Stud mark of doom

Mubama needs to be subbed off and never feature again for us

⚽D 2 JWP 3

Some of the offside decisions defied belief - did the linesman not know it’s based on when the ball is played? At one stage, after several mad decisions, I shouted “offside surely” - as a joke as it was about 3 yards onside - and even that was given offside. And the penalty - that was truly incredible - I genuinely can’t think of such a blatant penalty, that would have been absolutely clear from every seat in the stadium, let alone from the pitch, not being given.

Crucially, Kenneth was on TV and not the Radio. Personally I really like Adam and Jo - I always enjoy the highlights and the extended highlights on the club site with their commentary and it was quite a come down a few years back when for a season, if memory serves, they were replaced with some nameless generic voices, going through the commentary motions. As for adding in some anecdotes - fair play to Adam for finding a way of dealing with the endless recycling of the ball to no effect that was a feature of many of our recent managers. Having said that, it was quite humorous that for the Bristol City game this season, for both our third and fourth goal Adam is blabbing on about the same ex Luton player at length as the moves develop and only gets to interupt with “… and saints have scored another one” I did have his exceptional commentary for the 4th goal at Leicester as my ring tone for a while!

FFS - we have some complete idiots as supporters. Tonda was laughing with him about three sentences later. It was a light hearted comment. I think it was what counts a joke in Tonda world - or at least I hope it was. Has struck me before that it is completely unacceptable for super-rich football managers (Morriniho was particularly poor) to put the precarious careers of journalists (no doubt with mortgages and families to support) in jeopardy with their bullying antics in press conferences.

Tbf, you could analyse any side and conclude that, beyond the players that normally start, those other players don’t normally start.

Adam and Jo are great.

He’s played 9 minutes of football this season. We narrowly avoided shooting ourselves in the other foot by resigning him.

I’ve not watched it back on TV but I did notice he went over and had a chat with another official, and at the next breaking play seemed to be pleading with the ref - I thought his body language was suggesting he really felt he hadn’t done what he had been booked for - perhaps noting that he’d already been booked twice for that. I wonder if he thought he was making a “that’s the third/fourth time I’ve been booted up in the air” hand gesture - which is fine apparently - but that looked like the heinous crime of suggesting what a competent ref might do in such a situation - which is clearly unacceptable (except for highly capped England internationals).

Yes, but my points were also all made in the full statement, and seemed worth flagging. You’ve just summarised the summing up.

So to summarise the FA statement They were satisfied Tonda didn’t know about the rule and accepted this sort of thing was normal practice elsewhere, and noted that the 72 hour rule implied it was also acceptable earlier in EFL. Basically it seems that all Tonda did was - a) ask someone to check if Oxford were likely to play with a back 4 or a back 5, in a prep meeting B) not request anything for Ipswich, but be shown some recordings he should not have been c) ask that someone check if Hacket was fit And that warrants being thrown out of the play offs and 4 points!

Nice little side bar from the full FA statement, in our written statement we keep spelling it Middlesborough (with an extra o) which they hate up there - and the FA repeatedly add “(sic)” after to show we’ve misspelt it. Then later on in the FA’s own description they refer to them “Middleborough”

Seems a bit misleading for the league table to show the 4 points we will have deducted over the 46 game season from day 1 - or even day 0. you get a better feel for how we are really doing by proportioning it - 6 games in should be about half a point.

I was thinking that - obviously a league down but can’t recall any of our centre backs dominating to anything like the same extent since VVD, who was exceptional.

Ali Dia wasn’t “signed” was he - he was at the club on trial and then because of an injury crisis (squads were much smaller then - only two subs) somehow found himself on the bench and then on the pitch. iirc he almost scored - although he was clearly not good enough to get a contract.

Is it too early to suggest bald head fancy dress (where necessary) at West Ham?

Given the only way most teams can stop Scienza is to foul him, having someone who is the best at sticking free kicks in the net is fantastic.

He’s nay finnish- he’s 28

Also aligns with the change in strategy from buying players we can hopefully sell for a nice profit to buying players to form a football team Also a change in business guru Ted-talk bollocks to something more akin to “if something is broken, consider fixing it”

David Speedie…..

Thanks - haven’t watched the Canada games in full but obviously spotted he had scored two already (the highest scoring saint in world cups of all time!) so assumed it must be an injury.

Anyone know why Larin didn’t play?

First two home games when I’m on holiday 😞 I was expecting one but not two! Don’t recall it ever happening before. Two home games on consecutive Saturdays not a great idea in August from the fixture bods.

From this week’s letters to The Economist.

Nothing to see here as far as I can see. Saints didn’t screw up - that took sensible decisions and got hit with a black swan. Stewart is a free agent. Can agree something with us if he wants.