Saint Charlie

Mane injured apparently.

TalkSport saying Clasie did "absolutely zip" in the game.

From Guan on another thread:

Superb news. Shows the club are learning that rewarding players who excel early in a contract is a good way to protect your investment. Clyne and Mane should both have been offered new terms 6 months into their deals. ****ing love VVD, great player and will go to the very top in his career.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/mauricio-pochettino-can-guide-tottenham-7917891 Fonte: need to keep best players

You want them to play none. You need them to be good enough to play quite a few if they have to without costing you loads of points because one player is injured or unavailable. Since we came back to the PL we have probably lost more points than anyone else because of substandard backup GKs. Until Stek/Forster our second GKs have been third/fourth GK quality.

Agree. He is not good enough to play any more than 5 or so games. You need the backup keeper to be capable of 20.

Koeman wants us to stop selling players every summer: http://www.dailystar.co.uk/sport/football/513485/Ronald-Koeman-ultimatum-Southampton-bosses Fair enough in many ways. Edit: This is where the quotes are from. Still very evasive on a long term future, ball firmly in Saints court and lots of "you have to be realistic" etc. Very hard to see Koeman doing more than one more year IMO. Also wonder whether Ralph might do well to tone down some of his public comments: he has a habit of exaggerating somewhat. Certainly did so when talking about Koeman's situation recently.

Maybe.

Alderweireld and Rose both fine to play apparently. Only Dembele and Alli missing.

Quite possibly a different scenario for Saints though, where Koeman has undoubtedly been a massive influence on some of the players we have brought in.

Koeman is pretty evasive on it though. Seems quite uncomfortable when asked about it.

Sky guy in presser said 8th would get Europa if Liverpool win it this year and Koeman didn't correct him. Still don't think that is right.

Koeman saying again he will speak to Reed after the Palace game and reiterating he has one more year on his contract. Did rule out an extension but doesn't seem overly keen either.

Rhu-endly or Cedric for this one? I reckon Rhu.

So basically we need to finish 7th and hope United win the Cup to qualify? Finish 8th and we cannot qualify no matter what else occurs?

Sure does.

When Liverpool play at Anfield the players must enter the pitch a few mins earlier than at any ground surely. Certainly feels like that, there is sometimes a 5min gap between teams emerging and the kickoff being taken. Surely its the refs that make the call on when to lead teams out but seems different at Anfield somehow.

At least do a good wind up.

Not strictly Saints related but West Ham, possibly one of our most comparable competitors of this season (new stadium aside), are set to go big in the summer: http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/may/05/west-ham-michy-batshuayi-marseille-offer?CMP=share_btn_tw

I'm not. Things are definitely good. Just interesting that Reed said Pochettino is the hardest working Manager you will find and specifically called out the Academy stuff which is obviously important to the club. I didn't post the article for that though, generally found it interesting in many ways. You can see why Pochettino was such a good fit for us initially and this is the first time Reed has really spoken about how he came to be at Saints.

http://www.standard.co.uk/sport/football/revealed-how-scouting-philippe-coutinho-paved-the-way-for-mauricio-pochettinos-arrival-at-tottenham-a3240441.html Posted in another thread but deserves its own, quite a few interesting bits in there. Pretty clear Reed liked his approach, especially from an Academy perspective. Wonder if they do have a bit of tension with Koeman on that side of things?

It was only 4 days ago.

9.3/10

Virtually every match has been rain affected also so far. Losing much more than a session in 4 day cricket pretty much equals a draw. This most recent game a great example.