The Cat

There's 14 million people who are either over 70 or in the clinically vulnerable category. Give them all the vaccine first and then open everything up while the rest of the population get their jabs.

It didn't strike me that he was, more him being realistic about the current challenges he is facing.

Has anyone read the interview with Hassenhuttl in The Athletic today? Talks about the problems we are facing at the moment, especially with him being away from training. There's "nearly no training" because it's "more about recovery" and the "less we can train, the more we have to show them clips of videos of what we want to see. They have to learn with their mind and not so much with the physical work on the pitch." He also talk about having a small squad and that it's "very tough to find the balance of protecting them, leaving them out or playing them." Whereas some other teams with larger, deeper squads can change 3 or 4 players a game without it having a significant impact on the team we just can't do that.

Can't say I agree with a lot of the above comments. It wasn't the most entertaining game, however it's a decent point against a team who have a much better squad than we do. Not sure why people are getting on Stephens back, he had a good game apart from one poor decision. Yes we all want to see exciting high press football, but is that possible with a small squad and loads of games in a short period? You also have to factor in West Ham's performance, because apart from the odd period when they were on the front foot they largely sat back with a load of players behind the ball.

They also had Vardy, Mahrez and Kante who are all far better than any of our players.

Definitely took a while to get up to the pace of the game which is understandable. A mixed performance, a couple of sloppy passes and ill advised dribbles but also some neat tackles and runs. I like the way he drives forward which is going to be an asset to the team. Overall looked promising and should prove to be a decent signing.

Who on earth would have predicted Arsenal going 3 up against Chelsea?

How did Palace manage to do worse against 10 men than they did against 11? They are such a weird team.

Should have had a penalty, quite bizarre that it wasn't given. Saying that I'm not sure we deserved to win and a draw was a fair result. We lacked a bit of cohesion although it's to be expected with the players missing and Diallo making his first start.

Stephens in. Diallo first start.

That's surprising although I guess with all the fixtures coming up it's a case of using the squad.

It's the most ludicrous decision since Saints signed Carillo.

New Forest not in Tier 4 but Eastleigh is even though our cases are pretty much the same as theirs. This government are a bunch of total cretins.

"Are you free for a Teams chat about this?" No, just fucking email me like you used to and I'll get around to it when I have time.

Fantasy Football. Noticed an upturn on here with the number of people saying "oh well, at least he's in my fantasy football team" when someone scores against us as if beating Colin from Accounts in a game is any consolation for Saints letting in a goal.

Can you catch Covid from that? If not then crack on.

There was a 6-6 in Scotland a while back. I mainly remember it because of the Saints connection - Jutkewicz scored the equaliser and he was at Saints as a youngster.

My ID was checked, but the Covid form thing was just a "have you filled it out" question rather than having to provide proof. We were Blue Gate, turned up at 1400 as per the ticket but there were no queues at all, to be fair we could have probably wandered in 10 mins before kick off.

We are much more comfortable on the ball now. I enjoy watching us shift it from CB to CM, toying with opposition, waiting for them to lose shape and then playing it quickly through the lines to launch an attack. No doubt we will give away a silly goal or two doing it before the end of the season but taking those risks is worth it in the long term because it will get us a lot of goals.

I swear we used to chuck Vestergaard up front for the last few minutes and launch it to him. Might have been before Ralph joined. City have obviously focused on keeping clean sheets after last season and it's working well for them while they aren't as fluent going forwards. Quite tough to break down, Dias is very solid and Rodrigo is immense in front of the back 4.

He was first off the pitch yesterday. At the end pretty much everyone clapped the players and most came over to clap back, or at least did it from the centre circle. Redmond couldn't wait to get back to the dressing room.

Government guidelines say that Tier 4 elite sport can continue, so I guess the only way it would be off would be if there was a positive test at either club.

We were in the ground early so watched the warm ups. Tella's shooting wasn't great, a couple of misshit ones and a couple too close to the keeper. Compared to other players his technique seemed a bit, how shall I say it, immature. N'Lundulu can whack a ball although he is about twice Tella's size. A lot of other players were smashing balls in the corners which was a big change from the last time I watched us warm up away at Fulham when the crowd were more in danger of being hit than the back of the net was.

That article says it was first discovered in September. If that's true and it is much more contagious than other strains then would it have not ripped through most of the country by now?

The cynic in me thinks that this whole 5 day Xmas things was to try and make Johnson look more popular, now they have realised it's impossible they're blaming a new strain of COVID rather than admitting they fucked up by saying it in the first place. If they were serious about this magical Christmas they should have shut non essential shops and secondary schools 2 weeks ago and told everyone to work from home.