Sheaf Saint

People will moan about strange substitutions, schoolboy errors and questionable refereeing, but the long and short of it is that we went away to a team that are top of the table for a very good reason, and despite the personnel changes we were forced to make we gave a very good account of ourselves, and I take heart from that. Yes it's obvious we lost our attacking momentum when Lallana went of, but there must have been a very good reason why he was substituted which only MP knows at the moment. Lambert was utter crap today. Not involved at all, offside far too often and made no contribution of any note. Of course we forgive him because he's Rickie Lambert, but if that was anybody else putting in such an ineffective display he would be getting ripped to shreds on here. J-Rod had a really good game I thought. Made some great runs when he was able to but just didn't get to see much of the ball in the 2nd half because of the switch in formation following Lallana's withdrawal. Wanyama had a great game and showed why we paid the fee we did for him. Put in some excellent tackles to break up the play and his passing was much improved on his performances earlier in the season. Boruc - oh dear. That will haunt him for the rest of his career, but aside from that and a couple of wayward clearances he did OK.

Yeah but imagine if it was the other way round and it wasn't given. We would be screaming blue murder at the ref.

He had a run at the defence that ended with a shot on target. That's more than Lambert has done today - he's been completely anonymous for the whole game.

Oh those Arsenal fans are so hilarious aren't they - jeering every time the ball gets passed back to Boruc. Oh my aching sides.

Giroud is actually a bit of a pr*ck isn't he.

Saints fans coming through loud and clear at the moment.

Not really. He played a large chunk of both England games last week so MP probably wants to keep him fresh.

Lovely move building up to Lallana's shot there. Deserved a better finish.

Strange re-shuffle from MP. Clyne goes to LB as expected, JWP moved to right back and Davis slots into midlfield.

In place of Shaw!?

What happened?

I thought the yellow card for Hooiveld was a little harsh. They both went in feet high and the fact Giroud went down and Jos didn't made it look worse than it was.

Agreed. Lambert not made any real contribution today and looks like a passenger so far.

Why was KO delayed? Was it due to that new searching system that Arsenal put in place for this game?

Ultimately, yes. Had he been stood on his line he would have stopped it. But how many keepers stand on their line when the opposing keeper has the ball? None.

When Stoke won the toss they opted to change ends right before KO. Therefore Boruc had no frame of reference for the conditions when that ball came at him.

Exactly. We are above them because our keeper has been much better than theirs, and he is England's #1.

Outstanding from Lallana there. Unlucky.

This. I don't hold him responsible for the goal at Stoke as he had no time at all to judge the conditions prior to it. He's been excellent and today's lapse is the only big, costly mistake he has made this season - which is a lot less than Joe Hart has made for Citeh.

Boruc what the actual f**k do you think you are doing!?

That was an incredible dribble out of our half from Rodriguez.

I assume because he is labouring under the false belief that their protest against Gazprom's drilling in the Arctic is primarily based on concern over CO2 emissions, rather than their (extremely valid, I might add) concerns about the potentially disastrous effects of a major oil spill in such a remote and inhospitable region of the planet.

Then might I suggest you learn the difference between a theory and a hypothesis

So the author of this document is completely unbiased on the issue then Let's completely ignore the Cook et. al. article of which Mr Montford so clearly disapproves (although he does acknowledge that there is a scientific consensus regarding the ability of human-induced emissions to warm the atmosphere), and look at this instead... http://scienceprogress.org/2012/11/27479/ This isn't for the purposes of an article of any kind. This was just one guy who was interested to see for himself. The 13,950 papers he refers to are publicly available if you want to repeat the search yourself.