VectisSaint

Saints reunion at Oldham tonight, Mills, Mellis and Forte beat Stephens and Turnbull 2-1

Well he wasn't training with the first team, and Ronald said it would be a few weeks at least before he would be back with the first team squad in training. Reckon he will figure in a few more u21 games before we see him again in the PL.

He gets that from the fans whenever he comes on the pitch.

You've written almost exactly what I said, but I still don't think you get it. We will be limited in the size of our PL squad next season unless we bring in some new home-grown players, assuming that one or two of what we have will go, e.g. Morgan and Clyne, we could be down to 4 or 5, in which case we will only be able to name a squad for the PL of 21 or 22 (not counting under 21s). We already have a very small squad, if we qualify for Europe we will need a bigger squad, and you can't just get that by buying or loaning new overseas players. Despite all the hype that we are renowned for bringing through players from the home nations the fact is that we currently have very few senior professional home grown players.

You discussed the European rules in your Blog (and very interesting and a good read it is). But you are missing the point that we also have to comply with the PL rules for the vast majority of our games. yes, we can name different squads for PL and Europe, but it is the PL where the bigger issue arises, because we will likely have a very small number of home-grown players (PL rules last time I looked did not distinguish between club and association trained). If we only have, say 5 home -grown players then that will mean 3 slots in a 25-man squad would need to be left empty (this has no effect on u21 players, as many as you want can be named). But it does mean we are limited to the number of overseas players. The issue is that I think it highly unlikely that we will sign some overseas players who are then only eligible to play in Europe. Why would we sign someone who might potentially only play 2 matches? So this summer, if we qualify for Europe, the club would need to bring in one or two home grown players if we are going to have a decent sized squad ready to cope with a European adventure. We can't just bring in players from Eredivisie which is what this thread is all about (unless we can find some Brits playing there).

not to mention three times as many goals as JWP in considerably less appearances

I think we would be struggling with the home-produced rule, especially if we lose Morgan and Clyne in the summer. We seem to have gone from a club that was lauded for all of the young British players we were bringing through to having hardly any senior home-grown players (Kelvin, Clyne, Bertrand, Morgan, Steve Davis, J-Rod, Forster, think thats about it, unless Shane Long counts. Of those none have come trough our much heralded Academy and only Morgan has come through the Youth set up in any way). Take Clyne and Morgan out and that will limit our squad size to 22, which is going to be a problem if we qualify for Europe.

True, we might be in 2nd.

You should sack your editor.

From the original link below to the Treatment of Head Injuries: "Concussion is a brain injury. There is no blood test or scan currently available that can diagnose it." So having a scan is not really of any benefit, other than to ensure there is no other injury. It also says: The player should undergo a period of physical and mental rest for at least 24 hours after the injury (which includes the playing of video games or similar) I hope it wasn't Matty himself that was Tweeting. Matty will not play On Wednesday, and probably should not even train this week if the guidelines are followed.

Perhaps he would have struggled with Matt Mills playing CF.

He is, just not yet.

God there is some crap written on this forum by some who claim to be experts. If that's what you think of Davis, it beggars belief. I guess some just don't understand and can't follow the action when a match is being played.

Burying bad news time. The u21s have conceded 5 before half time against Chelski.

Thankfully saggy chops is not in charge of transfers nowadays. So at least there is a chance that any transfers will have an impact.

depends if the Johan Cruff Shield is considered a competitive/official match or not. At some point in the past the English Charity/Community Shield was classified as a Friendly. Not sure if it still is.

No, I seem to recall Dave Jones saying we had signed him on a pre-contract agreement which included Strasbourg keeping him until Rupert Lowe came on the scene and found enough money to buy him. I'm sure I read that somewhere.

Hey Bearsy, not sure if you are serious, but really there is no reason to compare Prowsey with Davis. But if you want some data, then Davis had already won the FA Youth Cup with Villa. He was playing for Villa in the Premier League at 19 (Prowsey was 18 when he played against Man City), and at age 21 he was named "Young Player of the Year", "The Fans Player of the Year" and "Player of the Year" for the 2005–06 season after making 42 appearances during the season. He also made his full international debut at 20. Lets hope Prowsey proves me and lots of others wrong and goes on to be half as successful in the rest of this season. I wish him all the best, and sincerely hope he does, but at the moment rose tinted specs are having a huge effect on the judgement of some people on here.

Oh Christ, here we go again. He's only 20, he's still young, he makes lots of assists, he is great at set plays.

He was one of our better players, but he really was not good, just that Pelle, Tadic, Elia and Forster at least were woeful, so that makes him one of the better players.

No he won't. He will never be a version of Steve Davis, unless he suddenly acquires pace, aggression and an ability to tackle. Even his set plays which he is supposedly renowned for, were **** poor today ( as were Tadic's). His shooting is woeful, straight at the keeper today, and his header was powder puff. No assists today either (which all the apologists say is his greatest asset).

Form is temporary.

This week's "stating the bleeding obvious" award winner

Guardian reports fee in region of £3m.