Professor

I agree entirely that fans should come first but the policy doesn't envisage any seats being sold to neutrals even if not wanted by home fans. I assume it is to stop away fans infiltrating the other parts of the stadium by not even letting a neutral turn up on the day and buy a ticket in case they are an evil away-supporting hooligan. You can get into games at other grounds by pretending to be a home supporter and I'm sure many people on here will have done so but its a shame that people must resort to subterfuge, or buying from Touts, which I suspect is what happens.

Last season, the top three teams each lost 6 games and the fourth team lost seven games. This season we have already lost 6 games which is more than any other team in the top five at present. We are where we are because our ratio of wins to draws is better than the others, Saints having only drawn three games so far all season. Nine wins to get a minimum of 69 points sounds good but it may not be enough if we lose most of the others. We really can't afford to lose many more because the teams around us will all have similar ambitions. You can't put an absolute points total on the target as you don't know what the other teams will achieve but less than 74 points and I'd be just a bit worried.

The club's ticket policy is set out on the Southampton website. The policy makes an assumption that everyone at a game is either a home supporter or an away supporter. Why the club fail to recognise that some people just enjoy watching a football match without necessarily supporting one team or the other, I for one, fail to understand. The Tottenham game is a category A game so even home supporters are limited to buying one ticket per person unless an additional ticket is for another registered supporter. Neutrals don't get a look in, unless you are someone like Roy Hodgson. Some neutrals probably pretend to be Saints fans and register as such but might need to go to a Cat B game first in order to create an attendance record. Angelman's advice looks sound, but you could talk to the ticket office and see what they tell you in case they have any discretion in the event of unsold seats close to the date of the match.

The Club must have taken a really hard hit on Osvado's £15m transfer fee. Not small money by any means.

Anyone checked if Osvaldo has been spotted down at Sandbanks?

We must be aware that there may be a one-goal disadvantage to overcome when we play Chelsea now that referees will be awarding Chelsea the mandatory Mourinho Penalty.

As the game gets closer there is a sense of excitement amongst many of my Saints supporting colleagues. The disappointment of the surrender by Pochettino at Sunderland last year which saw us knocked out at the 5th Round is still fresh in many minds. There is a real prospect of progressing to the 5th Round again this year but now with a team that is capable of competing with anyone left in the competition and with a manager who wants to win matches.

Champions League - Can we do it? - to which the answer has to be Yes we can. But that doesn't mean that we will. But in terms of our prospects for doing it, they do look good. We still have some hard games and we are missing some key players but we're fortunate that there is a small breathing space of one cup game and one league game over the next two weeks so that when the busier period starts in Feb we may be getting some of those players back and could have quite a strong squad for the March/April run-in. The only certainty is that we will have at least 42 points (assuming no points deduction crops up) but if currently we are marginally below 2 points per game and if that continues we should get another 30 points from the remaining 16 games. Whether a points total in the low 70s is enough for Champions League qualification then depends on how well our various opponents for a top 4 place do.

Growing up, we lived near enough to Southampton to be able to go to games, read about them in the local paper and on local TV. Have always lived within a reasonable drive of the city. Never had any respect for people living near the south coast who pick a London or Northern club to follow and then claim they are a supporter of a team they hardly ever, if ever, go to see.

Plenty of transfer gossip simply because lazy journalists need to keep filling the pages with fabricated and out-or-date stories. No club would bid anything like what JRod was worth before the injury, simply because they couldn't get insurance for him. There may be issues about what happens to his Southampton contract if it is coming to an end as the club will want to preserve as much value as possible but it may well be a tricky situation for both club and player.

Funny old game, football. The neutral could say that Newcastle should have won because they had more possession and enough goal chances, as well as the disputed penalty claim. On the other hand, Saints actually scored two goals and hit the bar, while Newcastle's goal was a pure fluke so you can't say it was an unreasonable result. But as fans we shouldn't get carried away. We did miss the injured three, and it will probably be mid-Feb before they are all back. With due respect to Mané, he wasn't missed because Elia proved to be the perfect replacement but the next few games are crucial until the squad is back to strength.

If we beat Swansea at the SMS on 1 Feb, we will either close 3 points on Man City or Chelsea, or two points on both of them, as they play each other the evening before. When we are away to QPR the following week on 7 Feb if we win, we will move further ahead of either Tottenham or Arsenal, or both, as they play each other that day. Then in the midweek 10/11 Feb the same applies to Tottenham and Liverpool when we are at home to West Ham. That looks like our next toughest game but if we do win these next three, third place will look marginally firmer than it is now and with the run-in further reduced. Man U are away to West Ham during that period (8 Feb), which could also be a help.

Interesting how we can all have different perspectives. In the Ipswich replay when Steven Davis was on the bench for the first half, I thought there was an immediate improvement when he came on. As for JWP, consistently making a very positive contribution to the team but against Newcastle I thought the impact of three away games in quick succession was showing and he seemed to make more wayward passes than is usual. Having said that, his contribution to the goals was priceless.

Would anyone rather have Wonga! How Newcastle sell shirts with that name on them beats me.

Admirable work but the problem is that there is no scientific basis to 'luck'. We all know the old rule - toss a coin ten times and if it comes down 'heads' ten times, the chances of it being 'heads' on the 11th time is still 50/50. There is no evidence to show that luck evens out over time. In football, teams such as Chelsea suffer or benefit from luck just like everyone else but if there is more quality in the team the incidents will tend to have less of a negative impact because the quality team will have more ball possession and more attempts on goal.

The penalty discussion on MOTD was another example of the so-called experts appearing not to understand the Laws of the Game. To be an offence the laws are quite clear - that the player must handle the ball deliberately. There is guidance to referees as to how to make that judgement which includes the requirement to take various factors into consideration but this does not alter the fact that handling the ball "involves a deliberate act of the player". Fonte instinctively put his arms up to protect his face from a ball struck directly towards him. For the referee to decide that when the ball struck his hand or arm that was not a deliberate act was a conclusion he was perfectly entitled to come to. The ball hitting a hand is NOT an automatic penalty.

Even with all the injuries and with Tadic rested as he came off at Ipswich with what appeared to be a muscle strain, the line-ups people have suggested look strong enough to maintain the system and get a win at Newcastle. Be very surprised if we don't get two goals given the striker quality of Long, Pelle and Elia, while the defence still looks good with Gardos performing well, Fonte just being Fonte and probably with Davis in front of the back 4. The main concern is that that any further injuries would be difficult to cope with as Cork might be the only sub with more than a handful of games behind him. So far on this thread, I don't think anyone has suggested names for the subs bench, which is understandable as its likely to be a problem for RK.

Until Yoshida returns, McCarthy must surely be the CB cover so having him on the bench at Ipswich would seem sensible but would you actually take Fonte or Gardos off during the game to give him a run out, even if we had a 2 goal lead?

The added time of 5 minutes on the 2nd half was so excessive that it took all the neutrals by surprise. There had only been 1 minute at the end of the first half, despite the stoppage for Alderweireld's injury, which highlighted how ludicrous the decision was at the end of the second half. Dowd did a very poor job overall and shouldn't be surprised if he's accused of bias. His failure to stop Van Persie trying to cheat over the restart, following Alderweireld having to be helped off the pitch was just one example, as were the shirt-pulling incidents that he failed to deal with.

Just taking a break from enjoying yesterday's result and it does make you wonder how we could only draw with Ipswich in the cup game and that the 1-0 loss at Burnley is a reminder that in this game, anything can happen.

Law 12 of the Laws of Football states that a direct free kick is awarded (or a penalty if the offence is in the area) if a player holds an opponent. If referees are interpreting that to mean that holding the shirt is not holding an opponent then you may as well have a free-for-all.

What an infantile performance by Van Gaal after the game. A grudging, peremptory handshake and sour grapes in his interview. Will have won him no friends in the game or in the media. Makes the sacking of David Moyes look like a serious mistake. Moyes was a gentleman by comparison to Van Gaal, he had the same performance record this time last year and he hadn't been allowed to spend £150m.

Very disappointed that the MOTD pundits didn't mention the shirt pulling, especially because two of the incidents were included in the highlight film. If you watched the game live you may have thought that the incidents were worse than what was seen on MOTD. Definitely a penalty for the first one, which would have stopped any subsequent fouls of that nature. But no mention and no questions about it.

The Sky commentators claimed it was shirt pulling by both players when we could clearly see on the screen that it was not.

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