trousers

Any chance of Austin being back for the next league game in two weeks? I suspect him coming back for the last 10 games and staying fit is now our main hope of avoiding the drop...

If we stay up he gets the premier league cash to offset his investment. If we go down we sell our best players, which will offset his investment. I don't foresee his investment being "crippled" either way.

On way home from the game. After some half decent performances in recent weeks, that was back to square one. Back to players being devoid of any fight or passion. What's so difficult about giving 100% every game?

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Would have thought that was worthy of more than 2 bites (make that 3 now if we're counting this one )

My hunch is that Pellegrino will be reluctant to 'drop' him as he'll be worried about the flak he'll get from the tactical geniuses in the stands....

^This Can we do rocket science next? p.s. the more observant amongst you will recall that I had Guido, not Long, starting in my preferred line-up earlier in the thread. That'll be the raving hypocrite in me.... On reflection, I agree that Long is the better fit, tactically, for this game.

Guido is a different type of striker to Long. The tactics of opponents differ from game-to-game, ergo you play the type of striker that works best against those tactics. Yes, I know that such 'logic' has to be balanced against the goalscoring form of said strikers, but surely applying tactical logic to striker selection is more sensible than playing the same type of striker game in, game out for the sake of it, just because they happen to cost more than the other available strikers?

Lovren and VvD?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/amp/football/42996628?__twitter_impression=true "Jay Rodriguez: West Brom striker charged over racist abuse allegation"

I wonder how many hours/days/weeks there were between us agreeing a deal with Arsenal/Walcott and Everton coming in with their salary offer. If it was hours then I can understand us being gazumped, but if it was days or weeks between the two events then could that indicate we weren't quick enough to tie him down?

As an aside, this screenshot from 7th February 2015 popped up on my 'on this day' facebook feed this morning.... made me feel a little wistful....

# trivia klaxon # So, how many ex-Saints managers is that now who have managed a national side (either before or after managing Saints)? Off the top of my head I can think of.... Laurie Mac (Northern Ireland), Burley (Scotland), Hoddle (England), Redknapp (Jordan), Strachan (Scotland), Koeman (Netherlands) Any others?

Fixed it for you....

Poop

Goooooaaaaaalllll

Can't see Chelsea getting back into this, somewhat annoyingly

Indeed. Looks to have put on a bit of weight too. Perhaps TheVMAN could reassure us all is ok...

McQueen scores with a 30 yard free kick Now 2-1 to Saints. Hesketh having a good game

You sure? I'd been led to believe we've flirted with relegation every season since we got promoted....

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Heart says stick with same starting 11 Head says tweak it a bit, thus: ---------------------- McCarthy ---------------------- Cedric ---- Stephens --- Hoedt --- Bertie ------------ Hojbjerg ---------- Romeu ---------- ------------------------ Lemina ----------------------- ----- JWP ------------------------------- Boufal --- -------------------------- Carrillo ---------------------- Subs: Forster, Yoshida, Davis, Tadic, Sims/Redmond, Long, Gabbiadini On the surface, that maybe looks too defensive, given the clamour for attacking football, but by bringing back Hojbjerg alongside Romeu, we can give Lemina the freedom of a more box-to-box roll IMO, so I would still see it as a positive line up. I admit that line up is somewhat harsh on Tadic though, and there's always a case for starting him, especially now as he should link up well with Carrillo, but on current form it's difficult to justify dropping JWP too, and I feel we need to retain Boufal in the starting line up for his creativity and unpredictability. Good to have a few selection headaches though.

Could it be argued that said chant sparked the players into a reaction or was the improved performance thereafter just a coincidence?