VectisSaint

If we beat the teams at the bottom and beat the teams at the top - we wont be "dandy" we will be the first team ever to win all their games in the PL. Man City came 3rd in the 3rd tier in 1998-99, it took them a further 12 seasons to break into the Top 4, though it took them only a further 4 years to achieve 9th (strange coincidence) but another 3 years before they reached the top 10 again and have stayed there since. So we could argue that we are doing as well if not better than City did (they got promotion from L1 in 3rd place, we got 2nd, we both won the FL Trophy when we were in the 3rd tier). A comparison with Citeh is quite illuminating and shows that we are doing rather well. Turning to Citeh's neighbours, United have only beaten one Top 9 team this season. By your standards they must be crap, yet they are still 2 places above us, playing in the CL (at least until the Bayern match) and still trying to qualify for the Europa Mickey Mouse League. 8th place is still very achievable this season, especially if we beat the barcodes this weekend, we could conceivably still get 7th, though have to concede thats unlikely after Sunday. Think the boys have done good this season, probably better than I expected (I think I predicted top half) and if we had a bigger squad we would have finished higher than we have. So stop your continual negativity.

Another area of your expertise I suppose.

More likely the other way round after Sunday. At least he won't mistake Pardew for Poch.

Absolutely spot on. Fonte saved Lovren's back yet again today on several occasions. Lovren was just plain awful, and its not the first time this season this has been the case but some here seem to think he can do no wrong. He should have gone off after Corky caught him, we had Yoshida as backup who would have been better today. I can forgive him being not fully fit, but his playing for fouls that aren't is just plain daft. Lovren and no-one else caused that collapse today, played like a plank and knocked all the confidence out of the team (I know Clyne made a schoolboy error for the first but the ball should never have been crossed). Sorry, but I'm fuming today at Lovren, I hate losing to Spuds, and twice in a season is hard to take, but when one of our more experienced players plays like that it is ****ing frustrating.

We certainly do, at least. Showed again today that we only really have 13 or 14 top players. And really we only had 2 out. No-one on the bench to change things apart from Gaston, who doesn't (usually). People can't see that we are desperately short of strong competition in many areas of the pitch (GK, CB*2, LB, AM, ST*2 at least, assuming we keep what we have). Thank God we are not going to qualify for Europe. I'm with Windows on this one. Haven't seen any sign of KL spending as yet, previous spending was what was planned by her old man and nasty nic.

Lovren cost us that, absolutelly **** performance by him 2nd half. Mistake for 1st and 2nd goals, then he was poor and affected our confidence. Not the first time this season that he has been poor.

Nothing short of a win tomorrow will do now if we are to keep our faint championship hopes alive. Even then we have to overturn a 33 goal difference compared with Chelsea. Hate settling for 2nd again Never changes for me though, always the one team I really want to beat whenever we play them. I reckon we have a good chance, but depends who is and isn't injured.

The VMan and Monk are about the only ITKs on this forum these days other than Fitzhugh. VMan not even mentioned.

Looking at that table we have 755 games in hand over Man U. If we won 618 of those games we would be top. So that would make us the bestest team in England.

My God there are some sad twits around. What is the point of twitter. A tool for saddos.

Last time I checked Yorkshire was still part of England (even though they like to think otherwise). Unless the Ruskies have been land-grabbing again. Gazza and Cropper are not English.

Injury crisis?

OK, if everyone that has left the forum because of GS could post now that would show him a thing or two. Oh wait... One of the reasons that a team who is 8th in the league has only won once or twice against teams in the top 10 is because they are 8th in the league. This really is one of the more moronic questions. Thats what league tables tend to show over the course of the season, thought there are exceptions. For example Man Utd have only beaten 2 teams in the Top 10 this season, and one of those was Villa, currently 10th. In a surprising turn up Man Utd are one place above us. Newcastle have 4 wins against top 10 sides, though two of them were against Villa. Chelsea on the other hand have won 10 times against top 10 teams, and surprisingly enough are top of the league. Liverpool 7, Arsenal 6, Man City in 4th have won 8. So you see it is quite simple, if you win more games against the top teams you will tend to be higher in the league. There are always exceptions, but this is nearly a self evident truth. Funny old game.

Electro-convulsive therapy. ECT is a treatment for a small number of severe mental illnesses.

Correct, but Prowse could still have prevented the goal, even at the cost of a free kick or even a penalty.

Alpine, it was not a great performance, it was not even a good performance. It was abysmal, apart from the first 7 minutes and a few minutes in the second half. We were sloppy and looked like we could not give a rat's arse. Norwich were so bad that the team just sauntered around without breaking sweat and thought all they had to do was last out the 90 minutes. Boruc tried his best with some help from Prowse, Fonte, Lovren and Guly to get Norwich back in the game, but even then it took them 85 minutes to work out that we were not trying and would have been quite happy to have them win the game. I have seen us play so much better than that this season and lose. I think Boruc was an utter disgrace today. Yes, we scored 4 goals, and it was great to see Gallagher get his first, but really that was a **** performance. The two goals they scored were appalling. It seems to be a trait that we have that we score a goal and then take our foot off the pedal and invite the opposition on, instead of going for the jugular. There were a few who played OK, but MOTM for me was Davis who kept running and working until literally the end, made the first goal (though Ramirez will get the assist) and was superb and unselfish for the fourth, could easily have scored himself but set up Sam to get his first PL goal (which he nearly fluffed but thats OK, it will do him a power of good). Really missed Cork today, and please Poch don't ever play Prowse as defensive midfielder again.

Agreed. We actually were awful in the 1st half. Norwich worst team at St Marys, even worse than Fulham. Was Boruc on drugs? Seemed intent on getting Norwich back in it. In the end the score was decent but it covers up one of our poorest displays . Motm Steve Davis

Thought this thread was about Shaw. 30m for Chambers sounds like a decent deal.

No, they still have a chance to win the league. They certainly have a chance of qualifying for the final stages. Currently 2 points of 4th (top 4 qualify) although have played more games. Some tough games to come but can't see these loans are because we are giving up on the competition. That said, if they do not qualify there are only 5 games remaining, which means little competition over the next couple of months.

Even gerry Gurr and Steve Middleton were hardly regulars. Gerry only ever made 49 apps and Middleton 30. Recently Michael Poke at least made more apps that Blayney, 4 v 3 to be fair. Poke has at least made a decent career for himself in the lower leagues, though looks like he will be back in the Conf next season when Torquay get relegated again.

Would be happy to see Leicester, Reading and Wigan come up. 3 teams with ex-Saints (managers/players) as managers. As long as QPR don't crash the party that will do me (4 ex-Saints managers/players managing in the Top 7) My wish is unlikely though as I'm sure Burnley will come up and probably Derby with Leicester. Would be nice to see Cardiff and Swansea go down with Fulham, then at least we will be back to having an English Premier League.

Just to clarify do you mean Matty or Matty?

Assume best case scenario now with Citeh out of the FA Cup is 6th place would qualify (previous 7th was possible if Citeh played Arse in the FA Cup Final and both qualified for CL). if so we have no chance, 7th or 8th is possible, but 6th would be most likely beyond us. We really would not be prepared for Europa league anyway, you need a much bigger, stronger squad than we have to compete in the EL. We would be looking at bringing in best part of a whole new team to support a EL campaign, as it is we probably need to add 5 or 6 for next season if we are to avoid the mid-season injury crisis provoked drop in form that has condemned us to upper mid-table obscurity this term.

Sad day, the passing of 'DWSL 613'. I for one will miss it, it had a nice ring about it. I guess this is progress, seems we have no respect for our history.

Will upset our Glaswegian "friend"