stevegrant

When he's given time to think about things, he'll make the wrong decision quite often. When he acts on instinct, he'll usually make the right decision. When he's on his game, he's a fantastic player - see the first half of last season when he managed to put a run of performances together - but when he's not he is incredibly frustrating. Still definitely worth persevering with, IMO.

Considering the Mirror scandalously agreed to Newcastle's ludicrous demand of paying them to be their "exclusive news partner", it's fair to assume that that £8m release clause story is accurate.

Not that this has anything to do with the actual thread, but are you saying you wouldn't pay £85 for an FA Cup final ticket?

To give credit where it's due, Townsend has been excellent for Newcastle since signing for them. Proof that there is talent in there somewhere, just the application and consistency has been lacking at times.

Also done if Spurs lose at Chelsea next Monday.

That game reminded me of us under Pochettino, dominate for an hour, miss a load of chances to kill the game off against defensive opposition, run out of ideas, concede a sloppy goal and fail to win the game. Looking forward to him telling Kane, Alli, Alderweireld and Lloris that they should all **** off now as they won't get a better opportunity...

We have a winner... Thanks to everyone for entering, we had 87 entries, most of which were not a million miles away - 59 within 2000 of the official attendance of 29729. Very well done to the five guesses within 100, and three within 30! pangy was 29 away, LGTL was 27 away, but the winner, just 21 away from the correct figure, is Hatch. Congratulations, I will be in touch shortly with details on how to claim your prize

As stated above, not this year, and there's already an event running that people can join.

Just as a heads-up, in case you hadn't noticed, there is the opportunity to play at St Mary's THIS summer in the stickied thread at the top of this forum. The prices there are pretty much identical to what we'd be charging for our own game if it goes ahead next year, but there's no guarantee that our one will happen - there needs to be the availability (the club will always offer it to the organisations who did it the previous year first), and there needs to be time in my schedule to organise it, which is far from guaranteed You also get to play alongside some club legends rather than just plebs like me

Yep, certainly, but it's a particular weirdness that while what everyone sees has been visibly wasteful in front of goal, the actual return of points is likely to have actually improved away from home. It goes without saying that we'd always be looking to improve in all areas where possible - defensively I think we're in a pretty good place, as per the last couple of years, but despite having quite a lot of attacking players, they all seem to blow hot and cold. Austin, when he's had a couple of starts, hasn't really shown a great deal outside the box, which would be fine if we were creating loads of chances for him, but Mané and Tadic have been off the boil for long periods, so he's looked a bit lost. Long's been our stand-out attacking player all season, and this is a guy many people were demanding we should get rid of only a few months ago. Just throwing this one out there, given the rumours related to both players, but how about Benteke as a replacement for Pelle in the summer, if we do get a decent enough offer from someone in Italy? Klopp clearly doesn't want him, and they'd have to take one hell of a haircut on the fee they paid a year ago, it could be our final merking of Liverpool's finance department

The numbers (Home-Draw-Away): 2012/13: 166-108-106 (44%-28%-28%) 2013/14: 179-78-123 (47%-21%-32%) 2014/15: 172-93-115 (45%-25%-30%) 2015/16: 135-93-110 (40%-27%-33%) [42 games to play] So overall, teams at home have been slightly weaker over the past three years - Villa being extraordinarily **** (previous bottom teams earned 23 and 20 points at home compared to Villa's 10) and Chelsea slumping from being unbeaten with 15 home wins to only 5 wins are massive outliers this season, though, which may skew the figures a touch. There are very few teams who you'd have any confidence in setting a game plan up to defend first these days. Even the likes of West Brom have been pretty porous despite very obvious game plans away from home. Defending just isn't a particularly high standard across the leagues now, which means that teams who do things right at the other end prosper more than they did a few years ago, IMO. However, the handful of teams who CAN defend properly - us, Leicester, Spurs, Man United - have got their rewards at times this season even when the strikers haven't been firing.

I'd largely agree, but having seen the 40-odd minutes of Sky highlights from the Everton game, it looked like Tadic had a rare away performance where he was effective from start to finish. Not worth analysing our away record from our first PL spell, pretty much always terrible, lucky to get 2 or 3 away wins a season. Since we've been back up: 2012/13: 3-7-9 (23-36) 16pts 2013/14: 7-5-7 (22-23) 26pts 2014/15: 7-2-10 (17-20) 23pts 2015/16: 5-6-6 (14-16) 21pts Win at Villa on Saturday, which we really should do, and we'll have actually gained more points away from home this season compared to last season, with a game to spare. Certainly, away performances have tended to be solid rather than spectacular, but sometimes the bottom line tells you a different story compared to what your eyes see.

An unexpectedly positive performance in the end. Basically one awful session in the morning of day two might even have cost us a winning opportunity.

Their last 4 games: Wycombe home - still going for the playoffs, but have drawn 4 of the last 5 Wimbledon away - another direct rival Hartlepool away - midtable, nothing to play for Northampton home - already champions, still going for 100 points. Not easy by any means...

:lol: Just to compound matters, Wimbledon, Accrington and Plymouth are all winning as well, so as things stand they're 8 points off 3rd, while a goal for Wycombe and a turnaround for Exeter would see them looking over their shoulders as well.

A pleasant surprise, that. Good effort Should ensure the draw, can't complain with that return given the injuries and opposition we've faced so far.

True story

Didn't have anything to do with the result, it was their attitude. The officials we had in the first game fully bought into the spirit of the event, but for the second lot it was all about them. One player on the opposition was a mate of the ref's, so was allowed to get away with a two-footed lunge that - it later transpired - broke my foot (I stupidly played on, mainly on the basis that I'd paid a good amount of money to do so). Said referee then threatened me with abandoning the game when I dared to ask how the **** he hadn't seen it despite being stood five yards away.

I've never been heavier than 12st 5lb

The problem with that, though, is that you could get endless breaks in play for reviews, and even then the outcome is potentially unclear - take that Leicester v West Ham game, nearly all of the big decisions that Jon Moss made have been argued heavily from both sides, I think Vardy's first yellow card is the only one where there's been a unanimous "he got that one wrong" viewpoint from observers, and even that's after about 400 replays from every different possible angle. For me, they absolutely should be using technology as much as possible for factual decisions, i.e. did the ball cross the line for a goal (already working superbly well, there's never a single debate about those tight decisions anymore, the possibility of human error has been removed completely), did the ball go out of play before a goal was scored or a penalty awarded, did an incident of foul play take place inside or outside the penalty area, etc. For subjective decisions like "was it a foul, and if so, against who?", I think it's a massive waste of time.

You're always going to have inconsistency between different referees unless they introduce robots to officiate. Literally no point wasting your energy getting wound up by that. What CAN be looked at and worked on is inconsistency within a single game - if a referee applies the same criteria to every single decision from first whistle to last, then the only complaints will be around whether a referee's got a decision right or wrong, rather than the even application of the laws.

Bet you're not

The first one was infinitely better than the second one, IMO. The officials were a bunch of absolute dickheads in the second one, tried to make the whole thing all about them, when in actual fact if we'd not paid to make it happen, they'd have been at home none the wiser and wouldn't have got the opportunity to officiate at St Mary's.

We've teamed up with playwithalegend.com to bring a potentially once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to SaintsWeb members to grace the hallowed turf at St Mary's alongside four Saints legends. Brett Ormerod, Jason Dodd, Francis Benali and Matt Le Tissier will be the player-managers on the night of Thursday 2nd June of the four teams that will participate in a round-robin tournament. Each of the 4 teams plays 3 30-minute matches (full pitch, 11-a-side). Personalised kit is provided, as are refreshments. All you'll need is boots and shinpads, and what little talent you possess Places are available at a specially-discounted rate through our page on the playwithalegend website, (password for the page is "saintsweb"). THE COMPETITION PART! In addition to this deal, we are offering ONE SaintsWeb member the chance to win a place at the event. All you have to do is guess the official attendance at Saints' away match at Aston Villa on Saturday 23rd April and post it in a reply to this thread only. The closest guess wins. It really is that easy. Small print: only one entry per person; if there are any duplicate entries (i.e. two people guess the same attendance), the earliest guess stands; any entries which are subsequently edited will be declared void; if two entries are closest to and equidistant from the correct attendance, the "Bruce's Price is Right" principle will apply, so the lower of the two guesses will win; prize is a 45-minute slot, winner's chosen position subject to availability; deadline for competition entries is 15:00 BST on Saturday 23rd April 2016. playwithalegend have also confirmed that if you buy a place but then subsequently win the prize, your money will be refunded in full.

Fixed