verlaine1979

His first touch and passing in the game were very good. Particularly the first-time lay-off in the run up to Redmond's second shot into the side-netting. Almost Tadic-esque.

Yes, and I'd imagine none of those occasions are the same or equivalent to an anonymous internet forum. I pray that whatever business you're in, its success is independent of your ability to parse meaning and context.

Always found the cap-doffing insistence of some on here referring to him as 'Mr. Cortese' really f-ing weird.

Thought Sims did really well. Knew he was quick, but didn't realise he had such a deft touch. The first time pass in the build up to the second chance Redmond put into the side-netting was Tadic-esque, and there were a couple of other instances where his control and passing were a cut above what we've seen in attack most of the season.

We're slow, weak and look incapable of stringing more than two passes together at a time. Not seen us play much worse this year.

Yoshida's back foot was playing him on.

To be fair, they should be two up with a decent penalty shout and a marginal offside inside 15 minutes, while we're yet to muster an attack worthy of the name.

The one at the top is a success story, the others are - at best - inferior to the players they replaced, with the probable exception of Gunn.

Fantastic goal. So glad it stood - none of the angles conclusively proved that a mistake had been made, so they had to let it stand. But I'm still surprised Real didn't get the benefit of the doubt.

He isn't faster than most defenders. Put Redmond up against most decent fullbacks (which is who'd usually end up marking him in this tactic) and Redmond would get smoked over the twenty or thirty yards of a breakaway. He's got a decent burst, but his topline speed is low.

He's doing okay; defends decently but you can see he lacks conviction going forward. When things go right and he manages to get past his man, it usually has a whiff of good fortune about it, rather than because he knew what he was doing. Moreover, despite having pretty quick feet, he hasn't really figured out how to feint to get a yard to put in a cross yet, with the result that 9/10 are easily blocked by the first man.

Redmond's flat out pace is pretty average - he gets reeled in pretty easily when we're on the break.

Bednarek, Hoj and Romeu all put in great performances - JWP motm though.

Bednarek really does get more than his fair share of blocks, doesn't he?

Stephens trying to take us down single-handed.

Eh, you don't think an additional £35m a year on top of our regular income would make a meaningful difference to the squad? Our record signing is only £18m.

You don't understand how FFP works then. Owners can inject up to £105m over three seasons as long as they convert the debt to equity.

As owner, she'd also have been entitled to surrender our place in the league, wind up the club and bulldoze the stadium. Would you have been just as sanguine if she'd done that?

A house isn't a community asset though. That's (presumably) part of the reason why the league have ownership tests - because football clubs aren't just fungible goods that can be traded back and forth without consequences - if bad stewardship results in the collapse of a club then the whole community suffers.

Eh, this sounds like dubious gossip. The wisdom of ML buying Saints was in the fact that he managed to pick up a team with a PL standard infrastructure and academy for about £15m or thereabouts. An investment entirely vindicated when his daughter sold the club at a valuation of just under £300m less than a decade later.

No, nothing illegal about a debt-financing. It's what the Glazer's did to United.

Eh, I don't buy this reasoning at all. Lander aren't a general real-estate development company, and Gao doesn't seem to have any significant business interest outside Lander and his ownership of Saints (and Lander's value has collapsed over the past few years, making a simultaneous international expansion AND a broadening in their commercial focus quite a stretch - not to mention Gao has sold off the majority of his Lander holdings in the last few months anyway). I think it far more likely that buying the club was a way to transfer wealth to a more liberal regulatory environment. Acquire the club with money borrowed from outside PRC, and either sell it in a few years for a profit or use the club's own ever-increasing revenues to pay off the debt, and one way or another you have moved over £200m out from under the nose of the Chinese government.

Apparently reducing the size of the squad was a critical action that we had to take in January so RH would have a smaller pool of players to focus on. But is there a reason you can't just send players who aren't in contention to train with the reserve/U23 squad? Do players now have it written into their contracts that they can't be demoted like that? It would seem a more judicious course of action when your main striker is highly injury prone and your now first-choice right back is a teenager. (Obviously this doesn't address our (apparent) need to save on a few months of wages, but that's not the line the club took in January anyway).

Tell that to our penniless Chinese owner.

I suspect RH was told Gabbi wouldn't be staying when he joined, as he was one of very few saleable assets in the squad. We kept Long because we had to.