sandwichsaint

Where are you getting that from? Vital cog for me - regularly picks up an un-noticed 7 and gets his share of 8's too - his problem (a little like Gully) is when he has one, he absolutely has one cf Leicester last week (just like MS, just like Cork, just like Conno, just like Gully did etc etc etc). I bet NA keeps count and I bet Hammond's season avg over all games is equal to that of MS or JC. Personally I have no beef either way, just saying my personal hunch is that NA will continue to play him; if he does I hope we will all get behind him cos I don't recognise him as our weakest midfielder and I wouldn't have thought NA does either - tho looking at Saturday's selection we could see a MS/JC combo tomorrow tonight LOL!

Where's Jack Cork in all of this? One of our very best players in the first part of the season and looked genuine PL class, worryingly inconsistent since then. Well chuffed with Sharp and Lee (once I've seen him play) but we are still left with 3 fairly similar midfielders now playing for one or two places. Reckon we will see an awful lot of rotation across the middle with: Deano, MS, JC, AL, JP, Gully, Falque, Chappers and SDR (and Holmes and the yoof) competing for 4 starting places and two spots on the bench. Effectively we can rotate our midfield pack every game without losing very much at all - if we can pull this off and maintain consistency it will be massively to our advantage. Have a hunch that Hammond will start most games in the centre; a fit AL is a given, interesting to see where we go from there?

Great news, grab an oar son!

That's not logical!

Good result - in the hat for the next round and another 90 mins competitive football lined up for Bart / Punch / Lee / Chaplow perhaps? / and the yoof players too. Great bounce back today from NA and the boys - bring it on for Tuesday!

Don't forGet yore iD !!!!

TBF we've never replaced Ivan Golac (but we keep hoping)!

Slower the better - this was the first game I looked for at the start of the season and everything crossed for getting 5 tkts on general sale!

Great news, decent player at this level, let's hope he can get up to speed quickly because he will certainly give us options either as a starter or from the bench.

Not sure it's helped over-much by modern idetikit fans either? If you'll pardon the pun a trip to SMS hasn't been much to shout about for a good few seasons. What has happened to the Northam this season? I've been to four home games this season (block 37-38) and the 'atmosphere' from the Northam has been pretty much non-existant. Don't want to come over all Bearsy but what is it with people who pay 27 quid to watch a game and then seem to spend most of their time moving to and from their seats, eating and drinking, checking their phones, updating face book, and generally doing anything except actually watching the match, and then cap it all off by leaving anything up to 15 minutes early 'to beat the traffic' (or as in last night in a big hissy fit because we aren't winning every game we play, preferably by x goals to nil). I don't think you have to look too much further to see why there's not much atmosphere at SMS nowadays. Also a reason why a lot of fans enjoy an away game 'more'. I'm down for the Cardiff game and part me is really looking fd to it; the other part is dreading a repeat of last night - on and off the pitch! Bonus ball from last night is that we might now sell our West Ham tkts slightly less quickly and means my 5 will go through to general sale!

Ben Thatcher CHDAJFU last night!

I like your posts but now you are just re-writing history! First 20 mins was level, we scored and got on the front foot, second half we were excellent (albeit against 10 players). At Forest v 10 men we saw Lallana, Hammond, Morgo and Cork all on top of their games; add in Connoly (Guly was average) and we had 5 of our front 6 really firing. We would have taken apart any team in this league on that second 45 mins - difference today is not just Forest v Leic, it is much more the diff in performance levels from our players. Why were so nervous etc today? Cork over 20 games has ranged from Prem Lge to Ryman South ..... how can one player be so inconsistent?

I think you mean our half but we get it anyway.

Apart from ML, and apart from 'signing' NA from sunny Scunny, WGS made a very shrewd investment in the Williams/Telfer combo ... two players that did really well for us and helped us get back on the front foot as an established PL team.

Yep the V man, the man that consistently gives our oppo the heads up on who will and who won't be playing. Time he was banned from here?

Which is easiest to replicate next time out? 2-0 is a clean team performance with everybody doing their jobs. 4-2 gives a licence to sloppy defending and relies on your team scoring 3 to get a win ..... can you really rely on your team scoring 3 (a relatively high number of goals) every game? The manager / coach / player would always take the 2-0. The fan and the chairman would always take the 4-2. I used to like it when we won 3-1 every week.

Did he though? With the new financial rules that's probably the going rate for the absolute top-end youngsters (there's not very many of them available with probably 90% of the top boys already with the big clubs). Bits I've seen of AOC he seems to have settled well and at this stage I would imagine that they consider it money well spent (even though you and I would probably have bought an established goal keeper and a decent centrehalf for the same money).

Trottman did well for us, some people have funny memories.

Really hope the club have pushed for max allocation for this. We have a group of 5 (no STs) who have been to about 6 aways each. I'll be proper ****ed if the club take 2k and then put them out in a very restricted last-minute window to 'two per ST' or some such rollocks. Let's get them out to one-per-ST this week, and then database one-per-customer-number next week.

Don't get it. Why have we suddenly started doing our business in public when we haven't done that at all since NC has been here? Either it's us putting it out there that we're after a big player and don't mind spending big money, why would we do that? Or it's kite-flying by agents and other clubs saying 'I'm available', 'Come and buy me', 'Let's start an auction'; I can't see that's really the way for other clubs/agents/players to go if they want to impress NC. cf The way he bombed Ward(?) out from Cov at the last minute. For these reasons I'm not sure we'll now get either of these, much as either (both!) would be welcome. Much more likely to get somebody under the radar who hasn't been linked at all, or possibly Maynard or Sordell still (if they keep their traps shut!)?

My top 4; Saints, WHU, Reading, Hull. Which would leave 2 spots for Cardiff, Boro, Palace, Leeds, Brum, BPool, Derby or Burnley...... say Cardiff and Brum then? It's a tough old league that we're top of.

12 noon on Good Friday? (give us a nice extra day to prepare for Palace if it is)

Was she the girl standing on her seat at the back directly behind the goal? Absolute legend, she stood and sang everything for the full 90; she could show some of our travelling support how to do it;). If it was you, you were stood right behind me, we were the the noisy beggars in front of you.

Lallana plays well. There is a lot less hoofing/long diagonal passes (take your pick) from Fox. There is lots more inter-changing and ground work/short stuff between DF / AL / DC. Chicken or egg (?)

Nutshell! Can't believe Saints haven't had more credit for how well we played. The first 20 minutes were pretty level but from the first goal it was pretty much game over. Of course Forest were poor and the 10 man thing killed it for them but it was great to see Saints have the confidence to keep the ball in all areas of the pitch, with some awesome passages of play. One sequence in the second half in front of the dug outs was shades of the Leeds/Saints humiliation clip from the 70's as we made about 15 passes in a 10m grid, then sprung out to the opposite side of the pitch to start yet another attack. Fantastic stuff. Forest fan on 606 on the way back '........ Southampton were an average team ......' , Forest fan on one of their message boards 'we should be doing better .... man-for-man .... blah, blah .... it's not as if Southampton had any players who would get in our team ....' Clueless, just like their manager. Anybody that was there on Saturday was privileged to watch real quality, if we can roll that forward into the Leic and Cardiff games then we should be seeing a couple of crackers at SMS.