sandwichsaint

Beat me to it, print that one out and send it to Mr Jao (sic).

This has the makings of an attractive game, we have been pretty good last two home games, Leic are organised and counter attack with pace and precision. Can we create chances? Against their defence yes, can we take them? Maybe. Can we concentrate for 90 minutes and shut out quite a potent attack? Maybe if Forster and VVD are on it, will they be though? I've only been to one game this season and not really missing it but would quite like to have gone tonight (doh! tomorrow). Interesting possibilities all round, I'm going for an entertaining 2-2.

surprised we're 13th, West Ham, Sheff Wed, Villa, Sunderland, not in my top 12.

Blind answer, bigger than us on FB Celtic Rangers ManUtd Arsenal Spurs Chelsea Man City Lpool Everton Newcastle Wolves Leeds SFC (not in order) ??????

Has he got a book coming out or something? Just when we'd all forgotten about him and moved on, and found the football world keeps turning in a quite satisfactory fashion without him he crawls out from under his self-imposed rock with the biggest load of twaddle you are ever likely to hear. Of course he had a game plan, that’s not the problem; every referee who ever reffed a game has a game plan; I referee (umpire) at a pretty modest level and I have a game plan on a Saturday afternoon. Where he is clearly BS’ing is in coming out now and saying it was all in his game plan not to send anybody off; that’s not in his choice, the rules clearly state which offences attract which penalty and while he has (lots) of room for interpretation he can’t just make it up as he goes along. The reality is he allowed the pot to get hotter and hotter, which arguably is a ‘good thing’ for the neutral and the watching ‘000.000s (but as stated above, not to the point where his actions eg not sending off players, who should subsequently be banned etc starts to impact on the overall sporting integrity of the event he is supposed to be officiating at). He then found, too late, he couldn’t turn the flame back down and it was no thanks to him that a player didn’t suffer serious injury or his actions provoke serious crowd disorder. In reality he ‘lost it’ big time in what was one of the worst refereeing performances we have ever seen in top flight football. By his own admission he missed three red cards (and that was only the worst offences), there were probably another three if you analyse the yellow cards that were given or could have been given; there was also some pretty unseemly scenes with both teams' benches and cards should have gone there too. He was appointed to do a job of work and he failed spectacularly, to now claim that he had a game plan and he stage-managed the whole thing with some sort of parallel rule book and that he allowed Spurs to implode is surely a bit of a **** take to any sports fan.

Wolves;)

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.