trousers

Totally. In fact, I think we should own this 9-0 malarkey from here on in and engineer one each season.

We lost our next 2 games after last season's 9-0, so no panic if we don't bounce straight back this time either...(although, those 2 games were both vs Man City of course)

How come they missed out the "Do all teams that lose 9-0 go on achieve top 6 form in the ensuing 12 months?" question...?

As soon as fans are allowed back into stadium again, I hope the club withdraw their request for Dean and Mason not to referee our games so that we can express our appreciation of their services to football in person....

How many feckin' "muscle injuries" is that so far this season? Gotta be some kind of record, surely?!

I assume the cutoff just applies to the next day's games rather than the whole gameweek?

Dean & Mason

One assumes they did exactly the same after Leicester and before our ensuing excellent 12 month run...?

Everything looked ok a fraction of a second before the tackle... just looks like two players going for a loose ball in this freeze-frame... (I'm not attempting to excuse a bad tackle here, just highlighting that there may be a relatively fine line between a good tackle and a mis-timed one, especially when you're 19 and pumped to the brim with a heady mix of adrenaline, fear and excitement)

Ok, I'll give you the arousal you crave by biting... Can I ask why you didn't post this a couple of months ago?

Indeed, if it goes to 4-1 then we enter an alternate reality (#BTTF). We'd have still lost but our heads would've been up rather than down

He wanted first team football. He wasn't getting it at Saints, ergo, leaving would be a logical path to take. Perhaps we should be applauding his ambition and desire rather than getting parochial about it...?

Why weren't people coming out with this sort of stuff a couple of months ago...? Surely the ownership was just as bad during the whole of 2020 when we were the 5th or 6th best team in the country in the calendar year...?

I'd take a 9-0 defeat every season if it was accompanied by top 6 form the rest of the time rather than wall-to-wall average performances.

How do you know things won't recover again like last time?

Surely, if there's one lesson to learn from the previous 9-0 result it's not to make knee-jerk decisions...?

And then went on a superb 12 month run (top 6 form over 38 games). Maybe judge him on that too rather than one game...?

Yeah, I can't work out if this just doubles the amount of "9-0" grief we get or if one dilutes the other! Doesn't feel quite as deflated as I did after the Leicester game as we didn't give up today and were on the receiving end of some dubious decisions. Hey ho... We get knocked down, we get up again...

Ralph looks distraught. Wouldn't be surprised if he walked

Difference between this and the Leicester game is that we didn't throw in the towel at half time. Small consolations

Penalised for trying to pull out of the tackle. I give up with these fucking laws

Cant be arsed to wait for the game to finish... Next!

It's part of the plan you ignoramus (no offence). We always go on a 30 game top 6 form streak after our annual mauling. Happy days