Sheff Saint

Well done Lambo. Interesting he beat off competition from 3 Leeds players...Would thought they'd be a Norwich man in there somewhere!

In reply to the idiotic OP. No. Not at all, not in the slightest. Not even a little bit. HTH.

Just in case anyone cares, if we'd have had the 10 points back we'd be 4 points off automatic promotion with a game in hand on 2nd. After the car crash that was our close season, that is a great achievement. Throw in the cup runs and no one can say this hasn't been a great season. And it's still not (just!) finished yet!

Sheff Weds will likely have a very difficult season if they come down. £30 million in debt they'll either continue to carry that and as such have no money still, or they'll be forced into admin which would at least carry a 10 point penalty, and still doesn't garentee them money. Peterbrough will be tough under Johnson, but beatable. S****horpe are proving a bit yo yo so i'd expect the to be around the top 6. Beatable though. Plymouth have picked up under Mariner and i wouldn't like to call how well they'll do. Doubt they'll run away with it but could be anywhere from automatic to mid table, IMO Watford and Palace, really depends what happens financially. Either way, assuming we keep all but the odd player, i think we should have the perfect platform to get through the whole season very well compared to any of that lot.

Lambo is amazing. Fact. Have we ever beaten a team 4 times in a season?

Regards the ‘Plan B’ I do think we need one but understand why this hasn’t materialised yet. The current first team have only been in place on and off for the last 6 weeks. Interspersed with cup games where the team had to shift and two games in a week, meaning less time on the training ground. It must be hard to get ‘Plan A’ straight and sorted in that kind of timeframe, let alone have a well rehearsed Plan B or C.

Not sure we've had a decent midfield since Jimmy Case was let go! In all seriousness, if we had a team of the last 20 years, what central mid-fielders would make it? Oakley... I wasn't there last night but for me at Tranmere and the games I've seen the midfield is the weak point. I like Morgan and think he has the potential to be a great box to box midfielder. He reads the game superbly but I'm not sure his final ball or tackling is good enough. Hammond is a question mark. I always find it hard to comment on the midfielder who need to keep things ticking over. By definition we shouldn't really notice them. But when you notice the path out of defence to attack isn't as smooth as it should be, that's when there is question marks. For me that's where the biggest question mark is. I know others have knocked the lack of width and, where as i agree to an extent, i think it's ok for this division.

No, around turn of the 80's / 90's we came onto 'You ain't see nothin' yet'. Well, certainly in the Branfoot era. 'One Vision' is great but i'm sure we only started playing it as Sky were using it for that seasons (mid 90's) promo music on all the Premier League TV ads.

Out of town football grounds are horrible, soulless unfun places to be.

I think Benjii is implying if we take our current form into next season. And then you'll find he is correct.

I think Roger Milfords dead now? Also, I'm not sure obstruction is an in-direct free kick any more. Think they scrapped that a few years ago. Never ever a pen, sorry. It's just black and white not a pen. If you were to be a bit harsh you could even do the Tranmere player for raising his boot in attempting the bicycle kick. I'd like to see if Saints Player shows the foul on Barnard, or the back pass that followed soon after. I'd also like to see the penalty shout on Fonte. I did think he dived but i reckon there was as much defenders leg there as the Tranmere kick.

Agree. Thought AL was ok. Puncheon was poor 2nd half. Semi impressed me. Agree about KD to a point but don't think he much to do today.

No he doesn't. If we'd had a normal August and September those away points would have been just fine.Your views are so high level you could see them from space!

Just back from game. Read Pards comments and they are fair. Not enough quality in the final third but probably did enough for an ugly win, but ref was a useless midget ****. Two stonewall pens turned down. Hey hum. Keep the team, tweak it for games like today and we'll walk this league next season!

10 goals in 2 league games. That last happened when...! Brilliant boys. Well done!

There's too much logic on here tonight! Agree again!

My thoughts exactly, FWIW.

I was a bit worried. The questions didn't seem to bad. He did sound like he was trying to prove a point to someone, he reeled off some recent stats, talking about it's results that count... He normally comes across very well in interview, IMO. I feel 2+2 does equal 4. I just hope it isn't NC being too harsh. For all the cynics on here i think AP is doing a pretty good job and i really don;t want us turning into a soap opera. Again. Surely we've learnt something from the last 10 years. Let's just hope it was AP keeping a lid on things until after Tuesday. Great win and performance today, well done the boys!

In my book that is all sensible analysis. We can debate about Leeds quality of squad and the quality of League 1 when Leeds came down but lets not. The thing i would argue with you is about the performances. I'm not sure anyone is really thumping teams this season apart from little runs. Leeds and Norwich, like us, have had convincing 'little' runs. But they've also 'scrapped' home against lots of teams. Look at this week's results for examples. Now, it's fair to say where they are scrapping home we are only managing draws and that is the difference. But their good runs got them into the top 2. Our good run only got us mid-table. Confidence wise that makes a difference. A season of playing together, a year to have figured out what makes each of the players ticks, and hopefully a tweak or two to the mid-field and we should be great next year in this league.

No there isn't. Some of us just think Pardew is doing an ok job and given the team he's assembled over the course of a year and with a full pre-season, we will storm this division next season. Some of us are worried, based on very recent history, that a change in manager over the summer will actually mean a step backwards.

BARNARD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! C'mon you Saints!

I can't believe we've actually won on opening day before...

http://img693.imageshack.us/img693/8761/opt1.jpg This is aces. Got to agree, if we change the kit like this, which i think we should as it's a 'special' kit, we should keep the badge (maybe a litle tweak) so we know it's Saints!

I don't think there are many players at all we have 'discarded' and then they've gone on to be successful. Kevin Davies is the most recent. To a much lesser extent Leon Best (though didn't we try and keep him) The likes of Walcott and Flowers were prised away from our grasp!

This is a great point. I tried to do a similar thing over Christmas, covering September to Boxing Day. We were second in that table, a point behind Leeds but they had a game in hand. Of course the first 10 games count but the whole point of this season is to make sure we travel in the right direction. Even 'mighty' Leeds are showing how you will have a blip and we are no different. The trouble for us is that with our ten points off and the fact we didn't really have a team until September, any blip we suffered from was going to make it very hard to make the play offs. With a full pre-season and the ten points i reckon we'd have been firmly in that top 3 and this goes some way to backing that up. Next season that will be tested but bring it on. Not that this season is dead yet...