VectisSaint

Antonio came on as a second half sub as Reading lost. Scott McDonald scored for WGS but Middlesbro still lost. Michael Poke was unused sub for Brighton who won, Pericard was unused sub for Swindon. Surman played for Norwich who lost on Friday of course. Apart from Fitz Hall, about the only other successful Saint yesterday was Scott Bevan who kept another clean sheet for Torquay (thats 8 in a row, though most were by Poke last season) and they now sit top of League 2. Mustn't forget though that many former Saints were not in competitive action yesterday because they are in the Prem - Walcott, Crouch, Beattie, Fuller, Higgy, Bale and not forgetting Brett Ormerod.

Sounded like they were hanging on desparately in the end as Leicester pulled back from 3 down. Possibly due to Burley's continued inability to train and condition players. Its not just Alps that knew that Burley was a **** poor manager, briefly made to look half decent by the excellent Snodin.

We are 9 points better off than at the same stage last year. About the best I can come up with.

Completely out played by Lee Molyneux, he certainly did not look fine, he looked unfit and devoid of ideas.

Rubbish. For the goal he was running towards the ball, and could not turn as quickly as the Argyle player who was facing the other way. Clearly you do not appreciate that the goal was the result of bad defending by I think Fonte and Butters (could have been Jaidi). Did nothing else wrong and was very effective first half with Dickson, I think I tend to agree with the Sky pundits who were saying similar. Pardew took him off to make space for Lallana knowing Dickson could drop back. Pity Pardew did not replace Punch with Chamberlain at the same time.

Apart from being partly at fault for the goal, Harding did nothing wrong, indeed he was probably best player in the 1st half. Goal was not really his fault, it was the failure to deal with the header in the first place. Hammond was poor, did not drive on in MF and his headers were misplaced (though credit for getting into good positions). Did Hammond shoot? Don't recall if he did, Spiderman had couple of shots, as did Lallana, must have missed Hammond shooting. Problem today was Puncheon down the right, we were good down the left.

Yep, with a new manager, is that what you are wishing for? I'm certainly not. Thought Punch was very poor today, clearly wasn't 100% fit. Barnard also was poor, his positioning and lack of understanding about what DC was trying to do was obvious. I can see based on that performance why AP did not play him as much as we all expected when he arrived last season. Clearly we need another striker, primarily as backup to RL, but you can't hope to go a season with 3 strikers, one of whom has a bad injury record.. We also need some pace out wide and competition in CM, apart from that we will be up there come next May.

Has anyone else actually downloaded the Plymouth programme? After a bit more time reading it this morning I noticed that there are several missing pages, pages 1, 10, 12, 18, 22, 28, 29, 40, 41, 51 & 52 to be precise. If a programme is being sold online then surely it should be the same as the one being sold on paper. I wonder if this is just a mistake with the initial launch or whether it is deliberate to not provide some of the programme in advamce. This might explain why there is no list of players, also the player sponsorship details are missing, what else? Can someone else confirm.

the quality of the proff reading is very poor, typos galore LOL, serves me right I suppose. Fact remains though.

Signed up, Plymouth programme has some interesting reading, history etc. No list of players, seems odd, no message from the Chairman, thought he would write something for first game. Have to say without meaning to be picky, the quality of the proff reading is very poor, typos galore, like something out of the Grauniad.

Don't think many will argue that we need another striker in the same mould as Rickie as back up. Most people have been saying this for weeks. Our #4 striker is Ryan Doble !!! Only other option seems to be Butterfield. AP acknowledges this as well, I'm sure he is working hard to bring someone else in over the next 2-3 weeks. Think its a bit unkind to refer to RL as the missing link though :-)

Doubt it, they are likely to wait until end August when they can take him on a free.

Nice touch that when you go to the link you are on the Championship page, not League One Gave me a chance to have a little chuckle at the state of play down the other end of the M27. I don't often support HMRC (except financially) but I think I will make an exception.

I really wonder sometimes if some posters on here actually support Saints or not

Is it? Unless you are saying that the loss of James and Thomas have seriously weakened us then this argument simply does not wash. We have signed Dickson, Richardson and Butterfield, we lost Antonio, Papa and Semi. I agree that the strength may have shifted slightly, we are currently a bit weaker in MF (though the availability of Chamberlain and a fit Holmes goes some way, but not completely I agree, to replacing Antonio). I still think we need a MF and a striker, but we are no weaker than the team that finished last season.

I wonder if even if SFC had ordered more any more could have been supplied. It seems from Phil's post earlier that Umbro had no more material in stock. Perhaps they ordered the raw material based on our order, but perhaps also that was all the raw material available at the time, and we said "so how many can you supply"? Who knows. Fact is that however anyone wants to run down the club on this matter, this is a SUCCESS STORY. Of course Alps can answer your question with any number greater than the current sales and be smug in the knowledge that we would have been closer to the necessary target, thats why foresight is a wonderful gift. If only Alps and the other serial moaners had such a gift who knows where we would be now (probably in the ****). Still think the Club missed a trick with the away shirt, it should also have had a sash in my opinion. Like many others I like the kit because it is not so obviously a footy kit, I will be quite happy if we go back to stripes next season but wouldn't be upset if we keep the sash, change to halves, change to quarters, go to hoops (slimming look for us perkers) or whatever, as long as the colours are basically red and white. If we can avoid terrible sponsor logos then that would be fantastic (remember all the complaints about the FlyBe and FP logos and how they were cheap and tacky and peeled off etc).

Seems odd that this was never mentioned again, and no-one seems to have gone to the game or anything. Perhaps Nicola decided he didn't like the ways the Vics were run and decided the team should not attend

Cortese criticses way FL is run. Well good for him, its a shambles as we all know, even if Mawhinney has now gone. About time some of the people that run it were shown up to be the idiots that they are. Good to know that we have a Chairman who can see them for the bunch of idiots that they are. That said don't believe the rumour for one minute, total ******, if only it were actually true.

LOL to think you would have caught DC, you may have had a chance with young Pulis perhaps !!

Anyone know whether this game actually took place, no mention of it on the OS, and it wasn't mentioned last week when it should have happened. Just curious, used to watch Vics frequently many years ago.

The only thing that is mental is people thinking this was going to be a 1st XI game. I bet Aaron Martin wouldn't have played except that it is against his old club, and was probably part of the deal to stage the game. Preseason for the 1st team finished on Saturday. Risking any first teamers against a Southern League (?) side 5 days before the first proper game of the season would be mental.

Antonio wasn't out of contract end of last season, his contract at Reading included an option for Reading to extend by a year, which they exercised, Antonio had no say in the matter. Its up to them if they are willing to sell or loan. They have a different set up now than when he joined us so I don't see anything unusual in the fact that he may be wanting to stay at Reading who must be one of the facvourites for promotion based on their form towards end of last campaign.

Assume you had had a pint of Stella when you wrote this, or maybe half a pint I should stick to the J2O in future

Think you have the "y" and "b" keys mixed up on your keyboard

Go and look at that starting line up again and ask yourself will it be the starting line up next Saturday. The only players likely to be unavailable next Saturday are Lallana and Richardson, it seems like even Adam is not ruled out. 2-1 up against the form team in the second half of last years CCC shows a pretty good performance in my view. We will I am sure have 2 or 3 new players before the window shuts, probably at least one before next weekend.