stevegrant

Rasiak also missed one but scored from the rebound. In shootouts, Chris Marsden missed at Bolton in the league cup, Michail Antonio missed against Norwich in the JPT (think someone else missed in that one as well) and of course Leon Best and Inigo Idiakez at Derby in the playoffs.

If you'd got there earlier, you would have got one. Those that went to the greater effort (either by forking out £50 for City away or queueing up from stupid o'clock) were rewarded.

Stung from the Man City game, I expect, by taking (and having to pay for) the full allocation in the misguided belief that we'd still have 3000 people willing to part with £50 for a game that's on Sky. See how the land lies in terms of how quickly we shift the first batch of tickets and get the rest after that. SFC ticket office in unbelievable "sensible ticket policy" shock Like the Arsenal game, if you're a season ticket holder and you want a ticket, you'll get one.

Convenient timing with his FA hearing starting tomorrow Purely in footballing terms, England will miss him. The contrasting defensive performances in two games against Ukraine in the last few months demonstrates what a good centre-back he is.

Liverpool. Always Liverpool.

It's incredible that a player who's scored 44 goals from midfield in the last three seasons does so often look like he's never taken a shot in his life when he gets into great positions

You're basically suggesting we play a game of GK-Factor, with our Premier League status at stake. That's utter lunacy

True. I can't say I saw anything from the Stevenage game that suggested he was in a position to challenge Davis for a first-team place yet though.

He may well be, but he's played twenty games in League Two, his sum total of league appearances in his career. While he's clearly an upgrade on Forecast, is that really the situation we're in, where we feel like we have to throw him into a Premier League game? Davis is far from perfect, we all know that, but he's played the best part of 100 games with Fonte and 30-40 games with Hooiveld and Fox. Surely that experience has got to be better than a few months of training sessions.

He didn't just say it, he demonstrated it with various freeze-frames at the start of each of the moves for the open play goals in the first half at Arsenal. In each of them, the back 4 were in good positions and the midfield 5 lined up in front of them, which Neville said was exactly what he'd be looking for. It was only as the moves developed that things went wrong for us, which was a combination of good play by Arsenal and bad decision-making on our part. For the first and fourth goals, Clyne's body position had him facing inside rather than outside, which meant that he couldn't keep an eye on Gibbs overlapping. By the time he'd turned, Gibbs was gone and there was no way he'd be able to get back to block his shot/cross. For the third, as the play moved over to our left wing, Fox was near the touchline and Yoshida just inside him, covering the areas you'd expect them to be covering in that sort of situation, but Fonte didn't move over as well, which left a 30-yard space between him and Yoshida, which Gervinho ran into to score.

Cox is usually pretty astute but I think he's wide of the mark here, especially considering the bits in bold were highlighted by Gary Neville on Monday night as the complete opposite, i.e. the shape is excellent and there's plenty of protection. What's cost us is a combination of excellent opponents and momentarily brain-farts from our defence. Hooiveld diving in to give away two penalties, Clyne having his weight the wrong way giving Gibbs an extra split-second, Fox's header at City, Fonte not keeping the gap between him and his CB partner at the right distance, failing to mark van Persie at a corner, etc.

Just done a quick tally and there are now less than 800 tickets available. As you say, mostly in the Itchen/Chapel corner and a small block low down behind the goal, but the 50 or so tickets still available in the Itchen are all single tickets. If you're buying for a group of 3 or 4 of you, you've no chance of getting a ticket there, so chances are those tickets will remain unsold. I guess that's the trade-off when you allow users to select their individual seats, there can be no "management" of available seats to ensure there are as many "blocks" of 2,3,4 seats left right to the very end to cater for people buying for a few people.

Yes, Walsall and Oldham were both really overawed by playing at Fortress Fratton :lol:

Er, his one great season was in the season Pardew was sacked The Pardew "rumours" were proven to be exactly that, made-up rumours. David Bick should be ashamed of himself.

Latest bidder is "Portco", apparently a UK group fronted by a Scottish investor.

I struggle to believe that when he said that, he meant a development keeper and another with 20 appearances in League Two. Are either of them genuinely expected to challenge Kelvin Davis for a first-team place?

He got a hat-trick for Burnley down there in a 5-1 win last season, if I remember correctly

So a former bankrupt who left another club with an unpaid PAYE bill makes an offer for Pompey - it's a match made in heaven.

I've just deleted a dozen posts which contribute precisely nothing to the debate. I have better things to be doing today than cleaning up after the pair of you so if you want to carry on the *****fest, please do so via PM so the rest of us don't have to read it.

Absolutely, no team has ever overturned a MASSIVE two point gap with only thirty-four games to play...

The long and short of it is that while we were set up almost perfectly, especially in midfield, it was little lapses that cost us each time. For example, for the first goal, Clyne's body position was in the wrong direction which meant he couldn't keep an eye on Gibbs outside him, and the third was because Fonte and Clyne hadn't moved across with the other half of the back 4, leaving a massive gap for Gervinho to run into. On the flipside, Reading were in trouble right from the start because their midfield were lazy in their positioning and tracking, and then every time Spurs got the ball in wide areas, each of the back 4 were facing their goal and nobody patrolling the massive gap in the centre of the penalty area, which is where both of the first two goals came from.

For me, the number of points won at this stage is irrelevant, everyone knew that in all likelihood we'd have 0-3 points from the first 4 games. What is relevant, however, is the performances in those games. We've only played well in one of the three games, and still managed to toss that game away in the last 5 minutes because of our woeful defence. Man City could have had 5 or 6 without breaking sweat, a feat Arsenal - a team supposedly struggling up front - managed quite comfortably. While there's absolutely no problem in reinforcing a strong attack, to do so without serious addressing a defence that got away with a hell of a lot last season is almost negligent. We had a deal for Buttner which fell through for whatever reason, but we were clearly chasing a new left-back, and after that deal hit a dead end it appears as though we had no Plan B for that position. We were willing to chuck £6m Birmingham's way for Jack Butland but then when they rejected the offer we gave up signing another first-team keeper. For all of Davis' many faults, would any of us chuck Gazzaniga or Cropper into a Premier League game ahead of him? Yoshida seems a decent signing at centre-back, but having let Aaron Martin go on loan for the season (the right decision, IMO), that signing merely takes us back to where we were at the end of last season, with 3 first-team centre-backs - I'm not convinced Dan Seaborne would be in contention at any stage if everyone was fit, and Hooiveld's injury he picked up yesterday leaves us with no backup. Meanwhile we have as many strikers and attacking midfielders to fill 5 teams. In terms of who's responsible for our lop-sided squad, there is a committee of sorts, comprising of Adkins, Cortese and Reed, with input from our scouting network. Some of our signings are fairly clear as to their origin - Ramirez, for example, is clearly a Cortese signing, his two-week "holiday" coincided with the negotiations for that deal and all the comments from both the player and Adkins have said as much - but I would certainly hope that Adkins, as the man who's going to be working with these players every day in training, has a significant input, whether that's a casting vote, power of veto or whatever. I can't say I'm overly keen on someone with only three years' involvement in football (and none at the highest level) unilaterally making signings. It was deemed unacceptable when a certain ex-chairman was alleged to have done so, I see no reason why it's OK now all of a sudden.

Why pick the player with 38 Premier League appearances, a third of which for the club who have won 4 of the last 6 league titles, over the player with 3 Premier League appearances for a newly-promoted team? No idea.

What happened?

It's unfortunate that Dawson was bowling because he's the only player in the current side I'd rely on to actually hold onto anything.