adrian lord

Taters literally willing an Everton revival

Absolutely correct. Osman mistimed his dive.

Yet if you merely brush an attacker and he goes down it's a penalty. Game turning into netball slowly but surely.

Owen sounds like some random northerner dragged out of a pub.

I thought it was a very absorbing game, not at all boring. I have to say I find tic-tac possession games often very dull. As an aside, has Cole converted to be a Moslem, with that new beard?

Doping with EPO and transfusions improves endurance and speed at threshold. Both useful to footballers especially in the final 15 mins of a gruelling game where that edge can mean beating a tiring opposition. Doping with anabolic agents improves power and acceleration - very useful for explosive attacking runs, jumping for headers and bruising defending. So I conclude that it is naive to think there is little or no football doping, given the ££ involved, the egos and the lack of policing.

Moyes did more good for English football in 9 months than Fergie did in 27 years! As others have hinted, a nightmare scenario is Man U eviscerating Saints by taking Pochettino and a clutch of our young stars.

Sunseeker, Rolex or Louis Vuitton. We're going all 'Riviera'.

Moyes not clever, not charismatic, not cultured enough to manage at the very highest level. Way out of his depth compared to Mourhino/Guardiola/Klopp/ Van Gaal/Wenger/Ancellotti et al. I'd not even want him at Saints, simply doesn't fit our club ethos, too dour and negative.

Interesting, and what I suspected to be the situation. Does tennis have a similar easy ride? One or two female players look like they've been exposed to masculinising anabolic steroids to me.

id bite their hands off for 7 mil - he's in free fall career and value wise.

I would have thought Chelsea's club culture would be a fertile breeding ground for misdemeanours by staff and even some players...but I know nothing. A conspiracy theorist would say that was the real reason Mourhino refused to take questions from press yesterday, not wanting to have to field tricky questions about his colleagues.

I'd say the best seasons ever were 76 and the year we came runners-up to Liverpool in the 1st Division. Both, but especially the latter, were remarkable achievements. This season is also remarkable, and particularly in terms of the academy and English contingent, but not, frankly, in the same echelon as those 2.

Isn't every provincial town well populated with migrant workers from Poland?

I used to live in a damp matchbox.

A worryingly political answer. Keeping options very open. Only thing certain is he'll see this season out.

No excuses for that craven capitulation.

Very enjoyable article, meandering through the horrors of history. What is extraordinary is that it must have taken real time, perverse imagination and effort to create such abominations - it would have been easier just to do something decent. You imagine the lads in the design office at Patrick or Hummel having a few beers for lunch on a Friday and then back at the office enthusiastically getting down to the job of making sure Southampton and their shirters look utter clowns next season. They would have laughed up their sleeves all weekend!

We have strong prestige and admiration throughout the game mainly because of the Academy's sustained success over the last 15 years, and partly too because we have tried to play 'the right way' on our rise up from the depths. We have however, underachieved massively on a long term look-back, and have only one serious trophy, from way back in 76. This undermines our 'size'. We have a solid core home support of about 20,000 who will go even in league one. Not bad but we don't have the tens of thousands of plastic glory hunters that tag on in the Prem like they do at Chelsea etc. which I am sad to say do contribute to 'size'. Neither are we blessed with a 'sleeping giant' globally entrenched and long-embedded 'granite' fan base like, say, Leeds are. We have no profile outside of England, plastic or granite. All in all, we are in the upper-reaches of the group of medium sized city clubs that have had only modest success, sustain a sizeable local fan base, but have no international profile. Can we break out and make a quantum-leap in 'size'? Probably not - even if we had a Notts Forest type run of success in CL and PL, I think we would, like Forest, still be a medium sized club that, once upon a time, had a purple patch.

That bloke who manages Spurs has lost the dressing room and is only care taking for the new guy in the summer. We ought to capitalise....but...

He had awful wind, so was grimacing a lot.

The chap seems to have a personality disorder.

is Tommy Docherty still alive?

Smalling was dreadful, Chamberlain looked rusty and misplaced several passes. Adam and Luke were revelatory. They're off to Brazil.

Bad feeling about this game too - this fixture has all the hallmarks of an ignominous defeat looming.