Sheaf Saint

"For me, if you take away the big boys, Southampton are the best team in this league and once again they made life very difficult for us," said Bruce.

Just got home to Sheffield. Battled through a blizzard/lightning storm to get there. Tried to be clever beating all the traffic into the city, got hopelessly lost and then stuck in horrendous traffic due to roadworks trying to find my way to the ground, all of which meant I missed the first half an hour of the game! From what I did see, we were totally in control. Once we scored it was never really in doubt because Hull offered no threat at all up front in the second half. Our defence did its job so well that they didn't manage a shot at goal in the second half until about the 80th minute. Chambers did really well down the right. Looked like he really wanted it. J Rod's running was causing them all sorts of problems at the back but he never quite got the right through ball although AL and RL kept trying them for him. MOTM Steve Davis - what an engine that man has got. Ran his socks off in midfield protecting the back four, always making himself available to receive the ball and looked to get things moving forward as often as possible. Cork's effort against the crossbar/post late on was the best I have ever seen him hit the ball. One of these days he's going to get a goal. There were a few groans around me when Guly couldn't put away Shaw's rebounded shot but it came at him so quickly and he was at full stretch, he just couldn't get enough contact to nudge it past the defender who got back well to clear.

Can I have tonight's lottery numbers as well please?

I see Clattenburg denied Everton a pretty obvious penalty at WHL today. I guess for them that levels out the blatant one he should have given us at Goodison.

A little under two years ago... http://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?36611-Hull-0-2-Saints-Post-Match-Reaction-Thread&highlight=Hull+Saints#.Uvdkjvl_spQ

I know they have improved a bit since then, but we absolutely battered them at SMS earlier in the season. It was one of the most one-sided games of football I have ever seen. No doubt they will come at us early on so as long as we can keep them out until they tire in the 2nd half, just like at Fulham last week, we should be able to get the 3 points. Perhaps we should stick Wanyama in from the start to break up their play and frustrate them. Looks like this will be the only league game I will get to this season. I've probably already cursed it for us by buying a ticket so I apologise in advance if we should lose. This fixture was the last league game I went to as well, during our promotion season. Again on a tuesday night. We won 2-0 that night with Hooiveld getting his obligatory midweek goal, and I can't remember who got the other.

How do you know we didn't try? How do you know we didn't make some offers that were rejected because the selling clubs were aware how eagerly we wanted to offload Osvaldo and jacked up the asking price? If we had signed a player for way more than he was worth because of that scenario, it perfectly fits the definition of a 'desperate' signing.

You think a week is a suitable length of time to identify a suitable player, negotiate terms with the club/player/agent and tie up a deal? Our transfer procedures just don't work like that, and any move we would have made in such a manner would have been purely out of desperation.

Change the f*cking record will you Delldays. Osvaldo needed to be shipped out for the good of the team and we didn't have enough of the transfer window left to tie up a deal for a replacement. Build a bridge... get over it.

Ignoring the importance of the match in terms of where it may lead us, I would just like for us to at least beat Sunderland once this season. To play a poor team like them 4 times in a season and not beat them once would be hugely frustrating.

And we are miles stronger than Wigan were last season. Everything is relative.

I bet there were a few Wigan fans who said the same thing last season as well.

It wasn't identical. In the tackle on Gaston he at least made a slight connection with the ball. He got nowhere near the ball in the one today.

I wouldn't exactly call it a howler but he perhaps should have done better with it. He seemed to wait too long to decide to come for it and then didn't commit fully.

Its a shame Gallagher wasn't available today. We could have done with his movement up front in the second half. Stoke defended very well but we were attacking so slow and centrally that we made it easy for them.

Meh. Are we ever going to beat this bunch of hoofers? Stoke played us at our own game in the first half and sat back and played for the draw in the second. Draw was inevitable really. Not our best performance by a long way but the conditions looked horrific. In a match very short of overall quality, I'm going to nominate Lambert as MOTM for that superb free kick to give us the lead.

Well when the nuns fail, it's time to wheel out the big guns...

Might be to do with the weather. Looks proper horrible out there.

Stoke are just sitting deep and playing for the draw or the hope of a counter attack now. Have to find a way through but so far all of our attacks this half have been one-dimensional.

I don't remember Crouchy being such a whinger when he played for us.

J Rod should have hit the target with that. Free header.

Need to put them to the sword in the 2nd half. They are giving it a good go but we have so much more quality on the ball than they do. Newcastle losing at Chelsea as expected, so it would be nice if we could nick this and leapfrog them.

FFS! Stoke with.another of their trademark 'bundle the ball into the net any way you can' goals. Are we ever going to beat these c*nts?

Haha! That's poetic justice - Begovic beaten by the wind!