stevegrant

We were 4 points adrift of Swansea two years ago with 4 games to play and ended up staying up by 3 points, so weird things can happen, but I do agree that Bournemouth don't really look like putting one of their little runs together as they have done mid-season in previous years. This current side looks bereft of either confidence or character.

There's always an element of luck involved in a game like this, but we loaded a lot of the cards in our favour with the way we set ourselves up - with City's lineup, we knew we had the aerial advantage, so the idea was to pack the space the width of the penalty area and force City into wide areas to cross the ball into the box where the probability of us being able to defend it competently were far greater than if we let them thread passes through us. Given the way we've defended in recent years, that seems counterintuitive because we've been shit at defending crosses, but City are a completely different team to anyone else we face in the PL. They don't have much height, their attacking ability is based around supreme technical ability and pace, and the ability to marry the two together in tight spaces. Pep taking Sterling and Mahrez off in the second half actually played into our hands in the end, IMO, as De Bruyne and Foden want to operate in the central areas of the pitch, and we had loads of defensive coverage there. Their biggest chances came from wide areas in the first half (Mahrez shot saved by McCarthy, Silva header from a cross - now that would have been embarrassing, to let him outjump our defence - and Sterling's subsequent shot wide), it was only really Silva's chance early in the second half which was created as a direct result of an incredible first touch that would have beaten most defenders in the world that came as a result of them threading the eye of the needle through the middle of us.

Quite surprising that other sides in the bottom half of the table haven't cottoned onto the idea of actually trying to win games at the risk of losing some. Sounds weird, obviously, but the raw numbers make it seem so bloody obvious - one win and one loss still earns you more points than two draws.

This is a league table comprised of matches since the November international break (i.e. post-Everton defeat). Fairly incredible how terrible Bournemouth have been in that period, even worse than Norwich

We're 5th in that. Man United have 10 points from their 4 games, then there's 5 of us on 9 points - City (5 games played), Chelsea, Arsenal (also 5) and Wolves. We're below Chelsea and Arsenal on goals scored, and above Wolves on goal difference The only PL teams still without a post-lockdown win are the bottom 4, who have amassed a frankly pathetic 3 points between them in 17 games

That line is only so wide so it shows up clearly on TV - the one they use to actually make the decision is much thinner.

Most transfers these days are done with some sort of instalment plan.

So it seems as though the forum software might have different behaviour for checking expired subscriptions that were added manually (as pre-existing ones before we switched have been) compared to those which were added via someone buying it via the new site. I've gone through the database and manually expired the ones that need expiring, so you should now be able to make the purchase.

I believe the site will prompt you near the renewal date - not 100% sure whether it's via email or a notification on the site (might be both). I am also still working my way through a spreadsheet of existing subscribers and adding the subscription details to the site manually - essentially, everyone with an existing subscription has been added to the Subscribed Users group so has all the permissions, etc, but there was no way to import the subscriptions themselves when we made the switch.

Certainly. Subscriptions can be bought here: https://www.saintsweb.co.uk/subscriptions/

So half of those Now TV vouchers have basically been worthless unless the Sheffield United game somehow ends up behind Sky's paywall.

Should now be fixed - was a quota issue.

You might want the "Caps Lock" key there...

Hoping I've just resolved that...

MSD UK Holdings Ltd was only formed on Monday (!!), and its registered address is a registered office service called LegalinX. Odd...

A year or so ago, that probably causes a pulled hamstring. Shows the immense improvement in his physical condition in that time

But we can only do what teams will allow us to do with their own systems - there are two teams on the pitch, and the opposition are allowed to have tactics to negate our strengths. It's only teams who are either so much better than us that they don't need to worry about it or teams who are very stupid who come to St Mary's and play a high line and allow us to play balls into the channels for the likes of Long and Redmond to run onto. If we play more direct, Long might win a few flick-ons, but because the opposition defence is so deep, more often than not the second ball ends in the keeper's hands or out for a goal kick. It's easy to defend against. In my opinion, the faster and more direct passes need to be horizontally rather than vertically - switching the direction of play quickly (in the way that Liverpool seem to have pretty much perfected) opens up much more space in attacking areas than playing a quick out ball to the centre forward. In the heat of Thursday evening, it's far better for us to maintain possession even if that involves a pass backwards from where it can then be moved across to a less-populated area of the pitch - there's no benefit to having to do all the running in 30+ degree heat, it's a fast track to knackering yourself out very quickly. The high pressing game that Ralph wants us to employ is obviously much more difficult in this sort of heat, and I think there's a natural necessity to slow the game down at times when we're in possession in "sterile" areas in order to allow us to have enough energy to press properly in the final third.

The problem is that there's the talk of an "uncharacteristic" error here - by my reckoning, he's made six such "uncharacteristic" errors in the 21 league games he's played. Man City away - came to punch a cross, missed it, directly leading to the winning goal. 1 point cost. Arsenal away - came to punch a cross, missed it, directly leading to a 96th-minute equaliser. 2 points cost. Newcastle away - failed to hold a relatively tame shot from distance, directly leading to a late winner. 1 point cost. West Ham away - failed to hold a simple cross, dropping it at the feet of the striker to give West Ham the lead, shortly after we had equalised and were on the front foot in the game. 1 point cost. Arsenal home - presents the striker with an open goal, AND spills a shot to the feet of another attacker. 1 point cost. Angus Gunn has looked pretty ropey this season, too, but I don't think there is another keeper still in the league (West Ham very quickly binned that Roberto fella who looked like he'd won a competition to play in goal for them) who has made as many errors that have directly resulted in a goal as McCarthy. We have three first-team goalkeepers (in terms of stature and salary), all of whom have strong credentials, and yet none of whom appear to have the unqualified faith of either the fanbase or coaching staff. Given the other defensive problems, it's a dilemma we could really do without.

I genuinely don't understand how you don't see that the game has moved on from "lump it up to the big man" and "a pass backwards is SCANDALOUS RETREAT".

At the bottom of the page there's a "Go to topic listing" link

No. All that would do is result in ganging up on certain people whenever they post, regardless of the validity of what they're written.

They've tried to keep the US and UK setups separate in terms of funding, as far as I'm aware. The UK project was well funded (and needed to be in order to persuade that amount of big-name and probably big-salary journalists to make the leap) and I'm sure will be given time to show whether it can/will work over here.