John Boy Saint

They provided a bit of amusement for Mrs JBS and myself as we reviewed our traipsing round Prague before nodding off to sleep, friends who we were with the chap photographed every chuffing one I pointed out. I thought it would be a one (or two) off: nope every bloody one Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz Keep it up lads, because you will be making one bloke very happy............. much to the embarrassment of his other half.

Trouble is it's hard to see past a ref who has openly said not too long ago, if one teams fans are getting on his back that will have an influence on his decision making in favour of the other side. There is no doubt that being a ref in the Premier League ain't an easy, due to the pace of play, then you add in that some of these refs are in their 40's and upwards, Neil Swarbrick is 51 (at 52 I would love to be fit enough to keep up with Redmond, Rashford, Long for 90+ minutes). Heard Dermot Gallagher say he knew it was time to hang up his whistle after a Villa v Man U game, Christiano Ronaldo had the ball and was off on his bike towards the Villa box, the attack broke down and the ball fell to Agbonglahor and he was off towards the Man U box, Gallagher joked that when Ronaldo set off it was 4:25 when he eventually caught up with Agbonglahor up the other end of the pitch it was 4:40: he decided then that he was verging on doing the game and himself a disservice. But back to Clatters, only recently when we played Liverpool in the league he delivered the most bizarre, and some might say blatantly biased decision against us, Liverpool had defended their box and the ball was in a break away position for Liverpool, just outside their box, one of our players had "fouled" a Liverpool player and the ball had broken to another Liverpool player, Clattenburg signaled an advantage, and the ball was worked up to Manė in our box closing in on the 6 yard box, Manė showed just enough of the ball to Virgil for it to be cleared into the stands. At which point Clattenburg blew his whistle and brought the ball all the way back for a Liverpool free kick just outside our box......... yes I view the game through Red & White tinted spectacles but if that game had been live on BT sport even Howard Webb would have struggled to defend that decision. All refs like all people have their faults, but when you have a ref who statistically is not in favour of your team when they are supposed to be totally impartial then it is hard to defend him. Put him into a European game or International Tournement and without doubt he is a very accomplished referee because he has no bias to give, in his own league though he exhibits some stinkers: especially in our direction.

Always think of this as his personal theme tune............. often shared with Mike Dean.

If I recall correctly, despite some of his decisions leaving you scratching your head, Jon Moss is actually one of the top refs for us.

Sadly Chez it ain't, we have been to away games where my 5'2" Wife seems to get the 6' plus bloke who chooses not only to stand up (no problem with that at an away) but in old grounds where the seats are on a slight step up from where your feet go he decides to stand on this slightly higher step totally oblivious to who is behind him and despite already having a perfect view. Also if you had been in Milan and seen the behaviour of some beered up Saints fans who bundled up the stairs then could not give a flying fk for Saints fans who had taken up their position earlier on the front row behind the railings and promptly stood in front of them at the rail, then got all borishly snarly nasty at anyone questioning their down right pig ignorance, then this kind of thing would hardly be a surprise.

A couple of seasons ago West Ham wheeled my little Donkey out against us and he was up against Yoshida, Maya had him under control the whole time to the point where Carroll was trying to knobble him by giving him a shove whilst airborne making out he was jumping to challenge for the ball, because Yoshida was winning every aerial ball, on the last occasion Maya had twigged his game plan and took half a step away Carroll pretty much missed Maya and came down crocked and was out for another 6 months as a result, if Carroll has half a brain he might be a tad cautious where Yoshida is concerned.

If it works that will pep up the dour spectacle we have endured more often that not this season.

A repeat of Maya sneaking one in like last season will do.

I just got it! It's been bugging me for ages. I knew I had seen Les Reed somewhere before........ he use to run that Tailors shop that sold new clothes to Emporers!!!

2nd half looked much better than it sounded in the first half Subs actually put a bit of lead in our pencil. Boufal replacing Tadic was the first injection, sorry to all those who sing his name to get a wave off him, but in all honesty he really does flatter to deceive, plays more touches than he needs does better crop circles than Fabrice Fernandes, against Liverpool last week he was as annonmous as admittedly Henderson was for them, Saturday came on ran about and waved his hands at team mates who weren't where he wanted them, on one occasion mid rant the ball was passed within an outstretched leg of him. But because he was having a winge and not paying attention he missed the chance to cut the pass out. He needs a bit of time on the bench to hopefully buck his ideas up......... Now Boufal is back maybe that will happen as he is like a box of fancy fireworks by comparison. Clasie is powder puff, the Premier league more often than not just passes him by - On Saturday aside from Long playing with himself alone up front, he was the senior player, and an International too, out on the pitch yet did chuff all until the last 5-8 minutes of the first half, with his experience he should have had more influence on the game and the nippers. Being replaced by McQueen tonight put a far better engine on the pitch tonight as you had a big lad who is no slouch and knows his way forwards and with the pace of Bertie behind him makes us far more potent down the left Sims replacing Redmond was spot on too, Redmond is a great runner but you can almost put your house on him getting to the edge of the box confronted by 2 defenders and just stop! At least Sims just keeps going and makes defenders work more under pressure as he is often on his way past them. Fair play to Redmond though he is a mere nipper in footballing terms compared to Tadic and Clasie and puts in more of a shift. Bit of a kick in the guts their winner tonight, (well taken though) as we were without doubt banging on the door repeatedly, it's just like we have all known all season we just don't have a prolific finisher in the box. Hopefully this new Johnny will be the missing link.

Hot knife and butter springs to mind

Back on the other side Mané on the bench went for a warm up just sat down and had a strap put on his knee, think he felt the heavy rain and thought "sod that why did I miss that penalty".

Don't be daft it'll be PEH and Reed

In other news Sideshow Bob has just smashed an absolute Exocet past the bin dippers!

Oops

Be interesting if he comes back and Liverpool get going again, how many if the fatter cats than Liverpool will come sniffing around for him this summer

Good for him, given what we have frittered money away on as a back up to Fraser, I was a bit disappointed that we shipped him out, the last full game he played for us was against Palace on a nasty swirly wet and windy day, the goal he let in even if we had 2 Gordon Banks on the line it would have gone in, the rest of the game he was spot on and Palace were knocking quite loudly on the door!

Either I was numbed in to apathy watching that training pitch game that my hearing was affected, but I don't think anyone in the stadium was bothered at the final whistle as I didn't hear any boo's

He has a talent but he doesn't do what a player like Romeu is doing endlessly, taking mental photographs of who is where on the pitch, PEH invariably picks up the ball with his head down then ploughs into trouble, fair play to him though invariably when he has dropped a clanger he cleans up his own mess.

That was a carpy goal

Maybe there has been a plan all along, with Leicester being the fluke last season Saints knew in all honesty we weren't going to challenge for the top spot, so a solid run in the cups delivers the prize goal if we win one: another European tour. I believe I saw somewhere that Puel knows that the season is won and lost in the final 3rd, and his previous teams have had a surge in the latter part of the season. So he rotates the squad and gets as many players as possible running at match fitness as possible without doing too much overall damage to the cause. Then you get into the situation we find ourselves in now where in 4 weeks time we will be playing in a Cup Final. Unlike Leicester who rolled out the usual suspects just about every week last season we have a squad of 20+ players who have all been involved, all ticking over "in the pits", who now all want to be in the starting 11 in a cup final and also a further 7 players if they don't get the nod, to be waiting on the subs bench. Now with all the rotation we have potential headache looming for the manager as now he has to start thinking about his starting 11, but the pot of players to pick from is bigger than the available spaces and all of that pot is pretty much match ready, so with the exception of the odd 1-2-3-4 players they know that Claude is going to rotate players in and out: the result being that everyone ups their game to be in the Cup Final Squad, no one is going to hang back to avoid a possible knock because they know they are replaceable so they have to remain on top of their game to be in with a chance of playing in a cup final. Resulting in the whole team performance stepping up. If we fail in winning the League Cup the better performances in the games leading up to the final potentially see the 6th round of the FA Cup to redress the disappointment, and so the process remains until the last day of the season. Yes what I have written above might well be complete hogwash, in the first leg of the Semi at home v Liverpool we saw a very tidy performance. Burnley game they are battlers and everyone who turns up at Turf Moor is going to walk away having been in a hard scrap: we get done by a quirk of fate. Norwich we put out a rag tag team that on paper should have seen the job done, but end up bringing 2 players on who put the impetus in to win through. The Champions turn up Sunday, and despite the Tinkerman having a brainfart, we have enough about us to identify and exploit the pickle they are in with style. Then Wednesday night we step out onto one of the hardest grounds in the land, but where against Norwich we played like strangers, we worked as a disciplined team, no one was pointing fingers at anyone like we have seen, everyone got on and did a job in snuffing out the opposition, then punching them in the guts at the end. Claude will likely have a little tinker on Saturday evening, but I bet whoever he picks will be pretty damn keen to be in the reckoning for that starting 11 on the 26th February.............. Could be fun.

I was thinking of the nipper who sadly passed away just before the Liverpool game, who we had a minutes applause for but rather remarkably also the minute we scored our 1st goal in.

15 notes on an Arsenal ticket punts you up the pile?

I think the rules might have been relaxed after a whole load of them royally had their pants royally yanked down when tickets were being divvied up for a champions league final and they ran a ballot some folks got 6 tickets on 2 Wembley season tickets and others got chuff all!! Some more goal posts were moved for some other things reducing the benefit and as they were already forking out a hefty sum of money felt the FA were getting too greedy and decided to shaft them back by not renewing their membership. I have a mate who was one of them and one of the originals when the stadium opened, he sorted out superb JPT tickets for the 4 of us. Funnily enough I sent him a photo of my 1979 final ticket priced at a massive £2.50 and tongue in cheek asked if he thought tickets would have gone up much since then, he replied "probably not that much as they are having trouble selling the Season Tickets these days!".

Blooming glad half of the clowns who pontificate on here are not managers in football, blimey the Saints team would have an average age of about 32 if the team was selected on experience. This nipper isn't ready yet" "not ready for the Premier League, needs to go out on loan" "a seasoning loan in a lower league team will do him some good". Even the commentators were prattling on at Jacks inexperience. Anyone who pays attention to Saints will know that Jack Stephens has been out on loan the last few seasons and been deemed good enough to start over 60 first team games. Yes they have been with lower league clubs (which is where many proclaimers say any nipper should be going after their first appearance from the academy). Anyone with half a brain knows that in this country when it comes to football any team from any of the 4 divisions can spread the nose across the face of any of the multi million pound fat cat teams on their day. (Bradford -Chelsea) So young Jack isn't some wet behind the ears total novice, he has been getting experience where the muck is dirtier and the bullets are harder, and through my eyes when he stepped in on Sunday lunchtime he had an air of confidence in knowing what he had to do straight away, and last night once more he did not look one bit out of place on that pitch, his positioning and poise showed a lad who knows his way round a football pitch.