The Kraken

Indeed. He otherwise has something of a point, though not to the ridiculous extent he keeps trolling on about. "Penny pinching club like ours" after a summer as Europe's 7th highest spending club is just a moronic statement.

Ah yes, the other one that West Ham play ugly football and we play the Southampton way.

Why is it that simple? If you mean your opinion then fair enough, but not as a factual one or the other. Won the league with Limerick, has the highest win % of any Blackpool manager, won promotion with Notts County (won the title by 19 points), got Bolton promoted, multiple top 10 finishes with Bolton in the PL including 6th and UEFA Cup qualification plus a cup success. Even his spells at Newcastle and Blackburn weren't as bad as was portrayed. Saints fans would be more inclined to side with Adkins as manager. I wouldn't swap either for the other, to be honest. If we had BFS as manager I wouldn't be at all disappointed.

I'm sure there's some stats that will prove why I'm mistaken. Because football really is quite that simple.

Good for you; but clearly I wouldn't.

Yes. This season I'd rather have Jaaseklainen than Boruc. Yes, I'd rather have Collins over either of our centre backs. Ideally with Yoshida though. Why? Because its my opinion. I think there's some games where he'd be a better option than Puncheon. I think you need to read that part again. I listed some of those as squad players, and that your simplistic "first XI" scenario isn't all that realistic, being as we don't actually have one. Our lineup changes depending who we play and where; the potential first team players I listed i could envisage using for certain games instead of some of our players (Davis yesterday for instance). And its probably best you don't speculate on what Adkins and Allardyce think.

Its not that simple though, is it? We don't have a "first XI". Gaston is too erratic away from home to justify a starting slot. Lambert was "dropped" for the trip to Chelsea. Players like Taylor would IMO be a great option to have when playing away and trying to keep it tight in midfield. Its why I said that any first team choice would be dependent on who we were playing and where.

As a squad player he's better than Dan Fox.

F*ck it, let's open it again Bear. I'd definitely have Jaaskelainen, Collins and Jarvis in, and depending on the opposition could make a case for any of Diame, Nolan, Noble, J Cole, and Taylor. Other squad players such as Tomkins, O'Brien, Demel and Carroll.

What does it matter how many West Ham players people on here would choose to have over our players? This is the forum that had some thinking the Saints side of the lower leagues was better than England, so I'm personally not sure of many poster's objectivity when it comes to rating Saints players. West Ham and Saints have each got a number of players that are of roughly similar qualities. Building a 22 man squad from both us and them would probably consist of roughly an even split. At the start of the season I had them down to stay up comfortably and be the highest placed promoted club; I don't see too much to change my opinion of that.

Probably a bit 9-3; but for the amount that defenders get away with pushing and grappling in the box it would have been a poke in the eye had it been disallowed. RL and Cahill come together, and you can see Cahill put his hands up to hold Lambert, so Rickie just gave him a big shove in the chest. Cahill didn't appeal it afterwards, in fact he looked desolate that he'd been done in such a rudimentary way. What a header though. While the tactics did work, I'm not sure of this "lets stay in the game for as long as possible" idea. Its quite a defeatist attitude. And for those saying that its naive and lacking in footballing knowledge to think that way; have a look at Gordon Watson's tweets from last night. His opinion was that had we started with our strongest lineup and really got at Chelsea, there was potentially more than a point there for us. Its very hard to criticise after sucha result, of course, but I think he has a point. QPR showed that the bigger sides aren't invulnerable at home. Anyway, a point well earned and a big shot in the arm for our next games against Everton and Man United.

Ramirez also only on the pitch for 15 minutes. Coincidence?

Scumfinder General has blown a head gasket now that he's seen the besmirchment of his intrepid leader. He really seems to have little other meaning to his life than banning people from POL for being (in his eyes at least) a scummah.

Absolutely superb turnaround. And given the team we put out, brilliant.

This. A superb turnaround.

Replaced by Chaplow; f*ck me....

Sadly the paucity of our squad means that any chance of doing a QPR and getting something from this game was an entirely unrealistic aspiration. Having a £12M flair player who is too sh*te away from home to make the first XI is a sad indictment too.

Colour me surprised. What do people expect? He simply isn't a Premier League quality player, and especially against better sides will more than often get found out and exploited.

Agreed. And even if he was getting out of the way of the incoming challenge he was still diving to do so. So it still can be a justified penalty and a dive from JRod, and its certainly not my intention to call the player a cheat. I just think he saw the challenge coming and dived for a penalty. I've read 3 or 4 different newspapers yesterday and a couple this morning, plus all of the TV commentary. I'm yet to hear any neutral pundit or reporter call it as anything other than a dive. That can't all be because of biassed opinion against Saints or clueless reporters. The only place being given credence that it wasn't a dive is seemingly on here. Oh well. Not that it matters a great deal, some people think it was a dive and some don't. I don't claim to understand the not a dive viewpoint and certainly don't agree with it, but that's their opinion and so be it. I am just quite surprised at the sheer amount of people that don't think it was a dive.

Or various members of a message board, come to that.

Clearly you ignored my response in posts #200, #202 and #204. I listened to your reasoning but didn't agree with it. I summarised thus: I simply don't believe that explanation, that he completely lost his balance from his right foot moving backwards. If he had truly lost his balance I'd expect the legs to fully extend backwards up into the air and for him to plunge straight downwards as a consequence. He doesn't do that, his left foot actually gets thrown out to ensure he goes down, rather than try to keep him upright. As I said, it matter not, and I think I'll call a halt there as I'm off out to watch the Man Utd v Liverpool game and to see if Suarez and his mates can top JRod's 9.9 effort....

When Dan Fox and Steve de Ridder are the only current viable alternatives then yes, we're definitely a better team with him! Saying that, yesterday there really wasn't that much in it. Shows how bad he was.

Read what I've said. Foul? Possibly. Trying to avoid contact from the defender's challenge? Possibly. A dive to accentuate all of that? Absolutely. Show me one post that has identified why Rodriguez couldn't have carried on with at least his left leg. Show me one, and I'll consider it. I haven't see one that I'm aware of. I think his right leg could also have tried to carry on, but we'll ignore that for now. Just a plausible reason as to why he lost balance so completely that his left leg was entirely upended with his right and he literally had no other option than to hit the floor.

Of course you're allowed to have it. And I'm allowed to disagree with it. I'm yet to see a cogent response from anyone as to why Rodriguez was completely unable to utilise either foot to stand on following the incident. Foul? Possibly. A dive to accentuate it? Absolutely definitely IMO. I went on to Football 365's forum this morning to get a neutral perspective on it. Unsurprisingly there were hardly any dissenting voices to the fact that it was a dive. MOTD's analysis last night (including an ex player of ours and a ex-striker more than known for exaggerating challenges in the box) labelled it a dive. The papers I've read this morning labelled it a dive. I could be concinced it wasn't a dive if someone could provide a decent reason as to why Rodriguez couldn't at least try to stumble on with his left leg. No-one has yet done that, so I'll continue thinking it was a dive.

Perhaps because at the time (in real time) it did actually look like a foul. Shearer on MOTD last night said it was a dive, but that when we saw it first time round he thought it was a penalty. A dive, and a pretty good one apparently.