Whitey Grandad

At least you got something out of the evening

Nor that dreadful drumming at Palace.

We couldn't afford his wages. Not without upsetting the whole pay structure.

It's the cult of the manager. All you get on TV is continual shots of the bench even when there's a game going on. I even remember one game on BBC when they had a shot of a brick wall which was the side of a dugout and the commentary was along the lines of "...and in that dugout the manager will be deciding whether to make any changes...". FFS there's a game going on and we get shown a brick wall! Incidentally, there is no mention of a manager or coach in The Laws of the Game except to say that they have to keep off the pitch and stick to their designated areas.

Fixed it for you

To be fair, on the few occasions that I've seen him play he didn't seem to do anything particularly wrong.

I've just checked, yes he did.

Maybe they were doing a favour for somebody.

That's what I thought. I think the point of the article is that clubs seem willing to splash out on relatively unknown players from foreign leagues yet not do the same with our own lower leagues.

Martin Samuel in The Mail thinks this fellow might be worth a punt: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-3338721/Why-don-t-Premier-League-clubs-look-Jamie-Vardys-Conor-McLaughlin-not-exotic-story-s-Northern-Ireland-s-choice.html

You were lucky! I had to get back to the coach and got completely soaked. A thoroughly miserable night.

It occurred to me yesterday that you don't often see players dithering like that in the Premier League and then losing possession. You often see a bit of miscontrol but complete indecision under pressure is rarer. We've had Artur and Yoshi. I don't know what he thought he was doing for their third. He seems to have a limited awareness of what's going on around his peripheral areas.

I've seen such incidents a few times but TV don't normally show it in the highlights, probably because they don't think it worth mentioning.

He is a part of our rich history. Everybody knows where they were when Ali came off the subs' bench.

Yes, he'll need to do a lot to make up for that débâcle.

I don't think calling him an idiot is fair. Incompetent (at right back) might be more accurate.

I assumed that was meant to Sat, Weds, Next Sat.

Yup. I've added a RB to my letter to Santa

If Cedric's not good enough then yes, I certainly agree with you.

Surely we have to take some account of their operating circumstances. The chairman and club finances must also have played a big part in any perceived successes or failures.

I had hoped to forget it

There are a lot of points there and I will only answer a couple of them. Cedric has received a lot of head injuries and I would put that down to his stature and technique. When he jumps his head often ends up at arm and elbow level so he is likely to get caught. You cannot blame the referees if you see his situation as unique, you have to look at the player. Most of the other points are just your opinion, which happens to be different from the referee who happened to be in charge. There are situations where if you had 100 referees in charge half would give a foul and half wouldn't that doesn't make half of them wrong, or are they only 'wrong' if there opinion differs from yours. Pellè's mid-air collision was nowhere near a stonewall penalty and one other person saying he thought it was doesn't make it so. Was Pellè backing towards goal at the time? Where were the defender's eyes looking at the time? None of this can be determined on the TV but will have influenced Mason's decision. Of course I would have been delighted if he had given us a penalty but it was no surprise that he didn't and nor would plenty of others. Remember that all of your opinions are coloured by your allegiance. Video referees would not stop love anything, you're just asking for another opinion which you hope would go in your favour. You can't decide matters like this by committee. As someone once told me, it's best to have an odd number of members for a committee and three's too many.

This is the most important point to take from the game. I have not seen any reference in the independent match reports that criticise the referee. To have a go at him every time we play badly or lose a game is getting a bit repetitive and you won't get much sympathy for that point of view from those who hold no affiliation to Southampon FC. We should always remember that the referee is not on our side and nor should he be.

I would add that his positioning is suspect.