The Kraken

Indeed; but i was going by the premise of your original post. It matters little. And hopefully the scouts will have their targets clearly identified (just as we did with Jose Fonte, who signed in early January) so that we sign players early in the window rather than leave it to the last minute.

F*ck off Fratts; we're way more obsessed than you are. Well, perhaps not you personally, given your apparent regular forays onto here, but you get the idea.

42, to be precise.

:lol: Top thread!

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.