VectisSaint

He looks a very different player than the one we saw before who looked very lightweight. He has definitely bulked up over the last year and looks much more physically able to cope with the PL than before. He may yet turn out to be a good player, depite how he has looked in the past.

Subs: Davis K, Yoshida, Alderwiedhersein (Toby), Cork, Bertrand, Mayuka, Reed Is Mane injured?

Oh dear, local hack does not respond to Unbelievable Jeff. Bummer. Of course Blackmore should have interviewed the Unbelievable one and got the low down on what was happening from the insightful one. Talk about being full of **** and self importance. Really surprised that the Unbelievable one has not demanded an apology from some of the players who allegedly may have thought there were some problems at the Club this summer, they should come out with personal apologies addressed directly to the Unbelievable one, and made to wear sackcloth for the rest of the season. It was clear to everyone that everything was perfect during the summer and Unbelievable Jeff is the prescient one who is all knowing and we should all have listened and then we who are not worthy would have known that all was well.

Is it Eastleigh's turn next week? Hopefully the Skates will be on the other end of an 8-0 drubbing to complete the set. Good for them anyway, its still a great achievement scoring 8 away from home and saving a penalty as well, and no own goals. Must admit I was struggling to realise what was going on when i got back to the car on Saturday and heard Solent talking about 8-0, thought there had been a time warp or something. I heard one family managed to go to see Bournemouth the week we won 8-0 and went to Saints last Saturday, thus missing 8 goal drubbings in successive weeks.

This, good to see that someone else sees the situation like this as well. Because we have been doing very well, people have continued to overlook the elephant in the room, the same problem as last season. We shipped out was it 18 or even 19 players in the summer in total (think it was 18 before we found out about Ramirez on deadline day), yet people seem to think we have more depth to the squad. We do admittedly have slightly stronger backups than we had, and its good to see that we probably have 16 players capable of coming into the team without serious disruption. But we already have 3 injuries (J-Rod, JWP and Gallagher), a few more to key players, especially GK and we would be fecked again.

Really don't care any more about Poch. If he hadn't left we wouldn't now have Koeman. The football that RK is serving up is so much more exciting than Poch's style ever allowed. At the time I thought Poch was going to be a big loss, he did well for us, and instilled a way of playing that was successful, but now you have to wonder whether RK could have achieved more with the same set of players. I still enjoy seeing Poch lose, but its as much about my dislike of Spurs as about him now.

Depends on where we are come January. Assuming Boruc will be available for transfer out then a backup keeper would be useful. Otherwise options in any positions, especially attacking would be helpful to cover injuries/suspensions. One or two more to give depth and provide real competition is the order of the day really. No desparate need, but an injury crisis could leave us struggling.

Voting for MOTM Poll is supposed to be a bit of fun, like the rest of this forum is supposed to be. I didn't vote for either, nor did I vote for Fraser Forster who had almost nothing to do, but so what? Why do some people on here just have to have a pop rather than posting something interesting or constructive or even amusing. Its not (meant to be) rocket science.

Looks very similar to what I posted. Good that we both have found the same data.

Urawa Red Diamonds in the J-League. Currently J League leaders with 4 games left. 6 goals, 14 starts, 16 subs. Not exactly outstanding, but maybe will get another trophy.

I think you are flogging a dead horse.

Chelsea and Man City are far and away the best teams, we may be above Man City right now, but their squad and experience will tell and they will leave us far behind. Everyone else is beatable, we should be able to finish above Everton and Spuds, and probably Liverpool. Arsenal and Manure would be tough to beat, our weakness is our very thin squad. As last year, a few injuries and suspensions and we have little strength in depth. If these injuries coincide with our run of harder games (as last year) then we may well fall away. If we can avoid injury crisis this season (unlikely) then we could beat Arsenal and/or Manure. Key with both is to open the gap in the next couple of weeks. Manure's next 2 away are City and Arsenal with Palace in between, Arsenal have Burnley and Swansea. A 10 point gap after our next 3 games would be very good and set us up well to have a fighting chance of top 4. Its achievable with some luck, but my head says we will finish 6th or 7th.

Guess I really don't understand this bit, in the context of football at least: "very female friendly plenty of fore play and flicking it around the box but all us fans really want I'd a bit more penetration" Curious, I guess they speak a different language in the Potteries.

Today there was a camera on the Kingsland touchline near the Chapel facing down towards the Northam. Never seen one there before but then today was a different OB company. The now usual camera in the Itchen/Chapel corner was not deployed today.

You really have to wonder about the intelligence and research of the people who throw these articles together. Evidently: "The 8-0 hiding of Sunderland catapulted Saints into the top three." and "If Koeman has proved a revelation so far with the Saints, his eye for a bargain in the transfer market has been sensational. Full-backs Nathaniel Clyne and Ryan Bertrand have England quality..."

Magilton it was, 12 April 1997 vs Wet Sham at home (won 2-0)

Still can't see a deflection for Mane's goal.

I think Koeman should take the penalties. We should check the strength of the nets beforehand.

I would like to know how many shots and saves. The ratio is very good (although the worst is apparently Begovic with 53%), but these stats never reveal the true numbers. There have been so few shots for Forster to actually save so far it is really hard to judge how good he is. It was similar with Boruc last season, the outfielders are very effective and denying our opponents goal scoring opportunities in the first place. Did Forster save twice against Sunderland, I can only remember two saves? 75% suggests it is actually 15 saved out of 20 (given that we have conceded just 5 times). So that's 2.5 shots per match, which is remarkable if true (remarkable that we have limited teams to 2 or 3 shots per match).

I do, but in this instance they seem to have come to a perfectly reasonable outcome. Fined both teams, punished Serbia by having to play 2 games behind closed doors (except for UEFA sponsors LOL), removed any points advantage and avoided a replay of a match that could not in all honesty have been properly replayed. Not sure what else they could have achieved, except for expelling them from the competition. Really don't think GD would be a serious issue. The return match in Albania will be interesting and probably not very comfortable for the Serb players, Tadic included. What UEFA should have done before the tournament started was made sure these two teams were not in the same group, its been done many times before.

Two home games on successive weekends at the end of a month doesn't help.

A tie in cricket is when both teams score the same number of runs. As far as I know cricket is not American.

Extraordinary the things that some people think are Americanisms. "Tie" is a term that is very specific to UK sports. I've been going to cup ties for more than 50 years. Are you one of the many that thinks "soccer" is an Americanism as well.

They seem to have quite a soft spot for Dalek.

Fair play to the guy, glad he enjoyed the day, but "superfan" and first game at age 30. I know others that have come across from Oz on more than one occasion, I guess he just lucked out that we won 8-0. I am so glad that the Mail decided to include a map showing where Melbourne is and the big arrow showing it to be 9500 miles. Melbourne to London Heathrow is actually 10500 (somewhere between 10509 and 10519 depending on which calculator you use). Hopefully he got his full air mile allocation. Darwin is only 8600. Actually having re-read the article Melbourne via Brunei and Dubai would work out as 11122 if you calculate each leg separately Daily Fail really is useless though, not only did we score 8 against Coventry, but also 9 against Wolves. They probably think that when we beat Man U 6-3 they were wearing grey shirts too. Anyway, lets hope his good luck rubs off on us again against Stoke.