SaintBobby

Damn....

Bloody Wigan....3-2 up

Wigan equalise. Sigh.

About where we are now...Mid-table, but probably just below halfway. I''l say 11th.

Yeah? A gimme? What odds will you give me that Newcastle DON'T win? 12/1? I'll have a grand on that then please.

You're back? Oh, bless.

We're going to end up somewhere between 9th and 18th. There isn't going to be much difference between those positions, to be honest (maybe 10 points or so, in total?) Best guess is that we finish somewhere in the middle of that spread (12th or 14th-ish).

My own guess on our finish is that we'll get either 2 or 3 more points. Maybe only 1. But that will easily be enough.

I'm happy to bet you any sum of money you care to name that Wigan will get LESS than 9 points from their 4 games. Literally, any sum you care to name. £10? £100? £1,000,000? I'll even throw in 8 points as a tie - with no payout from either of us. (P.S. Do you still think we might need 43 points to stay up?)

We're still safe. Wigan will probably go down on about 35 - 36 points. If we lose every remaining match 45-0, we are still almost certain to stay up.

I've just stuck an extra £100 on my wife's life insurance policy. I obviously hope she isn't mowed down by a bus tomorrow morning, as I love and adore her to bits. But if she is actually smashed into a ghastly mush of guts and blood on the tarmac tomorrow, at least this will soften the blow.

If the over-riding, all-encompassing objective is to increase our chances of staying-up from 99.9% to 99.999% and we don't much care where we finally finish in the division as long as it's above 18th, then yes, we want Sunderland to beat Villa.

Given that players can wear any sort of name on the back of their shirt ("Chicarito" or whatever), my advice is that we ask a cigarette company to pay a mint for J-Rod to partner Rickie up front if he decides his nickname is "Butler" for the purposes of the shirt. Similarly, our centre back pairing should offer to change their names to Mr Benson and Mr Hedges. It's the future.

If it's impossible to predict what will happen, then pray tell.... how you can say with such certainty that 39 points will lead to relegation? Bless.

It's something like this: Chance that 39 points is enough 94% Chance of Saints getting at least 39 points 100% Chance of relegation in this scenario =0% Chance that 40 points is needed 5.5% Chance of Saints getting at least 40 points 97% Chance of relegation in this scenario = 0.165% Chance that 41 points is needed 0.5% Chance of Saints getting at least 41 points 80% Chance of relegation in this scenario = 0.1% Chance that 42 points is needed (now zero %, I think?) I think the odds are actually a bit lower than this, but that's a very rough indication.

Sensible bookies will disagree on whether it's 0.08% or 0.03% or 0.1%. But as long as they have total fools willing to bet money at odds which are wrong by a factor of 10 or more, they are laughing. Most bookies closed the book on Saints a week or so ago. Some of them have now realised there is a market of cretins willing to put money on a spectacularly unlikely event at (relatively) short odds. William Hill, Victor Chandler and other smart people are very happy to take money from the wallets of innumerate, irrational and very stupid people. And good luck to them.

It's like the Mayan calendar apocalypse loonies. Armageddon will occur on May 12th 2009. Oh, sorry, I got that a bit wrong. I mean June 9th, 2010. Nope, that was a tad wrong too. It's May 18th 2013. If you keep saying the world will end tomorrow, one day you'll be right. But people are entirely right to treat you as a blithering idiot before, during and even afterwards.

The bookies are laughing. They have wet Saints fans placing money at 100/1 or 150/1 on an event (Saints relegation) that is actually about 2,000/1 This is why bookmakers make money on sport, And why drama queens on football forums do not.

The odds of all of those results happening is 1,245/1 And even if they all did, Saints would still stand a pretty damned good chance of staying up.

A draw would be exceptionally good news. I might even take a one goal defeat is you offered it to me now. (which sounds weird, but would mean we preserve our much superior goal difference over Villa and Wigan, which might just start to look dicey were we to lose 6-0)

Has any team gone down when 7 points clear of 1 team to play and 5 clear of another, with those teams having just 4 games to play? No.

I'm going to stick up a bit for both Jos and Fox (a bit) Both had poor games yesterday for sure and I wouldn't want either in my starting XI as a rule. But, I'd still count them just about as "adequate "cover". My definition of "cover" though isn't being in the team ahead of Fonte, Forren and Shaw. My definition of "cover" (at least for defenders) is that we'd ideally hope never to use you in the first team, but we might just need to throw you in for a few minutes here or a few minutes there. In absolute extremis, because of injuries or suspensions, you might even have to start a very small handful of games - but we'd look to move to the loan market or sign a new player or rush anotehr player back from the treatment room as soon as we possibly could. So, to my mind, Seaborne is "cover" this season. Hoovield is actually one of our first choice centre backs FFS. And Fox doesn't seem to be "cover" for Shaw, he seems to be an alternative to Shaw. I'd be happy for Hoovield to be our 5th or 6th choice centre back next season (similar to Seaborne this season) - definitely not in our top three or even four. I'd be happy for Fox to be our 3rd choice left back behind Shaw and A.N. Other (similar to Richardson role this season). That to my mind is what is meant by "cover" - not actually being part of the starting XI on a pretty regular basis.

Le Fondre. As an impact sub?

Again, I don'y buy this. If I recall, when we kicked off our last League One game against Walsall, we weren't mathematically safe. If we'd lost 7-0 and Huddersfield had won 8-0, we'd have been pipped for the 2nd slot. We weren't really mathematically safe until, what?, the last 10 or 15 minutes of that game. But it would have been an odd thing to worry about.

It's also true, as I type, that neither QPR nor Reading are 100% sure to be relegated, but it's so certain both will be as to make no real difference.