derry

Saints didn't play between the 2nd and 16th Jan. They can hardly be fatigued.

I meant swop a block rather than give it away but I do know the difficulty, even worse with long haul.

Don't you lot do roster swops?

It always happens for big games.

What have they to do with anything?

How about the whole ground singing - Pay up Pompey, Pay up. every time they sing Play up Pompey.

Seaborne mis-headed the ball under pressure, back to the Millwall player.

I just have this feeling that he has to deliver the evidence this season that he can hit the ground running next season. I'm just unconvinced that continually playing below par and winning against the lesser sides is going to satisfy the expectations. The new players may gel and we could really bomb on for the rest of the season, in which case there would be no problem. Time will tell.

Season ticket holders will get at least a week to reserve their seats or an unbooked alternative before general sale.

Duncan, I have reservations about Pardew because the way he selects and sets up the team. It is good that we can win games but we haven't won much against the better teams in this league. I don't set out to see the negative side but I don't see the results in this transition season as all important, however I do see the playing of proper football and a balanced team as the most important thing and it hasn't happened yet. As for the results, we have only beaten one team in the top ten, MKD, in the cups Ipswich are the only team from a higher league that we have beaten. Cortese doesn't strike me as someone who is particularly forgiving if people who work for him don't match his expectations. Whilst I would like to see the stability we haven't had for years I am convinced that now Cortese has had six months in charge in English football and the fact that Pardew is now spending a lot of money bringing in players the expectations of the management are greater. It is my view that because of the investment in players, unless we match the top three sides over the rest of the season and make progress over the playoff teams, Pardew will be under pressure.

Holmes was stopped by James from taking corners and in the first half he took a free kick off Holmes and promptly hit it straight to the goalkeeper. Mills delivered some good balls in but James in the second half took them from both sides with Holmes stood a few yards away.

I'm not sure he is defensively as good as Thomas, I would be happy for Thomas to continue at right back. As for James I think he showed yesterday he is on borrowed time. I have doubts over Pardew, in my opinion Thomas is a better full back than James so why has James played in preference. Holmes has been overlooked for two months but seems now back in favour. Yesterday James insisted on taking free kicks and corners when both Mills and especially Holmes do it better.The problem I have is Pardew doesn't seem to know what his best team is nor how we should play.

With Wotton hoisting everything into the air and James struggling, with Ipswich passing the ball around we didn't keep or pass the ball for most of the game. In fact we have been pretty poor in that respect, in at least the last half dozen matches except the MKD match where we passed the ball well. The comment was a comparison with Leeds not Spurs which was more relevant. If we are to have ambitions of winning this league next year we will have to match their balance, pace and teamwork, at present we are nowhere near. No, because we don't and never have, even existed on the same football planet.

You may be right as I recollect a problem with the Tottenham player on loan to Portsmouth not being able to play for anybody except Tottenham if their ban isn't lifted. In that case back to Grimsby if possible.

Lancashire wasn't involved at any time in their goal, it was one of the defenders that missed a tackle and the ball dropped for Counago. A lot of people on here criticising him obviously weren't there or weren't watching him, as he didn't do anything wrong the time he was on the field. Lancashire needs to go out on loan again with a better team than Grimsby and play regularly. He did well at Grimsby.

Weren't they!

Wotton and James were awful and were carried by the rest of the team today. Gillett looked better than either of them.

As Weston said forget the euphoria we got out of jail free today. The back four plus a lot of hard work from the the two wide midfielders and front two kept us in the game. Apart from the odd pass we didn't pass the ball at all today. Wotton and James were awful. I lost count of the number of times Wotton just lumped the ball to the Ipswich defence who then with the midfield cut us to bits. James and Wotton played like headless chickens, always late, never picking any body up and being passed through by the Ipswich midfield. They both proved conclusively today that they aren't even div one midfielders. We were really lucky that Ipswich lacked a finisher with the crosses into our six yd box. Thomas's goal was fantastic from at least 35 yds against the run of play and our second goal was Lambert free kick low through the wall back off the goalkeeper for Antonio to tap into an empty net. Apart from that we hardly made a chance. The up side is the players who didn't play today and the fact we have hopefully a decent central midfielder coming in this week. Having watched Leeds v Spurs we are nowhere near yet.

Fabregas would be home grown at Arsenal along with a lot of their foreign players recruited at 16/17ish. Only Fonte and Waigo wouldn't qualify for us.

The big problem with playing Lambert up front on his own, as he isn't particularly quick, is that his strike rate from play in the box is nullified. It is non prolific midfielders that are tasked with getting forward in lieu of strikers, that means in the main, good chances fall to those players not used to scoring, consequently whilst we create good chances, we miss most of them. In the long term we need two prolific strikers,together with wide players and central midfielders that are capable of scoring double figures in the league along with maybe a dozen from the back four.

Lallana has a lot of ability on the ball but is not particularly clever in his understanding of the game. If he was a clever footballer he would be drifting into space and blindside positions and make use of the width on the left touchline to outflank the defence, but because he seems to play pretty rigidly as he is instructed he allows himself to be fenced in by the instructions. When he is wide left and actually plays wide it gives him more space and time to play and when he is wide it gives the midfielders the time to get further forward. When he is narrow he is deprived of the time and space consequently he is crowding the central midfielders and the ball ends up being booted up towards Lambert. A big part of this lack of effectiveness is the way he is instructed to play. He needs to be given a role wide on the left side and apart from providing the width and tracking any runner wide gives him the freedom to play. For wide players it is pretty simple when the opponents have the ball track the runners, get goal side and tuck in if there aren't any wide runners, as soon as we get possession, wherever, get out to the touchline immediately.

A bit.

If you want to blame anybody for Lallana's drop in form blame Pardew and the coaches. The boy is trying to play the way he is instructed and it is not helping him or the team. He played really well wide left, tracking back wide, stopping the full back getting forward and stealing in on the blind side, off the wing to cause problems and score goals. The next thing that happened was that he was instructed to come into a more central position which denied him the space and freedom he needed and also opened up our left side. From that point we started to play hoofball up to Lambert and looked a lot worse for it.

If a player grabs another player by the shirt collar and gets pushed back then whatever punishment is given to the second player should be automatically applied to the first whatever the colour. Both were culpable. Professional players routinely should put as much distance as possible between themselves and the victim of a painful tackle. The referee should also position himself between the victim and that player. That would give time to take the heat out of it. Having said that, not wishing to sound holier than thou, I've waited six months to clobber somebody that badly fouled me. Believe me it was worth it. The first minute is the time for retribution. I passed him the ball and followed through, I didn't even get booked.

I didn't realise they played last night. As they played him he isn't leaving.