SaintBobby

I'm with those who take this competition seriously. Yeah, maybe it is the higher league equivalent of the JPT, but so what? I went bat sh1t mental when we won that. I'd rather end up 10th in the League and get to a Wembley final then finish 7th or 8th without the glory. Maybe 3 or 4 changes from Saturday depending who is fit/knackered (possibly Osvaldo in, maybe Steve Davies to start, maybe rest Lambert, possibly give Ramirez a run out?)

He's clearly an exceptional talent, but maybe he just can't settle or adapt to our style of play. It happens. I'm not writing him off yet, but the clock is ticking. If we were to end up writing off £2m or £3m in January and investing in a new £12m player, I can't say I'd be gutted.

10 games in strikes me as a fair time to make an assessment. Yeah, we've probably played slightly weaker than average teams overall - so our next nine or ten games will be tougher than our start. But not by absolute miles. Overall view - 19 points is probably about a fair return from our matches so far. Our luck has about evened out over 900+ minutes of football. We probably won't average 1.9 points per game for the rest of the season, but then we wouldn't need to in order to have a great season and be in the top six (or maybe even the top four). Reason to be optimistic: If Osvaldo comes good (and it's tough to see him getting worse), we might start to score goals at a more impressive rate which seems statistically to be our problem at the moment. Reason to be cautious: The starting XI are great, but two or three injuries and we do lack depth. Reason to be fearful: Can see the big boys trying to buy quite a lot of our players in January. Shaw, Lovren, Clyne, Schneiderlin, Lallana (and perhaps Fonte?) are surely on a lot of transfer target lists? Lose a couple of these players and we look measurably weaker. Nevertheless, at this stage we look a hell of a lot better than we typically did last season. Finishing as low as 14th would now be a huge disappointment. This is really excellent forward progress (aren't we 11 points better off than in equivalent fixtures last year?), even if it's still obviously a work in progress.

Even I'm beginning to despair of Ramirez. Maybe we need even more patience as he adapts to our style of play, but the trajectory isn't promising. On the upside, Ward-Prowse is starting to look the real deal, Lallana is having a great season and Wanyama and Lovren look like really great signings.

I agree these teams are probably going to be the top six. But to hit an optimistic note, I think it is possible (though not likely) that we will finish ahead of one of these teams. To do a bit of nerdy, off the cuff maths, let's say EACH of these six teams have a 95% chance of finishing above Saints. That would mean the chance of ALL of them finishing above Saints is 73.5%. Still pretty damned likely, but far from cast iron certain. I think those that want to map out how we might finish in the top six, probably need to rely on one or more of the big teams blowing up this season. Maybe this looked like Arsenal after their first game. With Man Utd trailing Stoke 2-1 at home with 15 mins left in their last home game, perhaps it was possible to imagine them underperforming chronically this year. Perhaps it's now Chelsea who look like they might just run into the sand. It would definitely need something quite odd to happen for Saints to make the top six, but it wouldn't be an outright miracle. Of course, we'd still need Everton to underperform as well as continuing to outperform teams like Newcastle and Swansea. So, all in all, offer me 8th now and I'd take it. But top six isn't (quite) a total pipedream.

My gf was the one who put that video together, must say I was pretty impressed! (but obv biased).

I'm still a mild pessimist, I think 8th is around about the best we can hope for.

Arsenal Liverpool Chelsea Man City (Saints about 8th)

18. West Ham (even though that's as likely as Man United to be relegated...or was that last year?) 19. Cardiff 20. Crystal Palace Hull will survive IMHO, they won;t be top ten, but I think they'll make it. Surprised that folk think Norwich might drop - I disagree. But maybe they were overrated at the start of the season.

Agreed. The worst draw we could have got. Brilliant spot. I doff my cap to you, sir. (cretin)

If folk are so adamant that we wouldn't decline and would be really keen for the extra games and revenue, why did we make it plain that we wouldn't accept a fair play slot last season? Because it would be unfair/unsporting?

I was intending to go. But I'm not sure I have enough loyalty points. I'm not even sure how to find out how many such points I have. Confused and disllusioned. Ah well...:-)

I'd prefer transfers to loans. But I'd make an exception for Zaha. He would bring a new ingredient to the side - blistering pace. Puncheon+++ basically.

Too true. If only we had Barry running the football side of things, just think how well we would have done in the last three or four years. I don't mind Cortese, but it's damend frustrating that he doesn't recognise and promote a football genius such as Barry. I, for one, am utterly gutted. An opportunity thrown away.

Don't have a strong opinion myself. But interesting that MP implied a couple of weeks back that he wasn't too keen on Europa League (although really just saying he'd prefer the CL, I guess). Additionally, didn't we say last season that we wouldn't take the fair play slot even if we'd won it?

I thought pitch sizes were all identical in the PL these days...or does that come in next season?

QPR at home last season was absolutely nowhere near our worst performance.

Thoughts on this (double) question? I can see that it might impede our forward progress in the league next year if we were to, say, come 6th and qualify and participate. On the other hand, could/should we basically just play our second string in Europe (Kelvin, Yoshida, Cork, Lee, Hoovield, Chambers, Fox, Guly, Ramirez (?!), Isgrove etc etc)? (Also, anyone know what the rules are? Would we be forced to take part? Would we be under any obligation to play our "strongest XI"?)

Can see the argument for Lovren and Boruc, but I might argue Lambert is the one player we don't want to see injured. I know some argue he doesn't quite fit into the new style of playing, but we have no other player quite like him and, given we haven't been scoring for fun, I think our attack would look quite toothless without him just at the moment.

Interesting to see comparisons with equivalent fixtures from last year. The projection for end-of-season points tally is absurd though. I think even if we won 15 games in a row, we'd still be projected to finish only 6th or 7th. If Man Utd lost their first 23 games, they'd still be projected to stay up comfortably.

Don't know the stats, but I'm always sceptical of these assertions about "starts", as the length of a "start" seems to be a movable feast. If you win your first game 5-0, it's your best "start" for 100 years. You then lose your next five games and it becomes your worst "start" for 25 years.

Corrected for you :-)

Good shout. I'm sure "we" agreed on just that point. Unanimous.

I'm going less this season. I live in London and a lot of games are on TV. This is (a) disruptive and (b) okayish even if I stay at home cos I can still watch the game. So, I skipped West Ham and will also skip Fulham.

Attendances have been very poor this season. Genuinely not sure why. Failure to sell out - even at pretty high prices - is concerning. Agree this puts any idea for stadium expansion on hold for a while at least.