sandwichsaint

Interesting, didn't see this yesterday. We were pretty much playing 4-2-4. Easy to see Everton dominating down the middle of the pitch with their 6 against our 4 and a half. Everton double teaming the left and right backs, like everybody knew they would. JRod way too high to provide effective cover for our RB. Look how far apart our CHs were pulled with 3 particularly being consistently pulled away from the middle to cover Clyne. Looks like RL was effective in keeping their 6 occupied, their 5 either had a really easy afternoon or was pulled out of position by the deep-lying threat of Ramirez? Shame we didn't have somebody with pace who could take advantage of the wide open spaces, particularly down Everton's left. JRod was clearly earmarked for this role and should have scored his first half one-on-one... if we play this again then Mayuka needs to play this role (or Lee!) As everybody has pretty much said - way too gung ho for an away game but very entertaining at home!

And so it goes round, in ever-decreasing circles, we seem to have spunked most of our budget on strawberries and cream, and forgotten to buy a cake to put them on. And who would have it any other way? Is anyone really suggesting we should have foresaken buying Ramirez and bought Dann and Buttner instead? Perhaps we should have foresaken Myuka and bought 5m pounds worth of goalkeeper (or perhaps not as we seem to have acquired Boruc and Gazza for around 1m and now seem to be well covered in that area). Maybe we would be doing better if we had spent 25m on a complete new defence and gone in with last year's front 6, a la Gully/Hammond/Sharp etc? Those scrappy 1-0 defeats would have been sooo much more enjoyable than what we are seeing now. What I see is a club, a team and a manager who are determined to do things the right way; we have in the main invested very well - for the money I think we would have been hard-pressed to have bought better than any of Clyne, Gazza, Boruc, Joshida, or Ramirez. The jury's still out on Mayuka, Davis and Rodrigues but even these three look at least good enough to be squad players at this level. What we haven't got, and it might take two or three windows to get it is genuine depth and quality in the squad, you can argue that our 'strongest' starting X1 (whatever that is?) lacks genuine quality from 1-11, hopefully over time this will become less of an issue. Have to say Adkins was caught in a bit of a schit-storm on Saturday, away to a top side bang on form and without arguably two of his best players so far this season. Having to play a rookie keeper (or a failed one, or an unfit one), having to play his best RB at LB and leaving an under-cooked reserve to face one of the best opposition left-sides in the Prem, having to play a 17 year old in a two man midfield away at Goodison. A couple of injuries to regular starters (add in Cork and Lee too) and we go from passably OK to seriously under-staffed - a situation that's unlikely to change before the next window. What's a manager to do? He can only play the cards he's got and 'hope' that the players do their part. In the circumstances NA's tic-tacs of aiming to win 10 home games and 4 away games make sense on one level - the side is massively loaded towards attacking and so far we seem to be creating and scoring against the best teams in the league, other things being equal we ought to be able to maintain or improve this strike rate against middle and lower table teams. Equally goals against are horrendous at this stage but we don't have to go Arsenal, or City or Everton every week (while teams around us haven't been to these places yet), a bit of 'gelling' across the back, a goalkeeping upgrade from Boruc and/or Gazza and a relatively lower level of opposition and we can start to think the goals against might start to come down. What NA does have going for him is three prize assetts (RL, AL and GR) the question for me is whether they can all start in the same team? At home clearly they can, away I'm not so sure, write those three names on a team sheet and you start to ask questions of the remainder of the front 6 - who else, where else, how? Picking those three on Saturday left Davis, JW-P and Rodriques to fill in the gaps, and unsurprisingly gaps is what we got! If NA had been prepared to go more left-field he could have gone with any of these combinations: Left out AL and played Fox in front of Clyne Played Fox at LB, shifted Clyne back to RB (with the option of playing FR in front of Clyne instead of JRod) Bought in Hooiveld and played Joshida as a sort of screening player in front of the back four (and lost JRod from the right) Could have played Gully on the right (or up front on his own in a Man City stylee, dropping RL or JRod to accomodate this) Could have played Chaplow in the middle with Davis and JW-P (dropping RL. AL, GR or JR to accomodate this) Could have played Chaplow right side instead of JR These are all 'realistic' options but we don't know how many if any were considered, for what we know NA might have got out a piece of paper written AL LM, RL somewhere-up-the-front, GR somewhere-in-behind, and then set about filling up the other seven places - TBH that's what it looked like! Maybe we would have been better with a 4-5-1 with JRod up front, tightening up in the middle and back and Lambert coming on after 60 mins (?) ... you can see the headlines now 'Adkins drops two-goal Lambo to play tyro Rod'. Seemed to me NA put his 'best' 11 players out, told them to go out 'and play a game of football' and see what we could get out of it. Predictably we got slaughtered! ... but he nearly got away with it .... a bad miss from JR for 2-0, and two very presentable chances in the second half ... hence the idea of us winning 4 away games (Norwich/QPR/Swansea/WBA/Stoke/West Ham etc) isn't entirely pie-in-the-sky, if we can keep the bluddy back door shut! So should NA continue to play so gung-ho? Probably not but hard to say until we have played another 6 games and see what the returns are from 6 more 'normal' games. Should we have a different side home and away? Tactics and shape-wise .. probably. Personnel-wise probably a 'yes' to that too, the three musketeers are awesome to watch and we all love them to bits but perhaps there's a case for a less is more approach away from home? Anyway, carry on enjoying the season, I am! It's gonna be a long one and if we can stay up then there's every chance we won't be facing this sort of start next year! A couple more additions and a season's experience for the players and the manger and we can be up where West Brom and West Ham are this time next year! COYRs!

Who would I play in goal? Gazza on Saturday with KD on the bench; I'd be looking for Boruc to come in probably for the West Ham game but for Fulham would be a bonus.

A minutes silence for Gary Speed but not for Dean Richards, how does that work? I was quite happy to observe the Speed one, but it was a major bo.ll.ock from the club not to do one for Deano.

I'm quite tempted by this option, looks like a 20 minute walk and then beat most of the traffic after the game, we've driven over the bridge before the last 2 home games. What's the parking like in Woolston? Pubs? That big one right on the bridge looks fairly Saints related? Anybody else (hundreds!) get caught up in that M3 business on Saturday? We sat in the Charlotte Place car park total gridlock for 15 minutes then did a right turn back down towards the ground and went out to the M27/A3. My phone had the M3 down as shut till 8.00pm. Don't know how accurate that was?

Did he say 'If we lose on Saturday we are fecked'?

In the days of the 25 man squad, international breaks, player rotation etc isn't it rather quaint to keep using the pejorative term 'dropped'? Whatever happened to 'together as one', something that's served us pretty well the last couple of seasons. We probably have a hard core of at least 15-16 players who are good enough to start and could easily justify their place in the starting line-up depending on the team selected for each individual fixture. (I'm hoping to see a bit of Tandanari Lee sometime soon but not sure where/when he's actually going to get a game). Simple maths tells me that 4 or 5 players will be justifiably disappointed every game they are not picked, and experience tells me that the team will fluctuate both in the short and medium term. I do fully agree though that we need to shuffle the pack and if that involves positive changes to strengthen the team then I'm all for it!

Looked strong last night, if we stop Baines and Pinnear we will only have Fellini and Jelavic to worry about! TBF I could see a few goals either way in this one, both teams are better going fd than they are defending.

Reasons to be cheerful 1-2-3 1 We are in the Premier League and we get to watch the likes of Ramirez and Lallana every week. 2 We are as stable and secure as I can ever remember us, if we go down we are solvent; we take the parachute payments, sell off our big money buys (probably at a profit) and start again. 3 The academy continues to be a production line with JWP playing and doing well in the Prem at 17 years old and the promise of more to come. Enjoy the ride, would you swap those Arsenal fans? I wouldn't.

Soooooooo glad I didn't get tkts! Sounds (and looked) awful!! Good work agent Morgan tho. I'm guessing Wenger would have had a look in his black book after the game and carefully written 'Non' next to 'Schneiderlin?'.

.................. Gazz ........... Patsy Font Jos Yoshi ................... MS ............... Chaplow ..................Llalana ................ GRFG ................ ............RL ...... JRod........... Subs KD Fox Cork Davis Mayuka Lee JP That shoud do it, 2-1 Saints.

Saw it on a stuttery stream and it didn't look great .... just seen it in glorious technicolor on MOD and it was chuffing awful. KD could have done better with 1, 2, 3 and 6. Looks like a complete rabbit-in-the-headlights. Never seen Gazza but he can't be worse can he?

whoosh!

DiCanio?

Come on everybody, I've just done mine, it's only a couple of clicks with PayPal. Let's get to the £1000 and reward Dr Who for his sheer persistence! Enjoy tomorrow!

Thanks for sort-of clarifying it but as you say, it would be nice if the club could think it through before the event, then communicate accurately what's happening, then follow through in terms of displaying the points gained etc. While we are all having a grizzle does anybody else think it strange that home games are dribbled out one at a time? What possible advantage is there for the club in selling one home game at a time? Obviously for the three or four super-gold games they may well want to put a points tariff on so that they can sell the most in-demand games to the loyalist (sic) customers first. I've got several friends/colleagues who have asked about coming to a game (those fabled premier league fans who are prepared to travel 150 miles to see Premier league football, not every week but two or three times a season possibly). Somebody said 'Fulham' last week, they just want to go to a game, not glory hunting big games, and were astonished when I said tkts weren't out yet! We will struggle for 26k-27k for this game and I've just turned away 3 or 4 sales. People have a life outside footie and people will make alternative plans for their time - IMHO we are verging dangerously close to MLG country where demand is artificially capped by the percieved, or in many cases actual, difficulty in buying a bl**dy ticket!

Where are you getting that from? I thought ST's got points for turning up, and why wouldn't they get the points if they bought another home tkt in their name? I assume that non-STs get points for buying home tkts? Therefore there are nominally a set number of points to share out each home game? I have 3 STs and have just bought 2 tkts to Villa, I am expecting to buy somewhere between 1-3 extra tkts for quite a few games this season and was expecting to spread the points over our 3 ST I will be pretty miffed I buy 20-30 'extra' tickets over the season and my points remain the same as somebody who doesn't buy any. They seem to be making this up as they go along!

Weren't they called 'unit fines' or some such? Judge/magistrates took your living costs off of your income and then fined you a fixed tariff of your disposable income. Predictable Daily Mail headlines when (rich) people were fined 500 and 1000 for littering or other relatively 'minor' offences. Policy lasted a matter of weeks if I recall. Shame, in my opinion it was the way to go (I always chuckle when footballers are 'fined' X amountfor their various misdemeanours, it's the equivalent of fining an ordinary Joe a couple of quid).

Hated it when it came out but no issues with it on the pitch, a kit's a kit, more interested in what the players are doing than what they're wearing. After two games I'm not even noticing it's not stripes, I quite like it in a one-off sash sort of way. Does look tacky up close though, although I have to say I've seen several female types who wear it very well!

TBF if Cortese spotted (or was tipped off about) Waigo and Gully as League1 players he's got a pretty good eye (or contacts) for a player. Does anybody think Waigo or Gully were scouted directly by Pardew, or Read, or by anybody else at SFC?

Thank god for that! Just voted blind for Morgan and glad to see he is winning by miles .... maybe we'll have less of those 'but what does he do?' posts this season. Really tough competition today from JWP, SD, AL and RL, but MS looked the real deal today.

Geoffrey you have email.

I have one spare on for Man U today due to v late drop-out. Back of Block 39. PM me on here or leave email contact, only available in the next 40 minutes (till 10-45) £35, meet at turnstiles.

Did anybody link this yesterday from the Guardian? Decent read, mainly from their perspective but it shows how we've punched above our weight before ..... and we can do so again tomorrow ... 2-0 Saints! http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2012/aug/31/joy-of-six-manchester-united-southampton

Anyway, in a Kevin Keegan stylee, 'we'll score one more than you', ..........................KD ............................. Patsy .......... Jos ......... Yoshi ..........Fox ................ Cork ........Morgan ................ ....Myuka .........Gaston ..........Lallana ..... ........................SRL ........................... Nice! Gazz Fonte Davis Gully Lee Rodriguez At last. A game-changing bench. Happy days.