trousers

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Pre-Match Press Conference.... RH: "KWP is back in contention. Redmond out for another month, should be back after international break" Journo asked about Djenepo. Ralph started to answer: "Because of his mum? Not sure...." and then they cut the video off mid-sentence.....

Going to be a tricky one this season I reckon. It's human nature to vote for players that score a significant number of goals, so Ings ought to be a shoe-in, however Armstrong and JWP have been revelations during the middle third of the season and continue to be so. They have been as pivotal to our turnaround in form as Ings has IMO. All that said, if Ings gets to 20 goals all bets will be off anyway, if they aren't already.

Looks like a good weekend to me, given all the bites...

9 points ahead of a team that aren't even "cut adrift" yet. Marvelous.

Half the problem, IMO, is that most of the best and most passionate Saints fans are on the SWF match thread rather than at the game a lot of the time. If we could somehow get these people along to the game then problem solved.

"up the premier league we go"

Get in! Or (for the non 'realists' amongst us): "bugger... Takes Arsenal further away from us"

Another Arsenal goal and we go up to joint 12th

Villa have lost 2 and won 1 of their last 3 PL games. Same as us. They have a 'fragile mentality' away from home. Logically, I'm not seeing an obvious winner either way

I agree with SKD

Villa have an equally awful away record. Ergo, I guess there are as many pessimistic, sorry "realistic", Villa fans doubting their likelihood of winning this one as there are Saints fans. Me? (a) I hope we win (b) I'm predicting we'll win © it wouldn't surprise me if we lose None of these stances are mutually exclusive.

Yeah, but optimism = complacency. Innit?

He's not looking for people to believe him, just to respond to it...

We've had a couple of injuries recently whereby it looked like the players would be out longer than they were (Armstrong and JWP) so for fingers crossed that Redmond falls into this bracket

Chomp chomp chomp

Annoying result. Creates a 9 point gap between us and 5th

No reason to be amazed. Life is always more rewarding if you predict failure rather than than success. By predicting failure you get a degree of satisfaction either way (i.e. you get to play your "told you so" card if said failure ends up occuring). Predicting success only gives you a degree of satisfaction if said success ends up as the outcome.

With us having the worst home record and Villa have the 2nd worst away record I guess a draw is the most likely outcome

Yep, that's another possible outcome.

Villa are (as it stands) 6 points behind us and with the same goal difference. They play us next so could be 9 points behind us and in danger of being cut adrift if we beat them

Just back from the game. 'Typical Saints' territory... an excellent run of games where we were 2nd only to Liverpool in the form table then games like today. Ok, the weather made it a bit of a lottery, especially in the 2nd half, and they won it with a moment of individual good play, but that doesn't explain why we didn't play with the intensity and desire that took us to the aforementioned heights in December / January. A draw would have been a fair result today as neither team shone but hey ho. By the way, would be interested to know what was going through Ralph's mind when he picked Vestegaard over Bednarek. Not because one player might be considered better than the other but because the foundation of our recent good form was built on a solid and consistent defensive unit. So why make a seemingly unnecessary change to that unit, especially with a debutant at right back? Strange. Today's result means we have to start looking below us again, however we're still as close to top 6 as we are the bottom 3 so some pivotal games coming up.

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