Fabrice Fernandes no.1 fan

He was also kept out of the side for years by Steven Davis and Hojbjerg, and was our second best player behind Redmond and Ings respectively across a few years. He represents hard work and longevity, coupled with a reasonably high level of performance, but on that basis for me he sits alongside Lundekvam, Dodd, Beattie, Lambert, Schneiderlin as players who were of good quality without necessarily being the best player and were of good service. If he carries on at the recent level, and is what keeps us up then yes that elevates him, but not to the top two.

11.22 so 12 goals is just above expected, so finishing the chances you would expect him to. One red card this year for a karate kick to the head of a Millwall player trying to bring down a long ball

It is a good metric for the quality of chance a team is producing against the end result, over a spread of games. For example, a team that has 3.5xg per game across half a a season but is only scoring 1 goal a game is making chances but not finishing them, but a team who have 0.5xg per game but score a goal a game are not making enough chances but are finishing those they do have well. It is also useful for measuring a striker's ability. If a striker is scoring above their expected goals, you can infer they are likely a better finisher, or more in form, than someone who is scoring below their expected goals. It is less useful when applied to specific circumstances, and better over a wider spread of data. However, it does represent Wednesday quite well, our two chances weren't the easiest, and so you would not expect us to score that often. Djenepo misses that chance more often than he scores it, so it has low XG.

Not sure there has even been a time or day set yet, just broadly the weekend the game will be. I wonder if the ties will all be set after the replays which is next Tuesday and Wednesday, so not long before the game should be.

Very kind, it is a touch tongue in cheek because he was clearly limited, but his goal against Everton at home will stay with me as a great Saints moment for a very long time

Proved this evening what an asset he is, he’s such a good defender and his ability on the ball is probably the best in the squad, he stutters and shifts his weight and the ball so brilliantly to keep possession

Ward Prowse seems to have the better of Phillips so far

Please can you put some sort of trigger warning if you're going to list this many awful managers. I had deep flashbacks to many of those eras watching awful football

I think we should do something with stripes every other year, and do something that is a nod to the past in the other year. What I don't like is the oddity that we seem to have every other year at the moment. This seasons isn't particularly nice, and the red with white sash never quite looked right to me from a couple of years ago. Away should be yellow and blue when we have stripes, and something different in the alternate years. If it were up to me next year would be Red and White stripes (red sleeves) black shorts and white socks. Yellow and blue away, maybe stripes, All black third with a red trim.

Agreed, we don't make enough chances and then when we do, we don't convert enough of them. The approach seems to be, give Adams 5 chances a game and hope he scores one, rather than giving another striker 2 chances a game and hoping they score one of the two

I have such fond memories of those first few years after relegation in terms of the academy products. Theo came in and looked like the quickest most direct player in the world (sadly long-gone are those days) and Bale was an absolute monster right away. Loved his partnership with Skacel where they would both play left back and left mid, and whoever was in the position did the job and the other covered them. Shame his career never quite hit the absolute heights it could have (stuck a little in Ronaldo's shadow really) but he has to be one of the best Saints have ever had through the ranks

Payne and Pearce would be my votes to get a loan move. Both are a little older in the group so might be the right time for them. Payne would get more opportunities to learn his game defensively (looks to me he spends half the time as a right winger when we're dominating games), and Pearce needs game time now Ballard and Morgan are playing so often. It is hard to see how many of this squad will actually make it to the top level, but it is so good to have a crop of players to be excited about

In terms of on the field, we need to ditch 5 at the back asap. At times we have all 5 defenders, JWP and Lavia behind the ball so then only attacking with 3 players, which just does not work. We have the players to play a 4-3-3, provided we sign a good player. I would play the following (with subs/backups in brackets) Bazunu (McCarthy) KWP (Tino, AMN) ABK (Lyanco) DCC (Salisu) Perraud (Larios) Lavia (Diallo) JWP (Ely) S Armstrong (Aribo) Edozie (Walcott) Adams (Mara) A Armstrong (Djenepo) We play a back 4 with Lavia sitting in to pick the ball up on the turn (his obvious strength) with JWP and Armstrong playing in front of him to support Adams when pushing forward, or one of them sitting in with Lavia when required defensively. The obvious weakness is the attack, we need players around Adams who can make use of his excellent hold up play and who can take some of the goalscoring responsibility from him and JWP

Free kick outside the box, they put a man on the line so we flood the box with players now onside and the ball goes straight over the bar, classic

Agreed, gives flexibility to the defence. Chelsea did it brilliantly the season they won the league with Moses and Alonso at wing back. Both fairly limited technically but were constant energy and movement into the right places. Then with Azpiliceuta at right centre back they could move to a back 4 if needed, or Matic would drop in. Don't think we have the players for it at the moment, KWP is too small, and Perraud doesn't seem defensively sound enough

How long does it take to get used to giving the ball away, not tracking runners and playing slow ploddy football. I think I could give it a go

Just like years of England teams, everyone going for Gerrard and Lampard when Carrick was the answer

Definitely helped him having Morgan sitting behind him. Imagine having a midfield where you actually trust that every team we play won't be able to just run straight through us. God I miss him.

Going to say I don’t actually hate it, if it’s 3 at the back. Get our wing backs high and stop there full backs getting forward; and have an extra centre back should stop crosses to the back post for Mitrovic to bully a full back and score like the idea of Aribo and Ely playing between their midfield and defence and Edozie and Adams are sadly the best we have Only difference I would make is Armstrong for Ely and DCC for Lyanco

Edozie was magic when he came on, really wanted to take players on, and kept getting into the box and the byline. Have to feel that given 90 minutes of that eventually a right back is going through him and giving away a penalty. Also his positivity seemed to impact Perraud too who suddenly was running beyond more. Watching in the stadium it was odd, we still seemed to be playing sideways like we did under Ralph but it did feel different. Seemed like there was more movement ahead of the back 3, they just weren't quick enough getting the ball moving to make use of it. A few times AA and JWP seemed to be frustrated that they had moved into space and the ball never came, about 15/20 minutes in there was a period where the ball seemed stuck with the centre backs and JWP was shouting and waving his arms around as if to say they needed to be moving the ball quicker. Initially (for the first half and a little of the second) the aim seemed to be to form a passing triangle between the wide centre back, wing back and midfielder on that side to move the ball up the pitch and then cross the ball in. We just then weren't winning any headers or second balls. That didn't seem to give AMN much of a role and he looked very lost. When we moved things around in the second half, JWP moved back a little and seemed to be on the ball a lot more and looked a lot sharper than he has recently We definitely had a massive switch in the second half to a 4-3-3 which definitely got through them easier (helped by Armstrong carrying the ball through midfield). One thing I did notice is that everything seemed to be in a hurry, throw ins were taken quickly, free quicks in our half played instantly to the spare centre back.

I would suggest Lavia’s homework be to watch Amrabaat for Morocco across this tournament. The way he’s receiving the ball on the turn and passing through the lines is excellent

Mattia Perin from Juve- the club is a mess and he's their back up, but an Italy international and a good keeper. Let him play the second half of the season because when we're fighting relegation we'll need a more experienced head back there, and it saves Bazunu from following Gunn's path of having all confidence drained out of him. Tammy Abraham- quality striker, PL experience and seems to have fallen out with Mourinho. He'd maybe know a couple of players from his Chelsea days, or England youth, so would fit into the squad well

Good to see Livramento has gone, must mean he's doing well in terms of his inury rehab

Mouez Hassen is there with Tunisia who was on the bench for us at Wembley under Puel: Ex-Saints 11 at the World Cup would be hard to field, bit out of position, but: ----------Hassen------------ ---Toby---VVD--Yoshida----- Caceres-Hojbjerg--Tadic--Shaw ---Minamino--Bale--Boufal----

Definitely a second eleven that played yesterday, getting them some game time to try and keep the squad fresh. Never really looked like troubling Reading, we played Freeland up front on her own and she was very isolated. Thought Lloyd-Smith and Wynne looked effective out wide, but they were all over us in the midfield for the whole game.