VectisSaint

Good news of true, only issue is his fitness, is he still injured at the moment? Paves the way for Pelle exit in the Summer. Saw this morning that Saints have allegedly delayed offering Grazi a new contract.

You really think it was just about Leicester? He is not good enough any more, arguably hasn't been good enough for a few years. Great servant to the club, nice bloke, but he needs to retire.

Of course he was. Did anyone ever say otherwise? Its just the nonsense being spouted by you and a few others that it was 2 hours, which was patently ridiculous. Never believe anything you read in the Daily Fail (unless it says Caulker is joining Liverpool)

Interesting that Vic's passing comes in for so much criticism, and yet overall this season his pass completion rate is 82%, i.e less than one pass in five goes astray. To put it in perspective, Oriel has an 86% completion rate, as does JWP, Davis, Fonte and VvD have 84%, Mane and Targett 83%. Clasie 81, Yoshida 80, Reed 78, Bertrand 76, Tadic 75, Cedric 70, Long 68, Martina 67, Pelle 65. So really he is around about average, accepted that his pass rate may have dropped off in the last couple of games, so the trend is downward, but there is not really much in the way of statistical evidence to back up the much spouted view that his passing is abysmal. By the way I ommitted Gaston from the stats, he is actually our best passer with an 87% pass completion rate - just shows you can prove anything with statistics. Stats courtesy of www.squawka.com

I didn't get why we suddenly reverted back to Davis on Wednesday, I prefer to see Gazza on the bench if Stek isn't available (in fact I prefer to have Gazza even if Stek is available). I hope it was just that Gazza had played on Monday night after Fraser was pulled from the u21 squad.

The highlights on SaintsPlayer don't give a particularly good view, but the comments were that at worst it was level. And as said no way could the lineo have known anyway - but Whitey "Frank" Grandad will be along shortly to put us right on that I expect

I assume 2017 is a typo, you are talking about this summer, right?

Found the interview with Ronald, Sadio turned up late for the meeting 2 hours before the game, he was clearly NOT 2 hours late: It also shows that MLT was incorrect that the meeting was on Friday. The meeting was around 1pm on Saturday.

The article you are quoting from also states: "The player turned up late for a team meeting two hours before their match against Norwich and Koeman punished him by dropping him from the starting line-up." http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3382158/Manchester-United-red-alert-Sadio-Mane-left-furious-Ronald-Koeman-late-arrival-Southampton-meeting.html The quote is clearly just Ron's poor English. Anyone with a modicum of sense would realise you can't be two hours late for a meeting two hours before the game (and still actually be on the bench). Listen to the interview with Ron (the link is somewhere on another thread) and you will hear Ron clearly state he turned up 10 minutes late for the meeting which they held 2 hours before kick-off. There are plenty of other articles in the Fail that make no mention of the 2 hours.

No we weren't, that was what one of the papers misquoted. Ronald stated in interview that Mane was late (he didn't specify how late) for a meeting 2 hours before kick-off. This 2 hours late for a meeting is a myth. Not sure that MLT's saying this was a Friday meeting either is correct, it certainly does not match up with what Ronald said. I thought they had flown up on Saturday morning anyway, but could be wrong about that.

Sorry, didn't see someone had already replied

"so-called" strikers, that's more than our all-time top scorer (Channon). Phenomenal really.

Gateshead. Auckland was his first managerial job.

Well Frank, thats the truth. Lineo was 50m away, whereas I was no more than 20. Ref was about 25m.

Its all becoming largely irrelevant given he will be gone in a few weeks anyway.

Along with about 30000 others I probably missed Davis "trundling" along on account of it being a figment of your imagination. I certainly didn't miss Long busting a gut, because like Davis (and several others, particularly Romeu, Clasie and Cedric) he did it nearly all evening. How anyone who has the slightest knowledge of the game and does not have a personal grudge can fault Davis for his effort is really just beyond belief and defies reason. Fault him for other things perhaps but not effort. You really seem to have a bit of a problem.

The fact that it was LBJ would suggest that your American company president was not the sharpest tool in the box.

Sounds like it was you that was not there. Even with your personal hatred of Davis, to have such a poor view of what he did last night is very difficult to understand, and you may notice that you are in a minority of one (unless or until Verlaine comes along with his anti-Davis venom). You are quite right that Romeu and Clasie were excellent, especially Romeu, as were Targett, Cedric and Long. The back three were very good although the middle three and wing backs meant they really didn't have much to do, but VvD won everything in the air (but was very loose with some of his passes and got us into trouble a couple of times).

No lack of commitment, but woeful finishing after doing so much great work to get into goal scoring positions. I thought subbing him off was a bad move, with 20 to go he was probably eventually going to get a lucky break and it would have done the world of good for his confidence, then again Tadic comes on and scores.

Actually for several of the calls, no I was a lot closer than the officials and better placed and II also have good 3D vision. That was part of the problem, the referee did not keep up well with the play and the decisions for corners were on the wrong side of the pitch for the lineo to have any idea of what had happened. I know how hard it is being a ref or lineo, but the decision making of the officials last night was poor if I'm being generous, and it really can't be defended. They may be "able" to view the situation in high resolution, but it doesn't work if they have their eyes closed. I don't usually knock referees, but last night they were very poor with the throw-ins, corners and offsides. Very poor. But it didn't make any difference except that we probably would have scored more (no correct that we would have scored more because Steve Davis' goal was perfectly good).

Fact was whether it was the ref or the lineo they made a lot of mistakes, especially giving goal kicks instead of corners. The ref just guessed at least twice in the second half but both times got it completely wrong. Several of the offside calls were completely wrong as well. In the end it made no difference, but the standard of decision making by the officials has become very poor of late, not so much with the big decisions (penalties etc) but with basic stuff like deciding who touched the ball last before the ball goes over the touchline.

Don't tell Turkish, this sounds like his idea of heaven. A few foam hands and Santa hats thrown in would be perfect.

It was Karl Robinson, MK Dons Manager.

Mystic Meg

FFS, do you really want to hear people shouting for Heskey in our team. You really should get out more and try to develop a sense of humour man.