stevegrant

Their next 8 games (maybe 9 if Everton sort themselves out) are terrible but their last 5 are all winnable. As long as they're not out of sight by then (which they shouldn't be, considering how crap the other teams down there have been), they'll still have a great chance of staying up.

I wonder if they'll put in an official complaint at having to play against two teams at once if they lose to Dagenham & Redbridge tonight.

Pellè just looks knackered to me, we've not been able to rest him because of injuries elsewhere. Rodriguez has taken much longer than most expected to recover (despite original predictions of a Christmas return, I'm now not expecting to see him play this season), Long has got injured at a difficult time for us and Gallagher has had a series of issues (and I'm not entirely convinced by him anyway). While in most games we've played quite a patient game, on Saturday this was difficult because of the pitch. You couldn't play a 10-yard pass with any degree of confidence, so as a result we ended up playing quite direct, but neither Mané or Elia really got close enough to Pellè to profit from his hold-up play, which is excellent but he can't be expected to hold it up AND beat the entire back 4. It's also been noticeable that our final ball has got progressively worse over the course of the season. Crosses are either under- or over-hit, corners are dealt with too easily and we're trying to be far too clever around the edge of the penalty area to fashion clear openings when sometimes you've only got a half-chance available.

Nurse!

It's a strange one, as we certainly don't look as free-flowing as we did back in September/October, and yet we've won 4 on the spin away from home and are the fifth-highest scorers in the league. Our eyes see us labour a bit up front, appear to lack a bit of clinical finishing, and yet we're still winning games.

I'd have thought that most of the idiots would have got the "Mané is rubbish" nonsense out of their system by now, considering how crucial he's been in recent games. All of his goals have been important: Stoke (home) - only goal of the game. Palace (away) - first goal, win comfortably thereafter Chelsea (home) - first goal, got a point Arsenal (home) - first goal, win comfortably thereafter QPR (away) - only goal of the game. Sure, he's going to be a bit inconsistent at times, he's still only 22 years old, but he's already shown that he comes up trumps at key moments in big games.

It would be quite handy if Hugo Lloris would pick up a knock as well, he's kept them in the games that Kane and Eriksen have subsequently gone on to win. Their defence ALWAYS looks likely to concede goals, but continually gets bailed out by a genuinely world-class keeper.

Leicester release a statement saying Pearson is still in charge.

To be fair to Watson, he's got the Pro Licence, so he's perfectly qualified to be getting involved in that sort of stuff as well as his specialist goalkeeping duties.

We are on the verge of another club record, never before have we won 8 league games away from home in a top-flight season. Even in 83/84 when we finished runners-up to Liverpool, we only won 7 away games.

Not sure if any of the live coverage on streams picked up on it, but the pitch was an absolute disgrace yesterday. Both sides could barely pass the ball 5 yards as it would just bobble up off the pitch and hit a shin or knee

Whisper it quietly, but Thameslink managed to run a perfectly acceptable service at peak times for an entire week this week. Genuinely shocked.

Criminally overlooked

As far as I'm aware, that's sort-of by design. There's a right-click blocker on the images so you can't download them (although there's a way to do it if you can be bothered to go through a minor hassle), and they're designed to be small enough so they're of no use to anybody away from the OS.

Some real Redknapp-esque attempts at rewriting history there by Poch, the snivelling *****. "Lallana who wasn't playing" - that'll be the injury he sustained 40 minutes into a game against Reading 5 weeks prior to your arrival "Shaw who wasn't playing" - except for starting ALL of the THIRTEEN games prior to your arrival "When we came here we had to recreate everything from zero" - with a squad that cost £200m. Bravo.

I'm not sure the Football League are in a position to block their parachute payments. They come directly from the Premier League, and they've already said they won't assist the Football League in collecting any fines they hand out.

£58m on transfer fees, at least the same in wages in the two-and-a-bit years in charge, recouping £25m in sales. Redknapp has done his usual trick of stockpiling players who have plenty of experience but who have very little resale value, and a load of free transfers on massive wages. Of the players he's signed, he's already sold a few on - Loic Remy (£8m, sold for £8.5m), Christopher Samba (£12.5m, sold for £12m, somehow), Jordan Mutch (£6m, sold for £4.5m) - with a whole load released on frees - Yossi Benayoun, Aaron Hughes, Stephane Mbia, Gary O'Neil, Danny Simpson, Andy Johnson, Jermaine Jenas. Those he signed who might have some resale value: Yun Suk-Young (£500k), Charlie Austin (£4m), Steven Caulker (£8m, but surely there won't be a third club willing to pay £8m for him based on the last two years' performances), Leroy Fer (£8m). Other than that, there's no long-term legacy there. If QPR go down, Austin's long gone, Fer as well, I expect, and then they've got to start again pretty much from scratch. Good luck, Tactics Tim, you're going to need it.

What has been seen cannot be unseen

I'm amazed Fernandes has got anywhere in business considering how naive and, at times, incompetent he seems to be.

FFS. I was hoping we could give him a final send-off on Saturday

GroupSave used to get you 50% off if there were 4 of you travelling, but it seems as if they've reduced that to 34% for groups of 3-9 people. A Network Railcard also entitles you to a 34% discount in the "Network South East" region (as far north as Banbury, I believe), hence why some will buy "split" tickets to Birmingham for the West Brom game. You can get the discount up to Banbury but no further. The benefit of a Network Railcard over GroupSave is that you can get the discount if there's only 1 or 2 of you travelling, and the Railcard is also valid with all operators in the region. GroupSave tickets can't be used on CrossCountry trains, which screws you for West Brom as the only way of getting from Reading to Banbury is on Cross Country. Example: Southampton Central to Shepherd's Bush on Saturday is £39.50 for a standard off-peak day return. With a Network Railcard (1-4 people) or GroupSave (3-9 people), that gets reduced to £26.05. So just to get to London, you're saving £13.45. If you make three trips to London in a year, you've made the cost of the railcard back.

Their "Premier League star" has been given an ADDITIONAL four game suspension, which makes a total of SEVEN games for his red card last week

He's a bit unfortunate that left-back is the one position where England genuinely has quality and strength in depth. Baines, Shaw, Gibbs and even Ashley Cole had he not retired would all be in with a shout of being picked, along with Bertrand.