The Kraken

How would going down be better than staying up?

True, they were horrific at St. Mary's. How we only won 2-0 was a mystery. I watched that game with the head scout of a PL side but who is a Fulham fan and he was utterly embarrassed with them and couldn't believe they had got themselves into such a situation with so many old, overpaid and not good enough players.

Shame. Officially Saints had 4 one season and stayed up (Burley, Dodd & Gorman, Pearson).

We really haven't. Against the really big sides we did ok but outside of the top 5 or 6 we often had a pitiful away following. Dropping down to the Championship and League 1 was a definite benchmark in arresting that trend.

If you count caretaker managers then, yes, plenty.

257 to Bolton.

We can target it, but if they win their game in hand (against Palace at home) they'll be 9 points ahead of us with 12 games to play. Expecting to overhaul that would be a bit unrealistic.

Viola indeed, pal. Wise words and, to be blunt, your right.

St. Charlie's meltdown seems to have soothed in this regard.

I can equate that to days gone by, pal. It was like in my 20s when I deviated from a decent night out in the Rhino and headed down to McCluskey's or New York New York. I would always target scoring with a bird who was a 9 out of 10; but come the end of the evening, I would always settle for a 5 or 6 out of 10. In times of desperation the relegation zone bird would come into play. Either that or a kebab and a cab home. Gotcha. Moving targets.

Yep, I was expecting VW to come on at half time or shortly afterwards. It's very rare that our central midfield comes off second best but it did yesterday. I've got a lot of respect for Jack Cork as a player, I think he's superb. But yesterday he just wasn't at it and too often got bullied out of it.

I thought Jack Cork had one of his most ineffective games for quite some time yesterday, our central midfield in general just got a bit bullied and over-run by Stoke. Cork and Wanyama give us different options but I think VW might have been a better option yesterday.

Artur Boruc, he's having a party. So bring your vodka, and bring your Charlie.

For a nation that doesn't really have much in the way of proper mountains I think we do very well. 2 guys in the final 12 for the snowboard slopestyle (one who was in second place at the halfway point) is a big achievement for a nation like GB, and we have one of the top performers in the world in the skiing equivalent. The women are also stronger across the board and probably hold our best hopes for medals. We won't win too much, and compared to the traditionally strong nations we're way off, but to have anyone up there in the elite is an achievement in itself, and this winter Olympics probably sees our strongest team ever.

Doesn't need to, it keeps you warm on a cold winter day.

He will go for it.

Horrible news, RIP.

I kind of agree to an extent, I like the stripes but only when well done. My favourite kits have been the sash and the Rank Xerox, so stripes aren't a necessity. The main things for me are that the kit represents Saints i.e. in keeping with what has gone before, and that it looks good. So I think both the pinstripes and the current kit have abjectly failed to do that. We ditched the black shorts and went with kits that were just bland, boring, uninspiring and nothing to do with us. They just haven't seemed like Saints kits, and that's why I really hope we move away from them and more in keeping with a traditional kit. The Sash and the Rank Xerox, whilst not stripes, are iconic as kits for SFC, so we don't necessarily need stripes to come out with something that will be much more popular than the last two years poor efforts.

So we wouldn't win the league if we qualified for Europe? Yeah, I think I could probably get over that.

Yeah that would be awful. Utterly terrible.

Indeed. You can read between the lines of Swansea's official statement that Laudrup seems to have been hawking himself around and wouldn't commit to a longer term future there. To be fair he's a world star with a huge reputation and for sure only saw Swansea as a stepping stone on the way up.

*waits for MLG to labour the point of the qualifying rounds actually counting while utterly missing the point about only the group stages providing the enormous financial gain of qualification in the first place*

Signed. Good luck.

It always amazes me that people get so rowdy about others having some contacts that feed them little snippets of information. Its utterly bizarre. Its not exactly something to be proud of, "being ITK". Its just a quirk of fate. Yet some people get so angry about it, simply because they aren't. Weird.