sandwichsaint

Spanish Carlton Palmer.

Thoroughly decent bloke, always seemed very genuine and honest with his comments.

You missed out Lallana's wild slide on Cedric when we were countering two on one in the first half, and a host of other misdemeanours. On balance booking Tadic was one of the few things he got right all night.

One of the few things he got right all night! It was clearly a yellow card in the rules of the game (Tadic running ten yards directly towards him, waving his arms and presumably giving him a right sweary mouthful too); notwithstanding that Tadic had been wrestled over by Clyne immediately preceding that it was the 'correct' decision. Agree the ref was totally inept and biased all evening but let's get him for the plenty of things he did and didn't do!

Loving all the Liverpool 'under-performing' and 'not-turning-up' stuff this morning .. a little bit of credit for our team and our manager please.

Somebody's tired What a great night that was, thought the support was really good too. Definitely given ourselves half a chance which is a massive step up from the 'no chance' we were on 12 hours ago!

A touching scene, and he could give you some tips on how to drink wine while you were at it.

Chris Perry - his legs had gone but he put himself through it every week for us. Antonio - I thought he had excellent potential, the forum genius's and the fans on the board knew better, one that got away. Osvaldo - I didn't see much of him but he was always 'interesting', and that goal too - probably 3 years ahead of his time punching Fonte out as well. PS I do realise we couldn't sign Antonio at the time.

When did the story about his missus being unsettled 'appear' in the press? Pre 5pm Saturday or post 5pm Saturday?

Sat16th Sat 23rd Boxing Day football on the Tuesday Sat 30th NYD fixtures on the Monday FA Cup 3 on Sat 6th Jan This would have seemed a completely 'normal' set of fixtures at one time. Two flies in the PL ointment: the games will be moved all over the shop for TV, and the completely superfluous round of games shoe-horned in on Wed 20th Dec. Clearly the 'fairest' option would be to have every team play on the same dates and move the TV games to 13-00/17-00/20-00 or whatever on the scheduled day. Double clearly this won't happen - TV pays the piper and they want games spread right through the holiday period. Best get our whinging in now and then suck it up, it's what every other team has to do, just might feel a little bit sorry if a smaller team qualifies for the Lge cup SFs though....

We look super skinny without Boufal.

I don't think there is any 'challenge' against TV games is there? Think this is being over-played (the fixture schedule) ... we had 10 days off from B to Spurs, a perfect 'half term'/mini-mid winter break for everybody. The game to move would have been yesterday's to Tuesday, was this Everton's only home game at Xmas?

Not a word about Evans' reaction? Launched himself into a double barrel roll and then held his right shin which the West Ham player made no contact with at all. TBF to Dean from his angle it would have looked a lot worse than it was .. the offside was a far worse decision .. there was another player (Pogba?) a further two steps offside and between the ball/Ibra/the keeper, clearly interfering. Not entirely sure how the linesman has missed this one?

Nutshell, we have made a series of less than good decision which have led us into a very un-Southampton like situation. For a club that prided themselves (correctly!) on being one step ahead of the game we have taken our eye off the ball and now find ourselves two steps behind the curve. From a position where we dictated our own development in a pro-active and planned way we are now forced into a position of being reactive. We either tough it out and rebuild in the summer or we chuck money at players we might not have been wanting in the bigger scheme of things. All dependent on a) who will actually come here at the moment and b) whether we stick or twist with the manager. I can't see any easy fix and any option we do take from here is going to cost serious money. The saving light is the youngsters but they've been massively let down by the oldsters this season - can't believe Fonte doesn't cop more flack on here for his antics since the summer, VVD's head's gone, Forster's been beyond abysmal (prob injured as well but with no reliable cover), Redmond has been a moaning and whinging ever present irritant, Long has been like Long has mainly been all his career, JRod will ride on those two B'mouth goals for the rest of the season ... etc etc. Guess none of this is exactly 'unexpected' for a smaller club taking on a full Europa programme, but we do seem to have hit a perfect storm of over-expectant fans and under-achieving management and players. For all they've done for us the board need to suck it up and spend some serious money or move on for someone that can, or else they might be feeling a distinct chill when ST renewal time comes around. Careful what you wish for eh?

Damn predictive txt.

Quite a few on here ....

/ Read somewhere on here today that Boufal made the most tackles in the game. Carp formation to go 4-3-3 against Spurs 4-5-1, unless we were going to go full on press/attack, as indeed we did for the first 20 mins. 4-2-3-1 would have been better, Not sure where the Boufal hate is coming from? He's looked decent so far and not his fault he's playing in a pretty meh team. Suggest you maybe take your dark glasses off tomorrow?

Worse case scenario you can cheer yourself up internally with these five gems: 1 There are Everton fans who think they will be signing VVD in this window, hell, even Koeman thinks this too. 2 There are fans on here who think Schneiderlin wouldn't get into our current side. 3 It's not Wycombe on a Tuesday night, the coldest, nil nil-est game I've ever seen. 4 We are on a sustainable 5 year path and if we have to take the odd 0-1 at home to West Brom so be it. 5 We were born with the greatest gift; a different accident of birth or a mix-up in the maternity ward and we could be skates. Keep it real folks, 1-1, Fonte.

Correct.

Having seen it once in real time, the position of the players etc, I called it as holding, it was well outside the area: free kick outside the area and red card - would have been my decision. Having now seen the video - I think I got it right!

4-5 years you say? Everton to be top 10 ........ tick Saints to be top 10 ..... why not? Heisenberg to be banned ..... unlikely .... why not?

Fonte to Benfica innitt?

He doesn't look too bothered about it, I reckon the photographer is holding up a copy of Ron's most recent pay slip.

Watching his kicking on Sunday he was probably aiming at a completely different part of the mural.

Boro 0-3 Liverpool adds some perspective to our recent 0-0 against the dippers. Stoke a Bomp a Spurs h WBA h What's a par score for that run of fixtures? 4 points/5 points/6 points? We have one down, 1 pt and 3 to play, we could get almost anything between 1 and 10 (obvs need to score a few goals if we are to take more than 4 points!).