Arizona

Now starting to spring up in several positions. How flippin' great is that. IMO: Bart or Davis - Bart. It's unfair to drop KD after today, so I wouldn't, but I do think BB is better. Semi or Thomas - Semi edge's it very slightly on today's showing. Harding or Mills - Harding. A more straight forward choice, but Mills put in a few decent performances. Antonio, Waigo or Puncheon - Agggghhhh... :smt048 Puncheon, by a gnats nads, with Bonio off the bench Lallana, Puncheon or Holmes - Assuming Puncheon on the right... Lallana Barnard or Waigo - Barnard... just. But Waigo if we come against a particularly slow centre half. Forts?

I conker with the first paragraph. To answer your second point, get it on the deck and play it. Saints can play it and we're easily as good as Leeds or Norwich on the ball. Don't hoof it at Lambert would be my opinion. Today and against the Dons we put out our strongest sides available and took two promotion chasing teams to school. At Exeter we lumped it up at Lambert and were hopeless.

Well this has reached a predictable conclusion.

Lallana hit the post twice second half. Think Semi might have hit the post first half, but not sure.

Finally made it out of the carp arc. Wasn't in the multistory, whoever asked, was at Norfolk County Hall. Bit more about the players: Davis - 7 Made one excellent save second half when at shot deflected upwards off a defender and looped horribly under the bar. Couple of "it's behind you" pantomime games got him booked for time wasting. Quite funny. Semi - 7 Has great pace, got forward and supported Puncheon well. Might have hit the post first half too. Can't remember exactly who that was though. Norwich never really gave him much to think about. Jaidi - 6 A bit shaky first half, with some hoof and 50p heading. Looked better second half though. Fonte - 8 Excellent. The more I think about it, Norwich really got very little past him. Harding - 8 Reliable as ever. Excellent distribution, cutting inside and finding Hammond or down the line to Lallana. Little hoofing, great outlet when Norwich put pressure on. Puncheon - 8 MOTM. Bag of tricks with some excellent deliveries. Mr Antonio has strong competition. What a choice to have! Hammond - 8 A good strong captains performance, some great vision and passing. Schneiderlin - 6 Felt he was a bit weak at times and went missing. Average. Lallana - 7 Pretty quiet first half, but improved second. Very unluck hitting the post twice. Lambert - 7 Good build up play. Skied a great chance first half. Good free kick in the build up to the first goal. An inch lower and it would have come down behind the line. Norwich seemed to make a point of marking him tighter than Barny, which ultimately played into our hands. Barnard - 8 Two very well taken goals, with another disallowed inbetween. Can only assume the (very dodgy) ref gave a foul for the tussle in the build up. Missed a good chance at the back post first half, but otherwise excellent. Subs: Antonio came on in the 5th minute of injury time. 2-0 away to the league leaders and it's 6 f**king minutes. Same as the Ipswich cup match.

Has had some flack for his first few performances for Saints, but he looked pretty good to me today. Had some good overlaps with Puncheon in the first half and has decent pace. I'd hate for people who didn't go today to assume he is always crap.

In a car park in Norwich. Traffic isn't going anywhere, but I couldn't give a sh-t. great performance and result. Out played them in both halves. Lambert and Barny both could have had another each first half. Lallana was vey quiet first half, but hit the post twice second half. Barnard had one disallowed put of pure sympathy just before his second. A great team performance. Our front six took this **** all game, although Morgan was pretty disappointing. Punchy was awesome. How can this bloke not get into the Plymouth team???? MOTM, but Barny, Harding, SKD and Hammond were all brilliant. Still a massive task getting near the playoffs, but this was a thoroughly brilliant away day. To Wycombe!!

Well worth our lead. Norwich have had a couple of half chances, nothing special though. Lambert and Barnard have both missed great chances for us. Puncheon, Hammond and Barny playing very well so far. Lallana, Morgan and Jaidi maybe not so.

Bart has won 9 out of the 11 games he has played this season. The two defeats coming at Leeds and Colchester. Easily our best player statistically.

Can I do the weather next time?

Marian Pahars. That beat him.

Just booked tickets. Looking forward to this one.

Just like listening to Wogan.

Won 3 of their first 10 games. Not sh*t. Not league winning but not sh*t. Saints won 1 of their first 10 games. Sh*t.

We had a sh*t start and minus 10 points. Norwich didn't.

The transfer window is still open in Ukraine until some time in March. So Pompey could flog a few players to Shakhtar Donnet'sk, assuming they would want any Pompey players.

Sorry... what. We're 15th, 4 points clear of the drop zone with a 5 team buffer between us and 2 games in hand. Even if we lose a couple of games now, it is unlikely we will end up in the drop zone. At the same time we are 18 points off the playoff spots with 18 games left. That is a massive gap to overhaul in a short space of time. Very unlikely. What has any of that got to do with money?

:-s You seem to have answered a completely seperate debate with your usual "we are the Man City of League 1" routine. The point I was making is that roughly half the teams in the League end up in a midtable possition. It is hard to get further up the table because the teams above you tend to win. It is also unlikely the teams below you will overtake because they tend to lose a lot. Some people can't seem to grasp this. If we win one game, promotion is back on the menu. If we lose we're in a relegation fight. We've scored 14 points more than the teams in the drop zone so far. They aren't likely to overtake us. We've scored 8 points less than the teams in the playoff spots and we're 18 behind. We aren't likely to get anywhere near them.

Norwich are the best footballing team I've seen this season by a mile. Playing on a cattlefield is going to disadvantage them easily as much as it would us.

Don't get me wrong, I wanted to keep him and his form was good at the end of the season. Can't believe we got rif of him and Oakley in favour of BWP and Wright. That was however his 'Saganowski moment' in an otherwise unproductive season.

£25,000? This means they will have to fine Portsmouth £950,000 for playing a weakened team all season. Appaling fine IMO. It's just terrible on so many levels. They have ignored the big teams doing this dosens of times in the past. McCarthy has the right to pick whoever he wants. Who are the FA to say what his strongest team is. If, as MM suggested, his first choice 11 were tired, surely the fittest 11 are the best?

He was out of form here in an uncreative team and for some reason Burley decided he would rather have BWP.

Meow. P.S. WTF are you on about? When did I mention money?

I like this idea too. I'd say a player must stay at a club within the catchment area he was born, or has lived at least 5 years of his life, until he is 18 years old. None of this Arsenal poaching Walcott, Ramsey etc. when they're 16.

I thought this was going to be a thread about Patrick signing for them. Working now it seems.