Matthew Le God

And as I've already pointed out to you... Newcastle have the 18th worst home record this season in the Premier League! So Newcastle's home atmosphere isn't helping them get home points from a significant sample of 14 out of 19 home games!

What does that have to do with the question I asked you? (btw St James Park is in Exeter... not Newcastle )

The team he listed is intended to be a three centre back system, how can Bertrand be both a centre back and a wing back at the same time?

He is a nasty piece of work, but to label him a sh!te footballer is wrong. He is a very creative and incisive passer of the ball and it would be good for us to not have him play at the weekend.

If he wins the cup and keeps us up he'd still deserve the sack. He has overseen an absolute mess of a 29 game league campaign so far. To win the cup he'd have beaten... Fulham, Watford, West Brom, Wigan and probably 2 of Spurs, Man Utd & Chelsea. One League 1 team, one Championship team, two not so great PL teams and two very good Premier League teams. Winning our second major trophy would be great of course, but a 6 game cup run isn't enough to patch over the disastrous bread & butter of the league campaign. It is a real struggle to see any redeeming features from how Pellegrino has set Saints up this season. If he remains in charge next season it is hard to see him having a better league season as he is out of his depth.

What makes you think I said anything remotely approaching that in my post? I'd obviously prefer that not to be the case and had we been playing at St Mary's we would have VAR for the quarter final.

That is flawed because VAR is not a new rule... it is a tool that means existing rules are more likely to be applied. Saints and Wigan have no advantage over each other and are playing under the exact same rules of the sport as the other 3 quarter finals.

Sims and Boufal as wingbacks is asking for disaster.

Alex Crook is completely clueless as to the working of any professional club, he has shown now for years that he lacks contacts within clubs. I asked him to link to an article of his that wasn't predated by someone else and came true and he struggled badly. He is a 'copy and paste journalist'...

Playing Devil's advocate... Hull the day before Silva - 3 points from safety Hull at the end of season - 6 points from safety

How about judge a manager on his merits and ability rather than rule the majority of the world population out for not being British?

Of course it has potential flaws as it is hard to give statistics for how good the resulting flick on was. But I've seen Saints fans claim he wins 'nothing in the air'... which is clearly nonsense. I'm Tyler Durden!

Who?

What evidence do you have to support that? 18th for home record after 14 out of 19 home games is a pretty damning statistic!

What factor is that? Newcastle have the 18th worst home record in the Premier League in 2017/18. This "St. James' Park" factor has not helped them so far! If anything it is a hinderance!

Looks like you could well be right! If we had a competent manager who knows... we could beat this Arsenal rabble of players...!

If someone hasn't had a managerial role in the 5 years it is usually for a good reason. For example... they are happy with effective retirement, happy working in the media, considered a dinosaur for modern football and are out of touch with the modern game etc etc. How many examples of clubs picking such a manager out of work for 5+ years are there? An extremely rare event (if ever)

I'd guess he is trying to call you out on your ability to judge player quality.

If they lose today (still possible with 70 minutes to go), they'd be 3 points ahead. That isn't 'away into the distance'.

https://www.whoscored.com/

Why? (tbh I'm not sure why he choose not having a managerial job in the last five years as the criteria)

As post 219 in this thread shows, he is doing significantly better than any of our other current striker options (plus Lambert and Pelle) at winning aerial duels. Problem is Pellegrino sets up with him often isolated from supporting players to benefit from his hold up play and flicks ons/knockdowns.

Acceleration, pace, work rate/closing down... not many (if any) better at those in our squad.

The stats are averages per game, so it doesn't matter how long they were playing for. It is an average per 90 minutes.

None of these meet the criteria asked for in the opening thread. Can Saints fans not read!?