DellBlockH

Fulham.

His vocabulary needs expanding. He only seems to know one adjective (and I expect he has very little direct experience of it).

I remember the Leeds fans singing "We're going to win 4-3" after they went 3-0 down. I thought their gallows humour was quite funny. I didn’t expect them to bloody do it.

Never in doubt.

You forgotten Lallana, in his first spell, already?

Wouldn't bet on it. I was overcharged for a can of IPA because the correct button on the server's screen wasn't working and the supervisor had told him to put all beer in as the more expensive lager. I eventually got an apology from the hospitality manager but I wonder how many people didn’t notice they'd been overcharged at about £1.25 a go.

Whelmed.

This is what I don't understand (among many things I don't understand). SR presumably want a successful football club either for its own sake or because it's worth more the more successful it is. If they want to sell, they will want the highest possible return and this will depend largely on which league the club is in and the assets it has in terms of playing staff. Other assets, like the ground and training ground, won't vary in value according to league. If they want to hang on to the club it (and they) will make more money if it's back in the EPL. So I'm not clear why people seem to think that SR are deliberately sabotaging the club or making wilfully wrong decisions. Yes, you or I may think they are wrong decisions but they must have a reason for making them. They've brought in good players and a few poor ones. I think we can see this happens to most clubs. Some things work, some don't (except West Ham who only seem to bring in poor players). I know nothing about this Larin bloke. The consensus on here is that he is not going to improve our team. The consensus could be right. But why would SR and our scouts want to bring in someone who will make us worse? Does AA want out or do the management team feel, on balance, that the team will survive (or the team mentality will improve) without him? Is it just chasing a few million quid while we have the chance? (Isn't it easy to discard a few million when it's not your money?) I see the argument that SR has a purely player-trading model. But, to keep that going, you need to develop young players to sell on. Larin doesn’t fit that model and I'm not sure our transfer trading balance shows that is happening anyway.

Azazzz

I can only watch the first half so we'd better be done and dusted by half time. After all, we never ease up in the second half, do we?

I don't dispute your general point. But there's an element of confirmation bias here. We see other clubs sign players whom no-one has heard of and who go on to do well. But, as we do not follow those clubs in the same way as we do Saints, we only hear about their successes when they sign obscure players. I'm pretty sure that other clubs make signings out of the blue who turn out to have been unheard of for good reason.

FWIW (which isn't much), I wasn't able to watch the game live but am relying on reports here, the highlights on Sky and the article in The end.Guardian. It seems it was a fairly even game (as you might expect from two teams in the bottom half of The Championship) but that Saints slightly edged it. We perhaps had more chances over the course of the game but were under the cosh towards the end. Like almost every other game this season.

I discovered I had something called Samsung TV last evening and thus was able to watch a bit of Werder Bremen v Eintrach Frankfurt. Bremen have this promising player, who played really well, called Sugawara. Could he DAJFU?

It's pronounced "eye gore". (Young Frankenstein)

Can't think of a single positive thing to say about that shambles of a performance. I suppose seeing Stewart back on the pitch might just qualify as a positive (but only just). Not one player had a good game and that has got to be down to the manager or the rest of the coaching staff. Not sure where we go from here. Thoroughly depressed.

You may be right. You probably are. I was just commenting that getting a chant going about a formation is unlikely. I have never heard the people who sit near me, who are not shy of criticising just about every other aspect of the team and club, say "It's all down to playing 3 at the back". But thank you for the, not-at-all patronising lesson in football tactics. I will bear it in mind at the next home game and will be chanting "Not 3 at the back" if we're not winning by at least 3 goals.

Most people, outside of this forum, really don't give a toss about formation, just results and performance.

At last, the whole negativity of this thread is astonishing. I'm sure people on here aren't unique among football fans, but, my word, they do like a moan and a conspiracy theory.

Once Coventry went down to 10 men, they gave up all ambition of winning the match. They no longer pressed our backline, giving them the freedom to move up the pitch at will. Unfortunately, for all our dominance, we could only make a couple of shots that caused their keeper any concern. On another day, we'd have scored three or four. A point against the league leaders isn't too bad - even though people expect to win with a man advantage. I thought we'd probably lose so I'm quite happy. Also, a shout out to Baz for a couple of good saves to keep us in it in the first half.

Not sure we need anyone - or not anyone we could get who'd improve our current team. Our squad is too big as it is. We need to hold on to Scienza, obviously. And perhaps ship out Aribo who looks as though he'd be happier elsewhere anyway. Once Stewart is fit, we'll have a good Adam substitute. And Archer is looking OK - just needs a goal for confidence.

FWIW, I thought Aribo was OK last night, unlike all his other appearances this season. He put some effort in and won 50/50s.

I really enjoyed that.

Lawrie McMenemy was assistant manager before getting the top job. He did OK.

I'm intrigued by the idea that the board sacked Still because of fan pressure and because the fans had turned against SR. I'm fairly confident that they sacked him based on results and, quite probably, feedback from players. Yes, there was some chanting from the Northam end during Still's final game. But I doubt if this was the deciding factor. After all, these fans spend quite a lot of time chanting about Pompey and, now, Nathan Jones. The idea that SR are holding off on a new manager announcement because they fear a fan backlash is also doubtful. I'm sure that they'd rather take the fans with them but they will announce when they have made a final decision, regardless of fan chants. They are either giving Eckert a long trial period or they have not yet identified (or persuaded) another candidate.

I grew up in SE London (used to go to watch Charlton rather than Milwall). I only went to the old Den once. It was in 1977 on the day the National Front and Martin Webster tried to march through Lewisham. I was on the counter demonstration which successfully stopped them doing so. After the demo, we thought we'd go and watch some football and went to the Den taking our trade union banner with us. God knows what we were thinking, I don't think we unfurled it but we may have done. But the other supporters on the terraces just treated us with indifference, which was a fortunate surprise. Anyway, I'm hoping Saints can keep up their winning form.