Wurzel

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44360546 Never heard that referenced before. Anyone know how long and what age he was here? Can we add to him to Ramsey, Hoddle & Keegan as ex-Saints England managers

But that shirt DOES have We March On inside the collar. Fingers crossed it's a fake after all, it's horrible.

Yep that makes sense, although that's effectively 2 week breaks staggered over a 3 week period. Probably just badly worded.

After years of talking about it the PL has decided on a winter break in February https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/44414487 Could be just me but not sure how this works Does that mean 10 teams have 2 weeks uninterrupted whilst the other 10 have two separate weeks with a game in the middle?

Assuming the same squad as well, in his short spell he showed he could get more out of them than MO could (both tactically and attitude/effort wise) Think Hughes would have won the same games MP won. Without being over optimistic I think he'd have secured at least an additional 5 wins among our 15 draws, and another 5 draws among our 16 defeats Which, whilst not spectacular would have put us 8th comfortably above Everton and just behind Burnley

Read this last week on holiday. About half the book is about his time here. Not that you'll learn much about the club. It's really about his constant striving to improve himself as a player, from childhood to present day (up to date enough to mention MH arrival but not staying up so ). He really does seem one hell of a committed guy, deserves any success he achieves in his career.

7:58pm this evening

To be fair the PL has had 4 different winners in the last 6 years. It's far more open than most of the other big European leagues. For me that is the most important thing. Admittedly desire and belief and confidence don't win points on their own, but without it even the best tactician in the world will struggle.

Putting 2+2 together and making 5 I would interpret "so far" as "not any longer". After all they have only really had a chance to see our transfer strategy in action in the January window. They've had plenty of time since then to assess it's effect. If club wants Hughes and Hughes wants to stay then maybe it's only the decision on LR that is delaying things. If I was MH I'd like to think I had enough experience in British football to not need to defer to LR or any other DoF

6min55secs in, to save you having to endure it all again.

No, he correctly said they were inexperienced - the context being managing an English team in the PL. That's something completely different to no one had heard of them.

Except he didn't say that at all did he.

I hope they didn't. He kept us up with 8 points from 8 games. He could have achieved that with 8 0-0 draws but that would have made him even more boring than the last two, and we'd have no idea of he was any better than that. I wouldn't want to keep him under those circumstances. Thankfully his 8 points were achieved by arguably improving the side with every game, so no reason not to think he can't continue improving it into next season. I'd like to think with hindsight it's now just a case of the board rubber stamping a new contract.

The Tadic that ended the season compared to the Tadic that played the first 30 odd games is like making our first summer signing before the season even ended. 2 months ago I wouldn't have picked him, now he's a must keep (provided of course we keep Hughes or sign a new manager who can continue to get the best out of him)

Dressing room scenes

Seeing the reactions of the players at the end of both the Everton & Swansea games don't think we can ever again suggest they don't care. Clearly they are as one as a team and care about the club, if only the last two managers had been able to find a way of getting even half of that level of enthusiasm out of them. Got to keep Hughes for another season.

This. Totally agree with the above. Only cause for complaint was the ghost foul given against Redmond right in front of the lino ( who's facial expression showed that he didn't even consider for a second it might have been a foul) then letting them take the freekick from miles away. If that wasn't given they'd never have got back up our end.

That was my initial thought as well ...... then I remembered even if we do go down (which personally I now think is unlikely) we'll still be above them for another year at least. So mock away.

For a younger readers the Painted Wagon was a city centre pub. The blue few did not travel by horses drawn transport (Embarrassingly that's how I read it the first time)

That's true, even as a teenager stood on the Milton terraces in the mid 70s I seem to remember the same rumour going round virtually every time we played someone in blue. Never saw anything in the ground, outside may have been a different matter (but I doubt it) To be fair they'd have had trouble getting into The Dellin those days. It was cash on the day, turnstile operators would have been well trained in checking for webbed fingers when the money as handed over.

I'm writing off the Man City game ( although secretly hoping they'll be in holiday mode by then). For me tomorrow is the crunch day. The way I see it if we beat Bournemouth we will also beat Swansea and Everton. If we lose we won't get another point. So it's either 9 more points or zero more points, really can't see any other combination of results happening. And unfortunately even the optimistic 9 still leaves us depending on the results of others.

Relegation is irrelevant. Pretty much all of those points (probably with the exception of administration) need addressing if we manage to stay up as well. Up or down, next year isn't going to be pleasant without a few changes from bottom to top.

You mention Palace and ManUre. I was reading only yesterday about how good ManUre support was against Spuds on Saturday (which it was). They put it down to the club learning from what Palace had done at Wembley, i.e ensuring when selling their Wembley tickets that certain blocks (lower tier behind goal) were allocated as singing section. Better atmosphere, no right to moan if people are standing but far to difficult for our club to implement (if they even though about it, which I doubt).

2nd favourites for relegation back then? ....... Burnley !