positivepete
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Posts posted by positivepete
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23 hours ago, LiberalCommunist said:
Absolutely nothing. Football is officially back. No more stunted celebrations. No more side line Mike deans. No more reverse decision crowd cheers.
Just football. Thank lordy lord for that.
(even a over zealous Bobby Madley couldn't spoil it)
When VAR was being developed and first trialled in the Dutch League, the proposal from Hawkeye was to use the “challenge system” similar to tennis. That would make it more interesting I think.
Interestingly in tennis the system has developed to an extent where the challenge system is no longer needed, and in many tournaments line judges have been replaced by Hawkeye and the line calls are made by Hawkeye and relayed to the umpire.
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Very highly rated by Northern Ireland fans
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Got my season ticket. £80. AFC Totton is great value!
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Potter will be free in the summer.
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4 hours ago, Bad Wolf said:
Quiz question I pinched from Saints Archive Facebook group:
Last time Saints were trailing at half time away in the PL and went on to win the game?
Hint: It was quite some time ago.
West Ham away. 1-0 down at half time, won 3-1. It was my grandchildrens first away game and I had to explain that it was 29 years since we had done that.
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Knowing most league officialdom, they will probably get fined and pojnt deducted for fielding an unregistered player!
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James Beattie to Eastleigh? As new manager …
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Thanks, Steve!
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Getting very frustrating now! @stevegrant any more ideas other than clearing the cache every five minutes?
cheers
pete
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9 hours ago, The Curse of St Mary's said:
Twitter account who was right on Tino and Small states we are trying to make statement signing -
Erikson would be a marquee free transfer signing!
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On 26/12/2021 at 20:02, positivepete said:
Rasmus Ankersen is leaving Brentford. He had a close working relationship with Saints during his time at Brentford. Also involved at Midtjylland. Coincidence?It was a guess before I am accused of being in the know. I have however, met him before, so my comment on his relationship with Saints was from my personal experience.
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A very touching video. Brave for the player and the club to put out as he clearly has been - and probably will continue to - have problems following such a series of set backs.
let’s hope he gets strength from the show of support on here and elsewhere.
all the best, Sam.
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He has announced he is leaving.
https://www.brentfordfc.com/news/2021/december/a-goodbye-social-media-message-from-rasmus-ankersen/
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Rasmus Ankersen is leaving Brentford. He had a close working relationship with Saints during his time at Brentford. Also involved at Midtjylland. Coincidence?-
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In a recent press conference he did make the point that he wanted to be allowed 5 subs because with 5 subs, he felt the team could keep up the intensity required.
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3 hours ago, TWar said:
Here that is, but given we are stuck with these guys it doesn't make for happy reading!
Goalkeepers
I considered the idea of putting strikers first and goalkeepers last in an attempt to open with positives but lets not beat around the bush. Both our starting goalkeepers have been, statistically, woeful.
The most important job of a goalkeeper is to make saves. McCarthy has the joint lowest goals prevented per 90 in the league (-0.32), joint with Guiata of Crystal palace, of any keeper in the league that has played over 500 minutes. Ryan is lower in total as well and has technically played over 500 minutes but across two clubs which makes the number hard to judge. From this, we see that his shot stopping is dreadful. Forster is better with a goals prevented per 90 of (-0.14) which still puts him in the bottom 25% but is at least not an outlier in how poor he has been.
So the obvious answer is to play Forster? Lets look into that. Forster is betrayed by the type of save he makes. Forster has made 20 saves this season with a pretty dreadful save % of 64.5% (McCarthy is 63.4%). Of those saves however, not a single one was a catch, with 14 parries and 6 punches. For most goalkeepers catches make up about 25% of their saves, Forster has 0%. He constantly puts us in danger with his poor handling skills, pushing the ball out for set-pieces or dangerously back into play. Forsters recoveries per 90 is 7.05, is only better than Ederson, Mendy, Schmeichel, Patricio, and both manchester united goalkeepers. That may seem like prestigious company, however these goalkeepers have low recoveries due to their teams high possession and low amount of time with the ball in their half (with the exception of Patricio who also is very poor in this area). Other goal keepers who face a similar number of balls into the box as Forster are significantly ahead. McCarthy, for example, makes 7.48 recoveries per 90 which is still poor compared to most goalkeepers adjusting for possession, but better than Forster. From this we can see Forsters ability to claim the ball really lets him down, and justifies McCarthy having to play against cross-heavy teams.
Finally we look to distribution. Our side relies quite heavily on Vestergaard to make long balls from the back. In fact in the closing games of the season McCarthy was taking goal kicks to Vestergaard who was stood a couple of feet away from him, who then took the goal kick for him. This is not normal, often a short goal kick is taken but normally the goalkeeper is sufficiently trusted to pick a pass incase the CBs are marked, we do not trust McCarthy to do this, and hence he no longer takes his own goal kicks. For this we turn to FBRef for info as FFS didn't have details. This resource only looks at primary goalkeepers for a team so we only have stats on McCarthy, however his launched ball (over 40 yards) completion % is a shameful 29.5%, rock bottom of the league and a full 16% lower than the median result. Whilst this website doesn't provide details on Forster, it does display Southampton's over all launch completion % which is 29.2%, this is EVEN WORSE, showing Forster is even worse at longer passing than McCarthy. We are still rock bottom of the league by this metric. Our need for a passer, like Vestergaard, is artificially larger than it should be as both our goalkeepers are embarrassingly bad at passing compared to the rest of the league.
Forsters inability to dominate his area when crosses come in has alway baffled me. He is a giant and could easily clear the players out of the way. Collecting crosses takes the pressure off the defence, and McCarthy has shown he can do that. Both are capable of making really good saves, so quite why they both have poor records is either they are both poor, or we really don’t defend well as a team.
McCarthy might just edge it with the ball at their feet, but they are both poor. Romario for me.
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1 hour ago, Whitey Grandad said:
Did I see that Messi is a free agent too?
I heard that following a Spanish League ruling Barcelona can’t sign any players until they get their wage bill down below a certain figure. I am not sure whether they have been able to officially sign Aguero, Depay, or Garcia yet.
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A piece in The Times today on the birth of European Football and the part played by Southampton (and Sheffield United)
The naked launch
“It is only 12 inches high, solid gold, and it means England are the world champions.” Whoever wins tomorrow’s kickabout will get a prize twice the size of the trophy handed to Bobby Moore on the same site in 1966, yet few could tell you the name that is on it. They sing about Jules Rimet still gleaming, yet Henri Delaunay is almost forgotten.Rimet is credited as the godfather of the World Cup, but Delaunay, his deputy at Fifa, secretary-general of the French federation and the founding head of Uefa, is said to have been the one who pushed hardest in the 1920s both for a global tournament and one for European nations. The latter only came into existence in 1960, five years after his death.
Delaunay had been a referee but retired after a ball struck him full in the face, breaking two teeth and causing him to swallow his whistle. The Anglophile Delaunay later wrote of how a big influence on him becoming an administrator had been the “primitive scene” he saw as a teenager at Crystal Palace in 1902, when he was among 75,000 fans at the FA Cup final between Southampton and Sheffield United. He created the French version 15 years later.
It is amusing that this match should have been Delaunay’s motivating force since the report in The Times says it was notable mainly for its roughness, “random kicking and indiscriminate passing”, and a dodgy last-minute equaliser by Southampton. That led to the referee hiding in a broom cupboard after he was chased out of the dressing room by a naked and angry William “Fatty” Foulke, the United goalkeeper. It is tempting to think, therefore, that the path to tomorrow’s final all began with an overweight yet underdressed goalie being enraged at an offside decision. No wonder they call it the beautiful game.
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We may also need a different central midfielder. With Perraud instead of Bertrand, we won’t be able to use a full back as part of a back three in possession as we started to last season when KWP went forward.
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5 hours ago, whelk said:
Cracking game? Fck me you are easily pleased. Was it the one shot on target that excited you?
Trust me, there have been a lot worse England performances at major tournaments over the past 10 years or so. Having been lucky enough to travel to South Africa, Brazil and France to see England in “action”, I was glad that there was lots of other things to make those trips worthwhile.
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4 hours ago, Alanh said:
I'm always intrigued by the response 'the club treat us like customers rather than fans. Surely the difference is that fans will do arguably irrational things because of devotion whereas customers will shop around to get the best deal possible. By adding padded seats and offering them to existing occupants they are treating them as fans, but with the opportunity to be a customer by moving elsewhere at a cheaper price.
Not saying its not inconvenient or distressing. I've been there as I used to have a season ticket in the centre Kingsland but moved a couple of blocks across when it became a premium price location.
The difference between a customer and a fan is simple. As a customer, if I get poor service I go to another outlet. As a fan, I am not going to go to the next nearest club in the PL, Championship, or League 1. The vote will likely be that I will not renew at all. A loss for me, more than for the club. It was the failure to understand the distinction between fans and customers that the owners of the clubs who were going to go off to the super league failed to grasp. Southampton FC were against that proposal, but in the way they have treated a section of fans, they have failed to understand that they themselves are showing the same disdain for fans, by treating them as customers, and treating them poorly.
The club has severed their relationship with 500 already high paying fans, and severed the relationships that those fans had with each other in a number of cases.
as I said before, very sad.
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8 minutes ago, Matthew Le God said:
Paying more for better views isn't a strange 'business model'.
In this case, we have been paying more for a better view for years, and like Whitey, I had paid full price, firstly for my son, then for my granddaughter as there were no concessions in this block. The bigger point here is that this block contained a substantial proportion of “customers” who held tickets for 20 years or more. After 10 years we were promised a bonus for staying loyal, that never happened. Now the club wants to reward us with very expensive padded seats.
The reality is, as Whitey said previously, a lot of groups who have sat together for many years, paying the top price in that stand, for a good view, will be split up.
I personally think that is a poor way to reward such loyalty, and the fact that the plan was executed without first consulting the affected fans possibly tells you all you need to know about what the club thinks.
Just as a matter of comparison, I moved into that block when my seats in the corners were closed. The club offered to relocate me anywhere I chose at the same price for that season. The club seems to be going backwards in fan relations, to the extent that being a fan is not a consideration. We are merely numbered customers.
Very sad.
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I have been in contact with some other regulars who have had their seats since the stadium opened. Again, they are reluctantly going to move, in fact they even considered giving up their tickets altogether, and these are people who went to every home and away game, in the UK and overseas.
I fear the club have upset some of their most loyal “customers”, with what increasing looks like an own goal. To be fair we have seen a few of those on the pitch in past few seasons ....
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12 hours ago, Whitey Grandad said:
I received an answer to my email today.
Hi <cantankerous_old_git>,<long_suffering_wife>
Many thanks for your email.
I understand how you are feeling about the changes to block 31, and please be assured that we are feeding this information back to the Management team and our Sales Director Anthony Cole-Johnson.
To provide a little more clarity around the changes and indeed pricing - Over several seasons been proud to freeze the price of general admission season tickets, whilst extending concessional rates up to 25-year-olds, and to all those fans aged over 65 where previously they were not offered. We have reduced for many the cost of coming to football at St Mary’s over the years, and have tried to be more accessible than ever, hence the £399 season ticket in the Chapel, and a £19 ticket seasonally in the Family Stand for U11s.
The introduction of the new Kingsland Plus as a season ticket is designed to offer an enhanced general admission experience for those wishing to choose something different from our usual hospitality. Indeed, we have priced it fairly to similar seats at other Premier League clubs.
Your seat in block 31 will be reserved for you. To confirm the adult renewing is £999, with concessions priced at £929. If however you feel, after reflection, this isn’t for you I can arrange for a member of the ticket office to contact you and look at alternative options in Blocks 30 and 32 where the adult renewal price is £737 and £660 for concessions. I appreciate from reading your email that you sit within a small group and we can with our ticket office to accommodate where possible, should you choose to look at alternative options.
Additionally, we have just released renewal information for all block which can be seen here: https://www.southamptonfc.com/season-tickets
I understand that you are disappointed, and to be clear if I can be of any assistance or facilitate a call with our ticket office please do not hesitate to let me know.
Kind regards,
Jim
Jim Gay
Supporter Services Manager
Southampton FC
T: 02380 711980
Not much sympathy there really. A polite take it or leave it.
VAR- What is it good for.........
in The Saints
Posted
So, true. Laws of the game could be reviewed in many sports with the adoption of technology, offside certainly being one of them. As we are aware, it is the football authorities that slow down the obvious advantageous use of technology, especially in the stadium.