SaintBobby

I think the problem on this forum is that attitudes seem to polarise into those who seem to think things are really grim and those who think they are really great. The truth is somewhere in the middle. I'd say our performance this season is mildly disappointing, but I can understand the argument that it's been just about satisfactory. Things have picked up after (another) dismal start, but we've never really hit a totally blistering run of form (apart from a short run over Xmas/New Year). I'd also say in recent matches, we've been a tad lucky - i.e. our results have been better than our performances. Walsall is the exception that proves this rule. I'm not a wrist slitter, just remain a bit underwhelmed by our season so far. I'm very confident we will be promoted, but was hoping we'd achieve it with comfort.

About 100 points should have been our target at the start of the season. We have the best - and certainly most expensive - squad by far. Finding one chunk of the season where we're averaging a bit over 2 points is good, but not amazing. Over the last three games, we've won 9 points. That "equates" to 138 points in a season... But over the whole season so far, we've been whipped by Brighton FFS. I'll settle for 2nd and think we'll get it, but that won't be an amazing achievement, it'll be a little bit below expectations to be honest.

33 points from 15 games is pretty good. But not jaw-droppingly amazing.

When the ball was last played by the oppo, NOT when it last made contact with any player

Ridiculous coverage. Talk to some saddo with a pair of boll@cks on their faces but don't spend 5 seconds showing one of the most controversial moments of the game....

You may be right that this is what Schneiderlin would go for - but in that case he's the most undervalued player in the squad IMHO. I like Chaplow but am not sure his market value would have gone from 50K to 800K in the last few weeks. Incidentally, FourFourTwo this month rates Lallana as the 2nd best player in L1 and AOC as the 4th (Elliot Bennett of Brighton is 1st, having been responsible for half of all Brighton's assists this season). The article places Lallana's value at £3m and says Bournemouth have a 25% sell-on clause.

No datatbase errors, but painfully slow reloading.

I havent been a fan of us until the last few games, he's been in awesome form recently.

Excellent result...nine points out of nine....sweet.

Great Saints performance Utterly abysmal forum performance...again

That's a big loss for them. I get horribly conflicted. Don't wish injury on any player - or oblivion on Plymouth, but I genuinely find it hard not to see all League One football through the prism of Saints promotion chances. Wrong, I know...

Sorry, the other thread got locked. Thanks for the personal abuse, alpine. Very immature, really. But I understand. You can't stop lashing out behind a keyboard. I think you'll overcome that, in time. I assume you now put our promotion odds at much greater than 50%? Nearer 70%, I'd think?

Quality. Free money available....take whatever that loon predicts and bet the other way. Presumably, he would have offered about 100/1 on a 3+ goal Saints win. Priceless. Tragic and sad, but truly priceless.

So your Barca predictions are bang on. But your certainty about Southampton's performances are just dire. (it will never be 3-0 etc etc) In fairness, I guess you actually watch Barca play football matches....

Not sure when Morgan's contract is up. Def want to keep him ratehr than see the last year run down or cash him in. But i wouldn't blame him for leavign if we're not in the Championship.

I'd say we should win by 2 or 3 clear goals. But I still give Yeovil a better chance against us than I give Arsenal v Barcelona... I think I'd settle for a semi-incompetent 1-0 Saints win right now.

In order to highlight the crucial importance of the next two games, Saints are around 1/3 to beat Yeovil tomorrow night - all of the other promotion contenders are odds against pickign up three points. For the Bournemouth v Saints, Southampton are very narrow favourites, although both sides are available at around 6/4.

It depends whether your comments are based on statistical likelihood or on relentless, baseless psychological negativity. As pointed out above, we are one of only two teams in the division never to have taken the lead and then lost a league game. It's fine, to a degree, for people to bark out their own irrational prejudices, or type out whatever unreasoned thought is running through their mind at any given time. But such posts are not grounded in reality and are therefore likely to be ignored or ridiculed by others. And quite right too. Actually, Saints have a very good record at NOT surrendering a lead in comparison to other teams. But why let a fact get in the way of a wholly baseless rant?

I think the problem is you don't show the same statistical certainty when Saints go ahead. I'm trying to remember the last league game where we went ahead but then lost. Can't think of one this season, but haven't checked. If your response to, say, Lambert putting us 2-1 up v Swindon was "well, that shld almost certainly be game won now. Fantastic!"....then fair enough....

I'm one of the positive types, in that I think the bookies are right and that we are very likely indeed to be promoted - probably in 2nd place. That said, we have underperformed quite badly this season - or at least for the first 2/3 of it overall. Appreciate the "we'll walk this league" meme has become an in joke on here, but we really should be walking this League. At the start of the season, I'd have said 100 points was a reasonable target. The resources we have at our disposal are just enormous compared to our immediate competitors and the team shouldn't have needed much time to "gell". That was a fair excuse last August as we had such an influx of new players, but the basic line-up this season is very similar to last season. I think the reason poor results (such as Tranmere and Walsall) provoke such negative outbursts is that they heap more bad news on what has actually been quite a poor overall performance and the margin for error at the so-called business end of the season is now pretty tiny. Although I have some sympathy for the OP's point about "we can only do what we can do, we can't affect our competitors other than when we play them", the very strong performances of Brighton and Bournemouth show how weak this division is. Both those sides deserve credit for doing so spectacularly well, but it does underscore Saints rather underwhelming points haul so far.

Very pleasing bounceback after Tuesday. Shame so many of our competitors won as well, but our game was one of the toughest in the division, so banana skin avoided. The top six do now have quite a buffer over the rest. I still have us as clear favourites to get 2nd...and havent given up on catching Brighton yet....

No offence to the administrators, but its shocking tbh. I don't expect even free sites to crash like this - and this has been a repeated issue. Embarrassing, frankly.

Sack him now. We can still salvage our season. Martin O'Neill might be able to get us up. (thought i'd get this in before this nonsense gets locked)

Saints started the evening at 5/6 to win and are now 20/19 Weird - 45 minutes gone, no score and no major shift on Saints' odds. Might reflect that we seem to have done everything but score in 1st half?

A bit unfair. But only a bit. The 5 year plan is, in my view, a walking, talking duck. It's not a "sitting duck". A sitting duck strongly implies that others can take an easy potshot and kill you off. If we fail to get promoted and work our way up the divisions, the fault will be our own. Frankly, it shouldn't be coming down to an iffy offside decision or a dodgy penalty claim - but either of these things could now cost us dearly. Southampton should have been on target to secure around 100 points in League One this season. Even if we go up as champions, we will definitely fall short of this points total, which in my view should not have been considered an outrageous target in August. I would say, however, that as fans we can't have it both ways round. If Lambert, Schneiderlin, Lallana, Fonte et al are that good, you can be confident that we'll still be promoted, and with room to spare. If they aren't that good, then why would we really miss them next year? I think the only thin on anything approaching a knife-edge is whether we get promoted. If we don't, our present highly paid squad will have failed to deliver and we will need to rebuild. They will have failed and we can't surely claim that we had the best possible squad but it was all Cortese's fault for not holding a fans' forum or whatever.... Most likely thing though is that we go up automatically - probably in 2nd place, but quite possibly in first. But even if we nick 1st place with, say, 87 points to Brighton's 86, I don't think we should get carried away about next year. Saints are making very, very hard work over what should have been a very simple task.