rickies fault - there was nothing serious in the incident and he could have pushed El-Abd anywhere but the face and gotten away with it! I just don't get it... All in all, I think we would have won (or at least drawn) with 11 players, but I don't think it was D'Ursos fault that we lost...

Oh no, it's Hooiveld mk.II! Comes from a crap league and we don't know anything about him. This is bound to turn out as badly as the whole Hooiveld fiasco - that useless Celtic reject :-( Hmmm wait up...

Haven't had the guts to read anything in here post defeat so apologies if this has been covered elsewhere. On a night of few positives I'd like to point out one that was made apparent during the Fulham-Arsenal game. Djourou was on a yellow, struggling with some sort of groin injury and his team was generally under a lot of pressure - Wenger takes off Walcott instead and rather predictably Djourou goes on to get his second yellow, Arsenal concedes two and Wenger blames the ref for losing them the game. I really appreciate that Adkins was able to take immediate action when Harding was in a somewhat similar situation and get him off the pitch. No need to just stand and wait for an accident to happen! I take that as a positive and lord knows they are hard enough to find at the moment

"Ah, that puta Xavi always passing sideways! Come on, punt it you idjit!"

If we had hung on to this Hassli guy, we would be playing champions league by now. Lowe out! I have spent a few minutes silently weeping over this issue every day since 2002 and it has really affected my support of this otherwise fine club.

Oh noes, it looks like West Ham are giving us a run for that 17th place in the league. Boro came so close to winning the title yesterday, but that late equaliser has condemned them to midtable obscurity at the end of the season. Tough luck!

Feck...

He's such a Saganowski... plays well to get a new contract and suddenly he's injured... Pah!

Jordan Sibley answers a question about the legitimacy of Guly's twitter account: @hellssfc: @jordansibley is @gu11guly real? @jordansibley: Yep, and I bet his English will be better on here than when I ask him to speak to press!! Sneaky b*stard that Guly

Very inspired - I lol'ed several times

Great to hear! Would certainly like to hear updates about "The Ninja" every now and then...

We're never going to agree whether he is great or crap - but a healthy debate never harmed anyone. That said I fail to see how contributions like "he's a crap footballer" or "he's just lazy" adds much. Adkins sees the matches too (and even has the luxury of seeing Guly in training and knowing what job he is supposed to do during games!), so I find it hard to accept that Guly is just a lazy no-good footballer. So maybe we could be a little more constructive or illustrative when discussing him? In some ways he is the opposite of a player like Scott Parker who (like Chaplow) brings energy and aggression (and other plus-words: drive, commitment etc.) whereas Guly's contribution is more difficult to see and understand. Parker makes a lot of ball-winning tackles and often goes for the simple, short pass to the nearest team mate. That's his job; stress the opponent, win the ball, deliver it at the feet of a team mate with better passing skills, in a better position, with license to roam etc. Guly is one of those players that Parker would pass the ball to and expect to deliver something "creative". He would probably make an excellent playmaker linking up midfield and strikers, but that sort of position seems to have left modern football with the rising prominence of the 4-5-1. When he is played as a winger, some of his weaknesses are exploited, as he doesn't threat the fullbacks like for instance de Ridder and he leaves a lot of the defending for his team mates behind him. He is no clear cut striker either, as he is not a big, strong player like Lambert, a nippy Defoe-type or even a predator like Connolly. But in both positions he has managed to add something to the team. When played as a winger he is able to work in tight spaces and always makes himself available to the defenders. When played as a striker he's linking up well with players around him though he can be a little light-weight when we are defending. His heading is surprisingly good and he times his runs very well. To me the crucial question is: is his link-up play good? Does he help the midfield get the ball forward, does he set up his team mates for goal-scoring chances? My views are based on whatever material has been available online - mostly from live streaming and SaintsPlayer. What are the views of those who see him live? And no, "he's useless" wont do... (cue loads of one-liners...)

This is my debut with Storify - for your viewing pleasure: http://storify.com/lazlo78/square-head-competition

It's primarily for the fans. It was started as banter by Chaplow and then Hooiveld picked up and made it into a competition. You don't need to be signed up to Twitter to follow the search for the competition hashtag to see the many wonderful entries - loads of great ones! http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23squareheadcompetition Player/fan-interaction at it's very finest and initiated from the bottom up - cool!

Ok, to be honest I didn't check if he had been playing - I was just hoping he was someone important to them

Oh, Brighton's just lost another player: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/16266885.stm

Never realised we are playing them so soon and that the sending offs would have any consequences for us. Sweet!

Still a great read - thanks!