Eric The Red

As far as I understand the rumours, it's that they're not offering as much as £7m up front, i.e. definitely under half the supposed £15m. I seriously wonder whether the £15m includes various add-ons which, given how hopeless Everton have looked so far this season, would never be due.

No. Would only attract negative press

Don't doubt there is a lot of truth in the Fulham story but it's all dependent on other moves and then them getting close to our valuation. I don't think 'close to £30m ' will be enough for them to win the race.

I think the words missed out of that headline are 'on the cheap'. Sure we'd love Tella back but also if they make us a good offer we will accept.

Just got there before me KK. I watched lot of the game, without being harsh generally a lamentably poor standard of football, even our lot would have had a good chance of winning :). Josh Sims actually looked ok, CDAJFU?

Tyler Dibling played for England 1-0 win vs Croatia tonight in the Euro U17 championships. Shame he's not available for a runout on Sunday.

I see the U 18's won their final game this afternoon, 5-1 against Arsenal with a Ballard hattrick. Surely it would be worth putting him , and perhaps 1 or 2 of the others on the bench for the last few first team games. They can't do worse than our usual subs!

I think the most disappointing for me was Bournemouth at home, we should have been fighting for our lives but were so flat for over two thirds of the game. Objectively it's a toss up for worst performance between Forest and Wolves at home. Forest looked poor yet managed to win comfortably whilst losing to a Wolves team who played with 10 men for over an hour (and were 1-0 down !) is indefensible

I see West Ham won the Youth Cup final tonight, winning 5-1 at the Emirates so perhaps our 1-6 at their place wasn't so bad?

Agreed, now unlikely to be 'officially' relegated in April but unless we get a win by then as we play Forest in the last game of that weekend we could be mathematically down before kick off and quite likely down by the final whistle.

Virtually impossible for us to be relegated before May! If you mean 'as good as relegated ' then I think Bournemouth is most likely to be the occasion we visit the 'last chance saloon'

The team we're playing next week looking pretty good today 🙃

I also agree that it's very unlikely that we stay up. I think with our GD 37 points is the minimum. If we 'write off' the Man C ,Arsenal and Newcastle games that would mean we have to get 14 points (4 wins 2 draws) from the other 7 games, a massively tall order!

Would prefer NOT to play Man Utd a 3rd time! The good news Forester is if instead of losing to Man Utd we beat Bournemouth on your plan we would have 39 points and near certain safety

Weston is spot on. We can all agree that Saints are (marginally) the worst team at retaining the ball when the keeper passes it. Overall we're pretty bad but I think I prefer our position in the chart to Meslier's. Not only is their retention rate more or less as bad as ours but their long ball rate is much worse. If you press Leeds on their goal kicks you'll get the ball back around three quarters of the time

Sorry but the numbers do matter. The X axis is percentage of TOTAL passes, The short pass completion rate isn't shown separately but is obviously much higher (at least twice as high as the long pass ones) so how many short passes you make is absolutely critical to your overall pass completion stat.

Interesting stats Matty but it doesn't really show what you claim. According to that chart Bazunu's long ball distribution is actually marginally better than average. To be overall bottom either his short ball distribution is remarkably atrocious or , more likely he plays a lot less short passes, which with our flaky back line would be a very sensible thing!

Redkeith I am afraid I think you have the Matchday comparison wrong. After Match 24 last year we had 29 points and a GD of -7 so we are 'only' a horrendous -11 Points at the moment ( & -15 GD). Looking back over the thread I think you've missed the home draw with Spurs , matchday 19. We could well be -17 on points in 2 games time though. You would hope it couldn't get much worse after Matchday 26 but you never know .........

I agree with a lot that the OP says but also I have a lot of sympathy for John B's views. I think football is a great game but also after over 50 years supporting the Saints I am right my breaking point. Yes our team is poor and Grimsby fans are rightfully over the moon today VAR is ruining the game and it does take away the enjoyment and yes some of the excitement out of the game. I am a ST holder and go to most of the away games but I am now actively thinking about more enjoyable things I can do with my weekends!

Looking at their site this time last week they only gave us a 23% chance of staying up. A win tomorrow surely will see our percentage increase by a similar amount.

We lost just before Christmas 1993 on a Saturday, I was there and it as very depressing but I thought it finished 2-1

Very happy if my misgivings are proved to be unfounded. I look at our players and think surely we have enough ability in there to produce a team as good as those in upper mid table (Brentford, Fulham) but then I think have how often they have underperformed both collectively and individually and wonder how much is down to the manager and how much to the squad?

Sorry but he doesn't do it for me. His post match press conferences are nearly as bizarre and fantastical as Jones' I also don't think Leeds played any different style than what we're used to and they had the same problem as us in creating opportunities but not scoring. A real absence of imagination or ambition in such an appointment

Breaking the matches up into groups; Firstly the games against the 'top seven', Chelsea - A, Man Utd - A, Spurs - H, Man C -H, Arsenal -A, Newcastle - A, L'pool - H, I think we need an average of a point a game, let's say 2 wins and a draw Then the other away games Leeds , West Ham , Forest, Brighton. I think we need 2 wins from these . Lastly the other home games Leicester, Brentford, Palace, Bournemouth, Fulham. Frighteningly I think we would need 3 wins and a draw So that's 7+6+10 =23 points to get to 38 and a fighting chance Likelihood of that actually happening, at the moment, minimal to nil, with an experienced premier league quality manager, pretty slight, but ................

I and my (handful) of Saints fan mates from Nottingham Uni were there as well. We went by train and who did we see getting off the train with us at Leicester? None other than Brian Clough and Peter Taylor.