James

Legend. Shouldn't be compared to Matt as he is legendary for different reasons. Rickie is a symbol of all we have become since the takeover and being saved from the brink of oblivion. He has been our best player from League 1 to Prem and for that he will be a legend whatever happens. My favourite player since Matt in 23 years supporting Saints.

Walkabout in Shepherds Bush

******** as usual. Gaston will be playing.

Good idea, could just do the trick.

So there is a thread for Morgan but no thread for S.Davis? Morgan had an off night but Davis is just a shocking player all round. Too slow, too lightweight, can't pass, can't tackle, delays on the ball and causes us to lose possession...I could go on. Problem we have is as we have stated earlier, our midfield is far far too lightweight for the system we play.

442 with Gaston and Adam on the flanks. JRod and Rickie up front. Good team

Unless you are prepared to back that statement up with any substance nobody on here is going to believe you. Wind up merchant.

Considering we aren't playing until Monday - I highly doubt it.

Adkins has to go. In our current predicament momentum is all important. With that team we were never going to beat Leeds away from home. I don't understand the logic of the management at the moment. This defeat is nothing in the grand scheme of things, but the tactics employed by the management this season has been utter madness...subs cost us against Fulham, Man U, clueless defending in all games - I could go on. As others have said....sorry Nige, I am eternally grateful but if we want to stay up this season we need a change as you are out of your depth this season.

Any word on cork or Ramirez for this one? Either back will be huge. And i would stick with Boruc - he is better than the other 2 you can tell and we need to bed down a settled back 5 ASAP

Adkins you are an idiot. Will be gone soon I think. Substitutions cost us almost every game

COYR - 3-1 (gaston, Rickie and punch) - would be great to see Morgan back.

Federici has an injury according to SSN - not dropped.

God, what an absolutely heartless way of putting it. One of the most moronic posts I've EVER had the misfortune of reading on this site. Words fail me. "dredge up" - people's children and loved ones died and for 23 years have been in some way blamed for their own deaths....so you'd just let that go if it was one of your family members would you? Unbelievable. As for the so called 'revenge part' - so are you trying to say that if a crime is committed and the perpetrator isn't caught at the time or in its immediate aftermath then it should go unpunished just because it happened a long time ago? Again, what an utterly ridiculous point of view.

6-1 - Arsenal destroyed us which was completely expected. The defence got murdered by the pace of Gervinio and Chamberlain again that was to be expected. I don't mind taking a hammering but the manner in which it happened was the most worrying thing - we did not dispossess the midfield runner once the entire game, the defence will look bad because of the goals conceded but the midfield simply did not do its job today, Morgan was as anonymous and poor as I've ever seen him, and whilst JWP looks promising he isn't the midfield ball winner we need at this point in time. Don't really know why we signed Davis either as he was utter garbage. There are plenty more games to go, and as many have said it isn't these games which get you relegated. But...we have major problems at the back and KD needs to go (not that we have anyone to replace him with but he simply isn't up to it). We need to be in touch in Jan and strengthen the defence because we won't keep any clean sheets at our current standard. Our full backs (Fox especially) are getting rinsed and our positioning (in general) is absolutely terrible. This might sound a bit odd but something just feels 'wrong' about this season: - We are playing a formation we clearly aren't comfortable with and don't have the players for - We are playing players in positions they've barely played before (AL as a CM) - JWP has come out of nowhere and is now first choice midfielder (fair play to the lad, but has he improved that significantly over the summer? Yet he was absolutely nowhere near the team nor the bench in the Championship last season. He's going to be a good player that's for sure but throwing him in as we have is irresponsible I think) - We totally and utterly failed to strengthen the defence and goalkeeper positions when it was blindingly obvious we were going to get caught out with our current CBs/FBs. - We signed two new strikers despite the fact we are going to play a system which requires only 1 out and out centre forward. - We've managed to sign GR, which whilst an amazing coup smacks of an NC signing - is there any truth in these suggestions that NA was refused the targets he actually wanted in favour of more 'glamourous' players. It just seems that our strategy over the summer was ill thought out and not very carefully planned, if we were going to play the system we are now then I don't understand some of our signings in the window at all. Hope it's not too late to sort it all out and we will improve and pick up some points, but this game exposed some very obvious limitations which we knew we had already and cannot now be rectified until January.

KD was utterly shocking yesterday - it was embarrassing. He's been poor all season yet some have vindicated him because he has saved two of the worst penalties I've seen in years. Needed to be replaced in the summer along with most of the back four. He wasn't so we're stuck with him and we will lose a huge number of points because of it. If Gazza isn't deemed good enough to start the next game then we have serious problems.

This is the problem. We can't learn from these mistakes because the players we have at the back simply are NOT good enough at this level. I can't see us keeping a clean sheet against anyone this season (seriously). Warning signs have been there since last season, Reading came and tore us a new one at our place (our defence was shocking then) and they are going to be down there this season.

Tom Cleverley is crap, only reason he is on the field is because he plays for Man U. Adam is a much better player and would have stuck those chances away. If Adam played for Man U then he'd be on the pitch and doing a better job. Roy's 'new England' is just the same as always, big club mentality with only players from top 4/5 who are all distinctly average. Stifles any talent coming through really.

Exactly. The JH tackle was clean as a whistle, all the ball and just caught RVP who milked it. Was identical to the Lescott-JRod tackle which wasn't even talked about. I don't understand how the Jos tackle was described as 'stone wall' by BBC yet Lescott's didn't even make it into their report. Mike Dean was doing all he could to even up our dominance over UTD and perhaps we shouldn't have given him the chance to give a pen (how dare we touch RVP in the box) but still he gave them everything but we best get used to it.

Exactly - he went off and there was only one winner. Just cannot fathom NAs thinking. He must have been watching a different game to the rest of us.

Cheers Nigel - absolute bloody madness taking off the three best players on the pitch. I just cannot understand it. We just gave it to them by bringing off the main threats. Lambert had Rio and Vidic sussed and they immediately got their tail up when he went off. All this guff about JF, KD and DF - they didn't cost us the game, Adkins did. Had we stuck it out with no subs we'd have held on. So angry right now.

Can Ramirez play? Presumably yes considering the OS said it was all done almost 10 days ago...

What on earth does this update actually mean? The first bit makes absolutely no sense!

Great player, versatile too. Of all the CBs we've been linked with I like the sound of Williams best. Young and fits with our mantra and probably better than what we have.

Agreed. He has a lot more in his locker than people give him credit for. Given his form in pre-season and now the cup he has been unlucky not to start more games.