The Kraken

I damn well hope not. Awful today. Epitomised in the second half when we could have had a break, ball played out to him on the left, he just stood there waiting for it and their player nipped in front of him and drove on, forcing a foul and free kick on the edge of our box. Lazy, lazy play that instead of hitting them on the counter attack led directly to us being right under the cosh. He was a liability today, and I really hope de Ridder gets a game instead of him as he seems to have so much more to offer.

Great atmosphere today; although somewhat let down by the complete f*cking bellends in our row who weren't in their seats, refused to move when asked by the guys whose seats they were, and ended up having a full on ruck with each other midway through the first half. Pathetic little children.

Agree for the most part apart from those bolded above. I thought Davis was absolutely first class; some good saves and commanded his box for crosses in from some dangerous corners. Really didn't do anything wrong at all and kept us in it during the first half when we were shocking. Rickie, thought he was fairly quiet but even still, up against two giant centre halves he still won plenty in the air and acted as a conduit. Would give him a 6, but definitely not sh*t. Morgan, thought he actually showed what a CM should do when he came on. Got hold of the ball, most importantly didn't just give it away, and was good at the end when trying to keep the ball and see out time. Thought he was harshly dropped in the first place, neither Hammond nor Cork did enough to justify inclusion instead of him. In general, I thought Connolly was pretty poor and ineffectual. Guly, awful, truly awful. De Ridder, wow, what a player he could yet be for us. Strong, quick, hungry and deadly when he got into a forward position. Guilty of being not being selfish wnough at the end, tried to play in Chaplow but could have gone on his own. And Chaplow, another brilliant bustling performance, ProZone will surely show that he put in an immense amount of running, top quality.

You assume any remaining tickets will go on sale; has there been anything to confirm this? I haven't seen in anywhere, and perhaps wouldn't be surprised if it was season-ticket holders only for this game.

I sincerely hope that never happens. Goal line technology, yes please, and then that'll do thanks. Video replays in football would utterly kill the game IMO.

To give some perspective, this is a decent article about it all. http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/paulfletcher/2011/10/football_league_votes_in_favou.html#299200 The fees paid for youngsters up front is not just the end of the payments; should that player go on to establish himself in the first team there will be follow on payments. Quite what these payments are is uncertain, but one would hope that they get close to providing a "fair value" that the Premier League claim them to do. It's hard to make an informed decision about this without all of the facts to hand; but it certainly doesn't seem like a great deal for the clubs outside the Premier League elite on first analysis. One can only hope that with 44 teams voting in favour of it that there is indeed a good deal to be had and all off the negative theories that are abound will just be scare stories and not the reality of the new system.

Second.

To be fair, that kind of goes on already, albeit at a reduced scale. The big clubs all have a history of employing parents of upcoming youngsters, or providing houses in the local area to bypass the 90 minute rule. That said, it's still a throughly distasteful move by the Premier League.

Quite easy to be one of the best in the country when Cardiff are the only opposition

Depends what the criteria is really. "Most successful" manager, and he's not yet close and won't be until he emulates what Lawrie did for us in the old first division. But "best" is a little more subjective, and our progress under him so far has been pretty remarkable, so under that remit alone he'd definitely be quite high up there.

If you can't get your job done in your allocated hours (without the occasional few days here and there for work peaks) then you're either not good enough at your job or being asked to do too much. Expecting employees to work 10, 11 or 12 hour days while being contracted to work 8 hour days is a complete liberty IMO. As a business owner I would never, ever impose such a demand on my staff without compensating them for it through overtime payments, and even then I'd consider working that many hours over any extended period of time to be an unhealthy arrangement.

I disagree actually; maybe it was that the standard of opposition last year didn't test us to the limit, but last season I would have described us as "functional" and "effective". This season we've carried on with the excellent form but I think we look so much better as a team and play much better, more flowing and more creative football. We were certainly getting there by the back half of the season, but this season is like night and day as far as I'm concerned.

"We arguably have the best players in the division. The game last night showed we don't have the best "team" in the division. But that's no surprise to me, as it takes time to go from a collection of individual players to an established team, more time than Sam has currently had at West Ham. There is lots of room for improvement in terms of the "team", and I'd expect a slow and steady improvement throughout the season." A degree of parallels between us and Brighton from the first half of last season.

Or just send the coach tickets out and not make it needlessly harder than it is right now. FFS. With all the restrictions in place and the game on TV I can't see us selling anywhere near our 3,200 allocation, think we could end up with around half that making the trip.

Pretty sure it's already been confirmed that they will have exactly the same procedure for our home fixture.

With it being a bubble game I'd be very surprised if we sell out our allocation.

Discussed here. http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?33212-The-downside-of-economic-boom...

That's the nature of football supporters; it's not unique to Saints and will keep on happening. Personally I don't know why people moan about it so much; if you enjoy going every week then go every week. It shouldn't be used as a badge of honour to criticise others who don't want to in this league, but might choose to in a league above. I've said all along that an average attendance over the season of anywhere around 25,000 would be a really great achievement, and it would seem we're pretty well on course for that, so no reason for complaints here.

"You can stick your f*cking bubbles up your arse". Try blowing this, Fat Sam? "Top of the league, we're having a laugh" Any of those is fine with me.

You've been looking foolish for months, but never mind that.

I'm with Dalek, we'll never finish higher than 17th.

Considering the whole idea of the justice movement has been to ensure that all evidence related to the day is released (to which the Government have now agreed) then one would assume that the complete opposite would be the case. And you try to deny being ignorant or ill informed? Jesus...

Pap, I'd suggest what is even more worrying has been the flat-out refusal by some to believe the findings of a thorough investigation and report into the disaster, in favour of scurrilous and blatantly incorrect newspaper allegations made nearer the time, just to seemingly continue a laboured point and entrenched viewpoint. Seeing some of the completely ignorant accusations made in this thread such as "If thousands of fans had not turned up ticketless trying to force their way in then this whole disaster would have been averted" and "the gates were rushed by a large number of fans", it's just incredible how entrenched these opinions are with the baseless newspaper allegations at the time (yet thoroughly disappointing that the posters that chose to make those remarks haven't retracted them since being made aware of just how wrong they are). I've said it before, but my biggest hope from all of this is that, finally, the truth of the whole day will out. That in my eyes will constitute justice for the 96.

Frankie Boyle's description of him always makes me laugh. "He looks like someone shaved a monkey and kicked it through Top Man".