John Boy Saint

As mentioned before I have a friend who blew his chance at being a pro footballer, his hobby and main source of income is betting and his observation of the game is impressive. He stumbled on Ralph at Leipzig by chance and made quite a bit of money on their games but worked out the games to avoid, games like last night would have been one of them. I could see why. Pelligrini has them drilled how he had City drilled the big difference is West Ham players don’t have the money no object finesse that he had with City, but he knows how to work with what he has, he has a winning pedigree he would never have got the job at City if he didn’t. The players he has certainly ain’t pretty but as we saw last night they are effective playing under him. Last night we ended up with 2 teams one drilled and settled against a team under a new regime playing a new style under with different disciplines, if reports about our training under Hughes were true then the Christmas schedule would be doing us no favours with the added intensity the team would now be playing. In the past West Ham would have hoofed the ball over Ralph’s system for players like Antonio to chase. Last night they bambozled us with their liquid midfield formation, using the width of the pitch and pretty much bulldozed us to suit them. With us still learning a different style of playing when that style wasn’t working we just resorted to our default setting for about the last season and a half, which as we witnessed is fairly inert. Which against their monsters at CB and our Kryptonite between the sticks Fabianski (as my mate alongside me said he can’t recall him ever having a bad game against us) we were pretty much piddling into the wind. All that said I certainly didn’t walk away from SMS as disappointed as I have after a defeat before Ralph rocked up. Pretty miffed at the officials though, which was perfectly summed up by my little donkey entering the fray flattening Oriel then kicking him when the ball was gone with no punishment, the ref spoke to him at least 4 times, yet from my seat he flattens Bednarek, seemingly in my view, from behind and Jan instantly gets a yellow for, I guess, the rare offence of impeding. Let’s get these last 2 Christmas games and the cup done and dusted and knuckle down to the ways of Ralph if we have enough petrol in the tank City and Chelsea might be better games for us as both will try to pass trough us, rather than bulldoze us like West Ham.

I watched that then ended up watching another hour or so of Saints highlights in the videos that followed

Partial to a Bullseye myself - blame my Granny for that cheeky little number - when you make the 3rd you know full well you’ve probably drunk enough!

But Shaqiri is only appearing a £12m bargain due to the players he has been blended with at Liverpool. If we bought him he would have probably been an upgrade on Redmond in that he would have goals in his boots and the bloody mindedness to go past folks instead of slowing down to think about doing so. If you watched him in the game at SMS last season he persistently moaned at just about every team mate for not being on his wavelength, which was for much of the game. Maybe he would have worked well with Ings and Austin both being natural predators. At the end of the day the bloke has gone from a relegated Premier League club to Liverpool without having to step on the Southampton stone along the way.

Need to remember the first Rule of Holes: when you are in one stop digging. ..........probably time to ease up on the Snowballs too!!

Norwich v Forest just as bonkers as the Leeds game at the death, Forest 3 - 1 up cruising into 7 mins of added time, final whistle Carrow Road going mental 3-3 ............those kind of games you go home feeling like you won.........flipside Forest fans will feel like they have been hammered 10-0

Wow - Leeds v Blackburn what a ding dong! 1-2 down in the last knockings of the game Bang Bang 3-2!

Alas not anymore - absolute shocker from the Fulham keeper I was actually nodding off watching this game until 14 minutes ago

Craig Pawson on the whistle for this one - think he’s one of those who will allow a bit of physical contact ride without being to whistle happy.

Merry Christmas folks

Showing my age - Bolton Wanderers were for quite a while.

Given the amount of money Everton have squirted up the wall on players recently, getting spanked 6-2 at home is quite amusing and pretty damning.

Secondedddddddd. You also have to sprinkle in that, with us now playing in a remarkably more cohesive progressive style as a team, how much does our superior performance make Huddersfield performance look worse than it might have looked a month ago. Last Sunday sitting in the stand at SMS v Arsenal with my full view of the pitch, 10 minutes in I did think “blimey can we keep this up for another 80 minutes”. Even before Austin had wrapped the game up Arsenal didn’t look like a team that was on a 22 game unbeaten run, after a week and a bit of the players buying into the Ralph philosophy the overall Saints performance made Arsenal look nothing special. Back to yesterday - I will readily admit that for quite a while I have thought Redmond, more often than not, to be a waste of space. Yesterday he looked like the player we hoped he would become when he first turned up, it’s like he has been let off the leash, had the lead taken out of his boots and Steak is for diner if he is good. The boy was electric yesterday (crikey did I just type that) wonder if Pep will be having another chat with him next Sunday afternoon.

What’s also good to see is an upbeat Dalek- Merry Christmas Sir!

Redmond wrapped that ball to Obafemi up in nice paper with a bow

Shaped to go right rifled it left fooled both Bernarek and McCarthy

Great pass great finish and NO fannying about.

That second one was no surprise really after those clowns somewhere else had the same song with the flowerpot. At the same time, as anyone who was there will testify, that game had descended into a bit of a dull affair on the pitch as we were 5 or 6 nil up at the time and coasting to the point where 2 players at a time could have taken turns to sit down on the bench to relax for a couple of minutes. Being positioned not too far from where it was dragging on, it did give some relief from the woman in the row behind me letting everyone know which Saints player was on the ball, and she was on first name terms with each and every one of them.................well all except Oriol Romeu: bloomin foreigners with their fandangled names!

I can remember Leeds at the Dell late 70's someone amongst them brought a family selection pack of Fireworks with them and were letting them off towards the Saints fans in the next pen.............. Leeds scored a goal and a couple of their psycho fans obviously cheered in the middle of the Archers this bloody great big hole appeared in the people with 2 blokes stood like an island in the middle then the hole closed it was like a Windmill convention. Silly Buggers

but rarely go off the rails

Could never work out why we didnt give him a spin when we came up, the guy is a penalty box predator even now.

We had our own numptie living in the Chapel on Sunday afternoon!!!!! After Austin had scored and the air had filled up with paper clackers, some bellend decided that wasn’t enough and somewhere in their pin sized brain the solitary brain cell sparked into life with the dumb idea to launch a partially full water bottle from the rows in the upper letters of the alphabet at the already annoyed Arsenal Goalie.....Why??!! Thankfully it missed and he ignored it aside from kicking it into the advertising board with gusto. So if you are treated like a criminal next Thursday upon entering SMS you have some **** in the Chapel to thank!

You forgot to add the audacious bit. You can’t beat the Sensational(ist) Current Bun

Les Reed on Sky Sports The Debate tonight. 10pm

Everytime someone mentions Branfoot I can't stop thinking about being sat at Wembley for the Zenith Data Systems Cup Final (remember that little tournament to replace European nights after Liverpool fans managed to get us banned from Europe). There were 2 chaps sat in front of us, one was obviously along with his mate as he had a spare ticket, the Saints team was being read out big cheers followed each name, chap says to his mate as the players were done "just listen to this"......... PA "And the Southampton manager is Ian Branfoot!" Wow the Boo's were immense!