Saint_clark

Eh? We have 9 games left.

I agree. If we had City or Newcastles millions to buy the best young ball playing players all over the park then sure, but we were regularly outspent by Brighton, Bournemouth, Fulham etc even when we'd been in the Prem longer than them. It's a recipe for suicide.

Players must be gutted he's going.

Ah, the old Cortese approach. I like it. Unfortunately I don't agree. I think they see this style of football under Martin as the one that will have us "successful" in the Prem, by whatever metric they measure success.

We weren't robbed of it though, we threw it away. The crazy thing is if we win today and our game in hand there's still only 3 points in it, 4 points to the top. It's being dangled tantalisingly close in front of us but always just quite out of reach.

Good point. Let's hope we finish this season strong and get back to back promotions.

Shame the game wasn't a bit more entertaining for you Christophe.

I don't think you can place him outside the initial 5 as that would put more pressure on him. He's still our second top scorer.

A. Armstrong Adams Rothwell Fraser KWP Would be my 5.

Seasons outside of the Premier League don't count, obviously.

The main benefit of a director of football role at a club is to keep a consistent strategy in terms of play style and signing targets regardless of who the manager is. Kind of defeats the point of we're going through them quicker than we're going through managers.

4 points off top with two games left - although if Palace win their game it's 6 points. Pretty sure it's mathematically impossible to go up now as Sunderland and palace play each other on the final day. One promotion spot, once again the women's game has some bullshit rules around promotion and relegation. Should be a playoff between 2nd and 5th at least.

Infuriating when you look at who else would have been available for that amount - Haji Wright for £9million has 14 goals in a decent Coventry side, Whittaker from Plymouth has 19 or Hardie also from Plymouth has 12. I think next season with Adams going and Armstrong probably being sold, we need to be trying to pinch one of those three and i'd also try and get Sargent from Norwich who will be into the last year of his contract. I quite like Matt Clarke at the back for Boro yesterday as well.

I'm not missing anything at all. I am not commenting on the rights or wrongs of the two lads or the stewards. All i'm saying is there was a noticeable difference in how the Saints players were performing while that was going on and as others have said, not just me, they were looking round to see what was going on. It was clearly a distraction that didn't help. Personally I think however heavy handed the stewards were being, the crowd would have been better off focussing on supporting the team.

I fully understand that it wasn't aimed at the players. What i'm saying is that the crowd stopped chanting in support of the players and drew everyones attention to what was happening in the corner. The players were distracted by this, as multiple people have said they kept looking round to the corner.

I could tell on the stream it wasn't aimed at the players. It's still obviously going to be a distraction when the crowd stops chanting in support of the team and instead all react angrily to an incident in the corner of the ground. And there WAS a noticeable difference in the effort levels from the players during and after the incident. For large parts of the second half we were pushing forward and hitting them on the counter, that stopped.

In front of 30,000 people it is.

He was clearly thinking about monday when today wasn't even won yet. Amateur mistake.

Non standing zone? Have they installed the safe standing already? If so we all knew that there was going to be a clamp down on standing elsewhere.

That is shameful to be fair. Wasn't mentioned at all on the Saints player commentary when the applause happened either.

I thought this watching the stream. The atmosphere disappeared and was replaced with jeering, chants of "wankers", "you don't know what you're doing", etc, it was obvious something was going on for 15 minutes and it coincided with the players stepping off the gas a bit.

Frustrating that it's still possible with everyone having a bit of a wobble at the moment, but you just know we won't capitalise.

Any chance of some context?

Not sure the players, focussed on the game, would have known that in the moment though.

Just in time to get injured for the play offs.