VectisSaint

Was discussed on the other thread on here yesterday, yes Liz Coley was secretary during Lowe's reign, then went to Fulham and then apparently Sunderland. She is now looking for a new job, though Sunderland deny it is anything to do with this issue. There have been very few times when clubs in the top tiers of English football have been deducted points for player ineligibity reasons, and never in the PL. It tends to be a sanction used more often in the lower leagues. Strangely Sunderland are one of the very few clubs that have previous form for this, having been deducted 2 points for fielding an ineligible player in season 1890-91. They were the first football league team to be sanctioned in this way. You would think they would have learned their lesson. http://www.footballsite.co.uk/Statistics/Articles/DidYouKnow29.htm There is a mildly interesting academic paper on the subject here: http://www.coventry.ac.uk/Global/05%20Research%20section%20assets/Research/Centre%20for%20the%20international%20Business%20of%20Sport/Working%20paper%20series/CIBS%20WP08.pdf

Discussion already commenced yesterday: http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?49681-We-was-robbed-by

Beat me to it, I was about to make the same observation.

Surprised that for 30M we have only gone for 3G pitches, would have expected them to have rolled out 4G pitches at least, much quicker and better for long term evolution. Maybe EE's network doesn't extend to Marchwood.

No-one has described Adam or anyone else as "league one players", you have added this in your reply as if it is a direct quote, which it is not. Nick quite rightly stated that we have several players "from League 1 days", which is factually correct, and not offensive in any way. Having a pop at someone else for being offensive (when they are not) is somewhat ironic when it comes from someone like you who is habitually offensive.

Seems to be a distinct lack of movement and pace in that team. Only Englishman in the team, I guess that depends on who Januzaj eventually decides to play for doesn't it? Also would not be too happy with a keeper called Scuffet, Boruz' kicking is bad enough.

He is our 4th highest scorer. This is a criticism that should be aimed at a lot of our other players, rather than SD. Morgan, Wanyama, Guly and Cork have scored 3 between them in total this season, we have 3 excellent full backs who so far have contributed 1 goal between them. More importantly Davis is 13th= in the Premier League for assists, with 6, same as Lallana, only a few very good players have more, Suarez, Gerrard, Rooney and some guy called Lambert amongst them. It is also SD that enables Chambers to get forward so much where he has impressed hugely in the last few weeks, with Davis slotting back into the RB position usually when Chambers gets down the line (which is why Davis will not be moved to the centre any time soon). SD is a top player and we are very lucky to have him and to have got him on such a good deal. Although not from our set up he did hail from one of the best youth set ups of the time, Villa, winning the Youth Cup in 2002, technically he does not have the flair of Lallana but he is still a very very gifted player.

Scored twice in Europa League against Trabsonspor, so both technically correct, Bandini said none in 7 league games. Apparently Juve management have been impressed with his attitude and effort in training, as well as his physical conditioning. Tonight was only his 4th start in Serie A, as Tevez was suspended. I think you'll find Juve rate him more highly than Bandini and that's good enough for me, after all it will be Juve who have to pay for him.

Think you're getting confused with RoMa, he speaks very good English as you well know, ToSa.

Completely agreed. But just to be pedantic, we haven't lost more than anyone else from a winning position. That would be West Ham, who have lost 5 times. In fact this stat of dropping more points than anyone else from a winning position is something of a double-edged sword. We have been winning 19 of our 31 games this season and in the end we have failed to win on 7 occassions. You could legitimately argue if you were so inclined that we must be doing something very right that we can get into that position so often. We just need to learn to hold on to that lead better in future, and its easy to see how to do that, by stopping dropping off when we are one or two up.

Not true, Matt Busby famously said that Big Ron was the best centre forward in the world. Shaw clearly isn't the best LB in the world, probably not even the best in England, but he has potential to be so, especially when he starts scoring goals as well. Is he as good as Baines, or is he as good a LB as Coleman is a RB? Anyway, what is your opinion Toffee Saint? Or in the style of your reference to our manager, my new moniker for you, ToSa.

Don't bring Fred Dineage into this FFS.

What obsession? The point is to illustrate that your assertion that one win against top 10 sides is bad or poor is a false assertion and that there are other examples to illustrate this that counter your continuous negativity against Saints. This is what happens when you put forward an argument, people use facts to counter your argument and show that you are wrong. Statistically for a team in 9th, 2 wins against top 10 teams all season would be as expected. We have one win already, and have 4 to go against top 10 teams. If you work on the basis of top 9, then the team in 9th would not expect to win any games against other top 9 teams, therefore to have won one is actually doing better than could be expected statistically. The use of Man Utd as an example however illustrates that this is not necessarily a good measure of success. They are currently 7th, and yet have only won one game against top 9 sides, statistically they should win about 4. So, how many games you win against top 9 or top 10 teams is not necessarily a good indicator of success, but if it is then we are about where we should be given our win ratio. Sorry to **** on your parade. How many games has your team won against top 10 sides?

Incorrect. They have 2 wins against the current Top 10 sides, Arsenal (1-0) and Stoke (3-2). The fact that was accurately stated was that they have 1 win against Top 9 (Top 9 is easier to compare because it has been very stable for most of season, only 10th has varied). Against Top 9 sides Man U's record so far is P13 W1 D4 L8 F7 A21 Pts7 Saints record against Top 9 so far is P12 W1 D4 L7 F12 A24 Pts 7 So, our record against Top 9 sides is similar but marginally better (goal difference and less defeats in less games) than Man Utd's. If you want to compare Top 10 then United have 1 point more than us. Hardly makes our record poor as you would like Saints supporters to believe. Only winning 1 game against Top 9 sides when you are 9th in the league is actually 1 more than would be statistically expected, so you could argue that we are punching above our position with respect to wins against top sides, but given that I expect us to finish 8th, 2 wins would be par for the course, and we could achieve that this weekend and still have 3 games left to play to achieve more.

He gets the beers in.

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.