sandwichsaint

Man City L Bournemouth W Arsenal W Leicester L Chelsea L Huddersfield W Spurs L Man Utd D Palace W Watford L 13 points

TBF would be a good move for him, he's still got it but he's totally lost his way here the last 18 months. We were watching the Brighton game on the telly box and Mrs Sandwich who is a casual sort of a football fan said to me, what's happened to Tadic? he used to be good, why doesn't he play like he plays for his country?. Literally two minutes later the taters said exactly the same thing.

You have to go back 6 managers till we had a PL proven manger. Do you really think the SouthamptonWay Leopard will change its spots?

Love Adkins to bits, he presided over some of the very best times in my 50 years of Saints-watching but can we just leave him out of all this? Top, top bloke and I would love him around the club in some sort of fronting-up-the-academy type role but he's not the answer at first team level. I think the owners have three (four!) main options: keep MoPe and accept we go down, sell 3 players at xmas and 4-5 more at the end of the season, basically slash and burn, get a lump of their money back and start again in the championship with the parachute money and gives time to find a new manager bring in a safe pair of hands, BFS/Pulis/Pardew would all keep this squad up short-term, whether that's what the fans want or is best for our long term position is debatable. bin MoPe, roll the dice on another LesReed/Blackbox-type manager and hope we find the next Wagner four, there's always the do-nothing option, pray that MoPe morphs into a decent manager, the players refind their form/fitness/mojo and we start to get some points on the board. It's not my money but as a fan I'd favour options 1 or 2, over 3 and 4.

Some would say we already are, but that's probably a bit harsh on the sides in the top half of the championship.

Yes, 11th best team in the last 50 years, but with an average position of just above 17th. When I saw 11th I thought it was too high. Maybe Dalek's onto something?

Great advert for the game if a 0-0 can be such a thing. Two teams going toe to toe in knockout cup football is just so much better to watch than endless playing-not-to-lose league football. Thought the ref was excellent, let both teams go for it and made allowance for the conditions and didn't buy any of the falling over stuff.

Swansea for one Probably two from: Brighton/B'mouth/Palace/Saints/West Ham/Hudds/W Brom/Stoke/Newcastle If we assume all those teams are equally poor / equally likely / equally unlikely to go on good runs or fall into a death spiral / change their managers in a good way or a bad way / improve or not improve in the window etc etc Then it looks like: a we're definitely in it b we 'only' have a 2/9 chance of going down (!) Fixtures played/fixtures remaining is definitely a concern; LOL at those pinning their hopes on signing players in Jan - it will take far more than 'new players' to stop the rot (though a new GK will give us a fighting chance). My prediction is we will change manager over Xmas, buy two starting level players, and pull clear by mid March, finishing around 11-12-13 mark.

In other news Cedric apparently says 'We must all work har....', unfortunately I can't tell you anymore cos that email went straight in the bin unread, just like all the rest of them.

#firstworldproblems

Not sure Gabbi is a target man or particularly suited to 4-3-3, 4-5-1 type systems. With the players we've got I think we'd be better off getting Lemina higher up the pitch (top of a diamond), with Boufal and Gabbi as the two strikers in front of him. Depending on oppo and home/away you can then perm two from Dav/Hoj/JWP/McQueen?/Stephens?? to play either side of Romeu. Long and Redmond as the change-it fd options. You would still have a fairly static/pedestrian midfield but you would at least get three of our better players closer together, nearer to their goal and causing the oppo problems.

He'd be mad not to ... biggest job he's ever gonna get and think he'd do well there. Everton completely lost their way under Koeman, just need to get some organisation and some belief back into themselves. He needs to steady the ship, trade a few in and out and find himself a decent striker, Everton give him time he could easily get them back into the top 6/7.

Tapped up by Juliette no doubt, head's gone.

I enjoyed Leeds v Sheff Utd on Friday evening, proper hurly burly football with a bit of ambition shown from both sides too.

In the big scheme of things one of the problems was that we scored about 75 minutes too early! My game plan was to have just enough for them, weather their early onslaught, bore the home crowd into submission (sod the away fans!), keep a clean sheet, and then nick it 1-0 late on. Only two problems with that plan: a)we don't always score (we did yesterday, yay!) and b) we are pretty good at the back but we can't guarantee a clean sheet if the keeper can't produce the ONE fairly routine save he's required to make. You have to wonder whether we had any sort of plan B lined up yesterday? Bonus early goal and keeping the ball well but you have to think that game was won/lost/drawn on the two half time talks. MPe needs to wise up very quickly that 1-0 at HT isn't a winning lead or a game-over situation in any PL fixture. Obvs Brighton were going to come steaming out, we needed disciplined defence and purposeful counter attacking and decent set pieces and we got neither, just meh.

TBF in the all the doom and gloom we made one classic counter-attack towards the end of the first half, we intercepted in front of our own D, VvD carried it over half way through their broken midfield, he relayed it to the right (JWP or Tadic prob) who quickly played Cedric in on the overlap, Brighton defence all over the shop and we had 3 players in distinct scoring positions in the box, Cedric hammered it over to no-one in particular, Brighton cleaned up and a really good scoring chance went begging. He didn't need to cross blindly, he had time and space to look up and pass it into the middle, we had 3 players all available. TBF he (Cedric) did that all game, he got forward (well) but I can't remember one cross going vaguely near where it was intended. Corners were also a shambles, I don't think we won one header in their box all game, VvD and Hoedt regularly came fd but the ball in was nowhere near them.

You missed 'drop Yoshida' for a full house. And the bonus ball of having Austin nowhere near the match day squad too. Shuffle the deckchairs, or the manager, but we're still just a bit one-paced, not very fit and not particularly bothered in the main. Those long contracts not looking quite so enticing now are they.

From the 5th March: called it 8 months ago;)

Bertrand too.

Yes! Did Fonte have something on refs? He seemed to get away with plenty at his own end, though unfortunately he ran out of luck at the Arse just when we needed some.

Your just a bryl-creamed Ward-Prowse A bryl-creamed Ward-Prowse.

I can trump all those derbies, back in the day when they had a competition that mixed L2 + L3 with the 'Conference' and other decent non-league teams, Meridian TV announcer on local news, 'and in the South Coast derby it was Bournemouth 0 Dover 0' ..... it was probably one of Dover's longest away games of the season. If you like a bit of bovver with your derby I haven't seen Blackburn/Burnley mentioned yet, that was a bubble before bubbles were invented. And for our older viewers that don't think of Brighton as a derby you obviously weren't at the park run after the Goldstone in 1978 (?), or maybe '77? 40 years ago, where's it all gone?

Lemina clearly a big loss but we 'should' still have too much PL know-how for BHA. We can pick any number of combinations where we are 'better' than them man-for-man, but do we want it, can we scrap, and do we know how to grind out a result? ...........Forster ........... CS .... Yoshi...VVD... RB .... JWP.... OR....SD....... .....Long....Gab....Tadic That side should have enough about it to keep a clean sheet, and enough of a counter punch to keep Brighton honest. Add Boufal (and Redmond) from the bench and we could see a solid 0-1 / 0-2 sort of a result.

City centre

Club missing out on a bit of a revenue stream here, looks like they should be selling half-term tickets for #Nighttime(un)GuidedTours