sandwichsaint

Spoil sport on Stafford Rangers, scrolling down and was just going to post (guess)that.

Not sure technology would have helped yesterday - he has reportedly seen it - and then 'decided' it's not handball. The referee will always have to make a subjective judgement beyond the mere 'fact' of the ball hitting the hand. I'm not sure about the criticisms of refs not keeping up with the game, the ref was well-placed for our incident and also the Chelsea one too and both were in the last few minutes of the game - possibly could be some mental fatigue involved? Do controversial incidents tend to happen late in games? Webb missed one in the first minute yesterday..... I don't think there will ever be a definitive answer as to how to improve refereeing standards; the game is so fast, the stakes so high, for many players and managers 'cheating' is the norm, and the coverage at the top level is unremitting - 20 cameras a game, super slo-mo, HD, graphics boards etc etc. Unsurprisingly some referees make some mistakes sometimes. I'm not sure that 'technology' would help much, most mistakes appear to be the result of an 'incorrect' interpretation rather than the ref completely missing something. I was gutted with yesterday's decision and would happily never have Clattenberg again ever, but don't kid yourself that we can just get rid of these refs and that there will be another 10-20 below who are ready to move up to that level. The top refs are there for a reason, they are the top refs available and they sit at the top of a pretty big pyramid, if there were better ones available they would be doing the job now.

Moving on, has anyone read 'Powder Wars'? The story of one guy's involvement in the Liverpool underworld/gangs/rackets in the 60s and 70s, a rollicking tale of unmitigated violence and criminality. The plot turns in the 80's when our hero's son becomes addicted to heroin and he decides to take on the big drug barons, goes over to the customs' side and infiltrates two big firms and lives as a super grass. There's a nasty twist at the end when one of the drug barons gets involved in some funny stuff with then Home Secretary Michael Howard and basically cons his way out of jail. The book makes out this was a big thing at the time and it was pushed hard in parliament by Peter Kilfoyle (Liverpool MP) though I don't remember hearing much about it the time, looks like Howard's leaning on the press was pretty effective? The book is ten years old now and I only picked it up by chance but well worth a look if you get the chance it fairly flies off the page. I'm sure Pap can fill in the blanks;)!

Utter twunt! Hand ball at the end is no debate, AL tries to bend it past him and the defender raises his hand to the ball and intercepts it. Stonewall penalty all-day. Clattenberg is building up some serious history with us and someone needs to have a word and get him banned from our games for the next 6 years. Cheated today; we competed well with Everton and the absence of MS proved decisive, we should have had a draw with the penalty, and with MS playing we might have got more than that. Right decision to withdraw Cork who was pushing for a red card but we should have reshuffled somebody into the holding role though, soft second goal. KD looked good - he'll need to be good again on Wednesday.

Davis kicking well. Excellent start to second half so far.

Wrong, 10 teams had double away games, 6 of them have played today. (Man U, Palace, Sunderland etc) ,,,,,,we jointly agreed to slip a day to Sunday .... Peter and Paul really as when we play Chelsea we will only have had 3 days (rather than 4 days if we had played today).

Good stuff. Oh for the joys of hindsight, sat in the pub before the game with a bunch of lads who were piling on Saints to win (10's 20's 50's!) on Saints to win 2-0, 2-1, 3-1, 1-0 (nobody had 3-0 though!). Couldn't believe what they were betting, I saw us getting absolutely Jack Sh from this game. The team is announced and all bets are off - no Lovren, no Davies, no Clyne. As it was - probably the easiest 3 Premier league points you will ever see, Saints on the front foot from the off and we had too much for them in all areas of the pitch. Great to see so many players back on form, Yoshi back near last year's levels, Fonte a class apart, and Shaw back to his swaggering best. Morgan and Cork strutted the midfield as they reprised last year's form, Lallana unplayable for much of the game and Rickie looking back near his best. JRod enjoyed the freedom of the city while Davis roamed and prompted all day. Sterner tests ahead but good to bank another three points, Gazza 6 - much improved but a long way to go still. Kept Cardiff more interested than their general play deserved. Chambers 7 - tidy show but he will have much sterner tests Fonte 8 - imperious and not afraid to get down and dirty too, our most improved player? Joshi 7 - back to last year's levels, mobile and aggressive, do or die defending but he still lacks quality on the ball Shaw 8 - strolled through this, yep, an 18 year old strolling through PL football, scarily good. MS 8 - back near his best, running, tackling, passing, he didn't stop from start to finish Jack Cork 7 - great to see the old JC/MS combo in full flow; industrious and intelligent he kept us moving fd and never gave them a sniff. S Davis 8 - WOW! For somebody that's always been a bit of a maker-up of numbers SD is rapidly becoming integral to the side - perfect for our set-up, runs all day and looks after the ball as well as anyone. JRod 7 - right on his game, 2 great finishes and offered an attacking threat throughout, A Lanalla 8.5 - has taken it to a whole new level - unplayable today, and so much of it is productive -not just a show pony, works so hard defensively as well. RL 7 - much improved, linked well when he had it, sublime assist, clever (easy) goal, and chased and harried really well all afternoon. Subs JW-P, GR, SG ... all came on and DAJFU. Great comeback for Saints after a difficult run of games, fans good too.

Fair play to whoever got into Gazza's head between Sunday and today. He looked like he believed he should be there and that's a first this season. He did OK today, not great (by any stretch) but definitely a step up from where he has been. He was far more pro-active today and for the first time he looked like he was part of a team (rather than a competition winner who was standing between the sticks and didn't know anybody's name). Think he's been hard done by where people are dissing his celebrations at the final whistle; I thought it was great - he ran the length of the pitch at the final whistle to celebrate (apologise/repent) with the travelling faithful, and then didn't know what to do when he got there. Still not convinced, he made a couple of saves today,and his kicking was generally OK - still miles to go if he is to be the long-term answer. I would prefer KD to play at Everton if fit.

Is Jos being paid? Just watched the OG again on MOTD. What is he doing? From where he's standing/facing and the angle the ball arrives at he has to really try hard to get it past the keeper and into the net. Any sort of a pub defender's Sunday morning kick and the ball goes somewhere between 1 yard outside the near post, somewhere towards the corner flag, or towards the corner of the penalty area.

I thought initially he was 'OK' when he played last season, it was a long time ago and people's perceptions have moved on but I remember his distribution at this time was particularly all-right, he was confident with the ball at his feet, but perhaps over-confident? Silly goal against Swansea, melt-down at QPR and then a completely shell shocked performance against Norwich. All confidence gone, the thin line between being OK and not being good enough was crossed. Sensibly withdrawn after this but alas he has regressed massively. We were all hoping that 12 months on the training ground with Boruc/Davis/Mopo would have kicked him onto the next level but alas it was not to be. It's clear from his 'performances' this year that his confidence is shot, his faculties scrambled, paralysis by analysis; goal keeping is all between the ears, 'keepers have a far narrower skill set than outfield players, a much narrower focus. It's all about reading/anticipation/mental strength and backing yourself to do the right thing - Gazza does none of these things. He cowers in his goal like a frightened child, racked by self-doubt, scared of his own shadow, unable to make the transition from spectator to participant. He wouldn't be the first, read Tony Cascarino on playing for Ireland, driving to the games on the team coach and feeling petrified of the forthcoming game, desperately wanting to swap places with any of the fans on the street. Charlie Wigelius wrote the same in his cycling autobiog (brilliant book!) of travelling to a race on the team bus and wanting to swap places with the weekend warriors who had cycled out to watch the race. Call it bottle, call it destiny, call it temperament; most sports stars have it, some don't. 4 weeks ago he was living the dream; in the dressing room with the lads, part of a highly acclaimed project, sat on the bench at Stamford Bridge watching Premier league football close-up and in glorious technicolor - and getting paid for it- what's not to like? One injury to AB and that all changes, Gazza was positively bricking it, AB was reluctant to come off (we can all see why now) and Gazza was reluctant to go on (we can see why now). He's just not cut out for it - I'm sure he's a decent guy - he was highly rated at Gillingham, I work with Gills ST holders and he was picking up rave reports there (Saint Charlie will tell you the book in which he was rated as one as one of the brightest prospect in the lower leagues), it was not wrong to buy him, it just hasn't worked out. Sometimes we all have to move on. Not sure what moving him to a lower lge club on loan would do for him or for us, he will never be a GK at the standard we require, I would be very surprised if he was still a professional footballer when his contract runs out. Why would a club sign him? Why would a manager play him? A non-saving goalkeeper. He appears to be pathologically incapable of doing the job he is paid for - he looks a decent guy, he's lived the dream, it hasn't quite worked out - move on. Gym instructor? Primary school teacher? Maybe something in the forces? He's still got time. I don't believe Cropper could be worse (worse than what?); if our 4th choice keeper is genuinely 'worse' than Gazza, our second choice keeper is KD (top bloke and SFC all round good guy), and our third choice keeper looks like a competition winner we aren't going where NC thinks we are any time soon. #Cathartic! Roll-on Thursday!

Where's Seaborne?

Agreed. but after the Villa game there were plenty on here who never wanted to see Yoshida playing for us ever again..... We were poor today (bar AL and Cork) and Spurs were up for it. JRod makes it 2-0 ...... and we would still have struggled to get anything from that game with that line-up. Hopefully Shaw and Fonte will play on Thu, i would play our 4th choice keeper, the 3rd choice has completely lost the plot.

Bump, last chance to tip the next 8 games, a simple W, D, L will suffice; name the scores if you wish. The winner got 7 correct results out of 8 last time, can anybody get a perfect 8 this time? Spurs (H) - Cardiff (A) - Everton (A) - Chelsea (H) - West Brom (H) - Sunderland (A) - Arsenal (H) - Fulham (A) -

I've got three boxed and ready to give out as Xmas presents, really looking fd to them being opened and having a little look myself. Thoroughly endorse the appeal to buy one, shocking that these guys who have produced some of the most acclaimed sports books around are sitting on a shed load of their own money and with no distribution deal. We are truly lucky to have the history of the club chronicled in such depth and with such loving detail, has any other club got anything half as good as In That Number? Please buy one if you can!

Don't know about this season, it hasn't been open much. Last season the KA had to screen off the back yard and ran a strict 'door policy' (show your tkt, home fans only) for certain games as and when directed by the police - Spurs was one of the games that was home fans only. If he doesn't have a home tkt prob best avoid the KA?

Brilliant (did the missus veto Nicola?)

Tim Sherwood might.

I’m sure once we’re established in the PL and we have survived the difficult second season syndrome we can expect to really kick on in the cups. I fully expect the club to issue a statement in the summer, via Crafty Nic’s PR pals, saying that we are targeting both of the cups next season. The club will have realised by then that we will ‘never’ get in the top 4 and that we are ‘too good’ to go down and we will use the lure of both the FA and Capital One cups to start the second phase of the five-year plans with ‘Operation Wembley’. We will continue to spend big, luring players to SMS with the promise that we will always play our strongest sides in the cups, indeed the very best signings will have clauses in their contracts guaranteeing that will play in the early rounds of the league cup 'irrespective of the opposition'. Players will all stand a really good chance of picking up an FA Cup or Capital one cup medal, and we will rotate our league side accordingly. ‘What the fans of this club really crave is a big day out at Wembley, no one remembers where you finish in the league’ said sources close to the club.

Nothing wrong with 'seeking out space' ......

To replace MoPo? I think Dalek would disintegrate with joy.

Fixed it. I couldn't get it to talk to each other from Internet Explorer (some sort of 'extensions' stuff?, it works fine in Chrome. (you can make your list in IE, you just can't export it, at least in the set-up I've got at work) Nifty app, you can use it all round all the BBC radio stations.

I used this last week, you log in, you tag tracks you like on the radio (6 music for me), you compile a virtual playlist, you then export your playlist to Spotify, I did all this last week and it worked really well. I am now logged into BBC playlister and I have Spotify running, when I try and export my new playlist I go through all the motions, it looks fine, but it doesn't connect to Spotify and doesn't move the music over... it just re-directs me to a pop-up window pushing the spotify and playlister apps (it didn't do this bit last week). I have now downloaded the playlister app into Spotify but I can't see any way of logging into it and it shows my playlist as 'empty' (it just links back to the BBC site, where I am logged in, and I can see my music). All very gggrrrhhhhh! It worked beautifully simply last week and I can't do anything with it today. V annoying.

Excellent. I missed out on Villa W (which we should have won) and Man City W (which we should have won). Next 8, Spurs (H) - W 2-0 Cardiff (A) - W 1-0 Everton (A) - L 0-2 Chelsea (H) - L 0-2 West Brom (H) - W 3-1 Sunderland (A) - D 0-0 Arsenal (H) - D 2-2 Fulham (A) - W 2-1 W4 D2 L2 F10 A8

BBC have it that Newcastle are the team we have most PL wins against and have scored most PL goals against. Guess we must have a pretty tidy home record against them.