SaintBobby

Is it safe to build in to the equation that we will finish with a superior goal difference to both West Ham and Reading? It's not a mathematical certainty of course, but seems pretty much nailed on. If we're going to consider circumstances in which we're caught on Goal Difference, we may as well consider circumstances where we get some strange points deduction for some highly obscure reason. So, I'd say that 16 more points guarantees us the Championship and 13 more points guarantees us promotion - not 17 and 14 as you have it here.

You're staying behind to cheer the team off the pitch and to will them on for every last second. To try and cheer Billy onto a hatrick etc. Sure, if you just hear your wife's given birth or a relative has been rushed to hospital, leave. But f**king off ten minutes early in order to save yourself 15-20 minutes isn't being as good a fan as cheering the team on to the very end and saluting them off the park. I can't believe that's even in doubt.

I disagree. All things being equal, you ARE a better fan if you stay to the end. All things might not be equal, of course....

Gees. I'd forgotten how badly Birmingham had faded over the last ten games.

Sharp for me. I didn't think Lallana was at his best today. Involved, but a lot of the stuff he tried didn't quite come off for me. Honourable mention to Schneiderlin, who always seems to justify being in the "top 3" performances these days, even if he's a rare choice for MOTM.

I'm kind of treating Blackpool as a "bonus game". It's probably our toughest remaining fixture and I'd take a point right now, given our league position.

Oh, and leaving on 81/82 minutes is utterly mad. You can save as much time by leaving on 88/89/90.

I never leave early unless I have one hell of an excuse. If others wish to that's pretty sad and up to them. What I do object to people pushing across my line of view while the ball is in play. Wait for a f*cking break in play you ignorant tw*ts. FFS.

West Ham are fading at just the wrong time (from their perspective). The term "must win" if over-used. But if they don't beat Reading, their chances of automatic promotion start looking pretty feeble.

He didn't believe we'd finish 17th. The bloke is just a fool. He was trotting out the same rubbish even when the chances of us finishing that low were, objectively, less than one in a million. It's like a monkey with a typewriter.

Just travelling back from the game. Pretty comfortable and measured display. We do seem to be grinding out results rather than dazzling (which is absolutely fine by me at this stage in the season). Most encouragingly of all, we don't yet seem to be showing any nerves as we approach the promise land (did Kelvin have a single save to make?) We're not there yet, but damned close. West Ham will have to get ten points more than us over the remaining games in order to catch us up (given our superior goal difference). On their present run, they might not even get ten points. A couple more wins and we're probably there. Obviously, promotion is the main thing, but I'd dearly love to go up as Champions and to win the division for the first time in our history. So, I can imagine myself cheering on West Ham against Reading, especially if they fail to beat Posh midweek. Happy days.

How does this policy raise much money? It's a minimum price not a tax, the revenues will be microscopic.

I agree. Rupert Lowe probably is better than Carroll.

I'm more worried by Pardew making a big bid than Liverpool. Still, live for today and all that...

My (slightly pessimistic) predictions had West Ham finishing on 88 points, us on 87 and Reading on 80. I had us winning our home games vs the bottom three and drawing our game v Reading. On the road, I had us losing to Blackpool and Boro and drawing with Posh and Palace.

My main hope is that we're mathematically certain of promotion before the Coventry game and ideally confirmed as champions. That would generate an atmosphere similar to Walsall last year and perserve nerves and fingernails. The Reading game looks like the effective clincher for me, though. A win and we have a lot of breathing space potentially. A defeat or draw and hings could be very tight. I keep trying to work out under which circumstances I want the W Ham-Reading game to be a home win, away win or draw, but it just makes my head hurt.

By my reckoning, if we're 9 points clear of 3rd by the end of the Reading game, we're up (because of the superior GD)

Amazing. That's a community club. Helping the good folk - not screwing them on a CVA. Truly, morally, there is only one team in Hampshire.

It's a salutory lesson. And a good lesson in hubris. But let's just back the team. The odd thing is that history DOES NOT repeat itself. We can win the league and all we can do now is back the team (yes, including Guly!) 100%!

It's definitely 2 from 3. With us in the driving seat and West Ham seemingly fading. I hope it's us, then Reading and Brighton through the play offs.

I'd say 1/5 or 1/6 is a bit mean, but not wildly so. It looks pretty damned certain that 2 of us, West Ham and Reading will get the automatic slots - so, on the face of it, that's a 67% chance for each club to secure promotion via 1st or 2nd place. However, of the three teams, we're in the strongest position and have the best run in - so, say, a 70%-75% chance that we get 1st or 2nd? If we fail to make the top two slots, we could still go up via the play-offs. Let's assume the play-offs are a lottery - we'd still have a 25% chance of going up via this route if we dropped to 3rd. So, seems to me like a 72.5% chance of auto promotion. A 30% chance of being in the play-offs (which we will win about 25% of the time = 7.5%). So, overall chance of promotion is 80% or 1/4 IMHO.

I'm not doubting that we deserve our overall league position. After 36+ games, the table doesn't lie. I think there are two meanings of "deserve" in football terms. Firstly, there's when you've been literally robbed by bad decisions - not been given a legitimate penalty or had a goal ruled out that clearly went over the line or conceded a goal that was clearly offside etc. That wasn't the case on Saturday. Both penalties were legitimate. In that narrow definition, the result was "fair". A second, alternative definition is that you are the poorer team on the balance of play, carve out very few clear cut chances etc, but still go on to secure a win. The win at Leeds fits into this category pretty clearly (notwithstanding the claim for a penalty for a Fonte handball). The result is "legitimate" but not "deserved". I'd say the win on Saturday fits into this category. Despite chasing the game, I think we only managed one shot on target in the second half until we got given a penalty. As I said, both penalties were entirely legitimate but also a bit "lucky" (in that it would have been pretty easy for the ref to have given neither of them, especially away from home in the dying minutes). Fair play to the ref for that, but I'd have been wholly unsurprised (although gutted) if we had been given neither penalty or only one of them. I suppose it's a question of "if we played like that, against these opponents for 100 games, how many games would we win, lose and draw?". The Millwall performance would typically result in a defeat IMHO. The Leeds performance even more so. My general sense amongst Saints fans leaving the game was very much a "how the feck did we win that one?" type attitude. Of course, over a season (a) these things even out and (b) it's the mark of a great team to make their opportunities count disproportionately. Saints score pretty high on (b) this season.

We definitely didn't deserve 3 points at Millwall yesterday. I put that as a +3

I don't have the stats to hand, but I would suspect that successful, attacking teams get flagged for offside measurably more often than struggling teams. if so, this is rarely used to suggest that the officials favour the underdogs.

Over the course of a season, every team is going to lose games they shouldn't; lose games they don't deserve to and win games undeservedly and beyond expectation. You can't just isolate one or two results and apply these to the final reckoning as if these results are somehow more definitive or more influential than the other 44. Saints have performed enormously beyond expectations. But that simply doesn't mean you can expect us to win every game in which we started as favourites. Man Utd lost at home to Blackburn 3-2. A staggering result. But any Man Utd fan who bleats about how they might not win the league because of this is not been objective.