The Kraken

Amen to that.

Good job that only around 23 or 24 games will have elapsed by then.

Buttner was rumoured to be around £3M. Also only rumours but we were supposedly scared off by £6M for Scott Dann. Yet (again rumours) we were interested in that Middlebrough defender before he got crocked at £6M. In short; who knows?

Just shy of £25M of that went on an attacking midfielder and two strikers. The rest was used to make us a solid unit, so its perhaps hardly a surprise.

Hope so.

Originally there was a 5 year plan; with 2 years set aside to get out of League 1. But Cortese did an interview after sacking Pardew, saying that expectations had changed with us spending a good deal of money in the January window i.e. he expected promotion from it. It was an original 5 year plan but that soon changed, according to Cortese himself.

Distribution is very good. Shot stopping looks very good too. Commands his area better, comes and punches at crosses which Kelvin just doesn't do. His timewasting skills are excellent too.

“We needed to be more compact with our shape when we looked at it,” he stated. “Rickie was playing in the 10 position and Guly has been out of the team for a bit so had the energy to go in there and run around.”

That's exactly what a couple of lads I was with said, especially Puncheon.

Exactly. First half rolled one past the post, had a left foot drive saved by the keeper, shot over from a breakaway move in the second half.

Yes, you're right, I'm wrong, you're the best. Time to move on.

No.

Agreed. If Mayuka wasn't going to come on at RM then he certainly should have done up front, whether for Lambert or Rodriguez (Id have said instead of JRod). And if he's too injured to even be considered a risk from the bench then, quite frankly, he shouldn't even be on the bench, its pointless having him there.

Are you suggesting that Rodriguez as a striker didn't offer any defensive support when he played LM for us? Of course he did, he adapted to the role he was asked to play. I think we've got to the point where we're not going to agree with each other, so perhaps best we just leave it, don't you think?

Good summary IMO.

Erm, yes. http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?40422-Rail-franchise-debacle

That's entirely your opinion, not a fact at all. Therefore it is conjecture. As is my opinion of it all.

You said they underperformed. I don't think Puncheon underperformed. I also thought Lambert underperformed less than Rodriguez did and should have stayed on.

Well I guess we'll never know so its all conjecture. As for the Marsden analogy; agreed. But Marsden worked so well for us because he had Bridge in tandem with him, almost playing as a wing back. So Marsden needed to have a more defensive side to his game. I don't think Yoshida overlapped once the whole game, so it was a massively defensive left side which didn't get at Riise and invited them upon us.

I do accept that, but I think at the moment we don't have too many other options than that. My opinion is, I concede, perhaps hindered by only having seen Mayuka in action in glimpses, but from what I have seen I genuinely think he can do a job there and would have been a decent introduction today.

First half he did. Second half i've already said that he was too predictable at times, but nonetheless he was a very good attacking option for us. If he was to go off then, as I've also said, it needed to be for Mayuka or even Guly; Chaplow was too defensive a sub. Completely agree with you about Lambert though.

No I didn't, I responded to your post saying that Puncheon and Lambert were underperforming, disagreeing particularly in the case of Puncheon. He wasn't our best player but I thought he did decent enough to merit staying on the pitch.

As opposed to Chaplow. who, lets face it, is not a traditional wide midfielder? I agree with TDD, Mayuka was the option on the right IMO. If nothing else it would have pushed Riise right back and not encouraged Fulham to attack us down that side. It also would have retained an attacking outlet for us; that option dried up completely with Chaplow. I'd even have preferred Guly to Chaplow on that side; we're at home so making such a defensive move was unnecessary, I don't subscribe to the notion that we were under the cosh because of Puncheon at all.

Sorry, from what did you infer that I thought Puncheon and Lambert were our best players?

Yep. He's a flair player and I personally wouldn't normally put a flair player as a skipper. Today it looked like he needed a proper bollocking in the last 10 - 15 minutes to get in and hold his shape, and give Fox some cover. Yet there he was just jogging back, almost doing his own thing. I'm led to woder if, now that's skipper, his team-mates are a bit more disinclined to give him a verbal rocket when he's not doing his job.