benali-shorts

I think he's decent. Good at Valencia (successive top 4 finishes before harshly sacked in season 3), ok at Atletico Madrid (9th then 5th (plus UEFA cup & Copa del Rey win); looks less good post Simeone's Atletico but was decent at the time). Good at Watford. Quirky spell in UAE. Looks like Hugh Laurie. Dapper clothes taste. Allegedly delaying Espanyol decision having been contacted by Sevilla and one other unnamed club this week. I think he'd be good, suspect people may think being ex-Watford makes him a downgrade but I thought he got them over-performing last season which is the mark of a decent coach.

Quique Flores at 16-1 is a great bet....

Dunn or Burke from Surrey? v difficult to get any quality and either of those would help, although hard to imagine surrey releasing either. let's hope fidel only a minor injury.

Plus Fidel injured in the warm up this morning..... Yorks 13-2, Vicar just got Ballance.

Alsop the best of the young batsmen at the club, very difficult to open in Div 1 in April, hopefully he may get another chance further down the order if Vince away with England next month after Jimmy back to open. Weatherley less impressive.

wood and vicar with the new ball. mclaren is going to have to bowl a lot of overs in the next few weeks, hope his body's up to it......

From The Times. The gist being average crosses per game now 28 vs 42 in 2003. And average cross accuracy diminished too (33% down to 20%). Saints achieve 23.5% crossing accuracy, an impressive 3% higher than any other team. Tadic and Soares good stats, Tadic highest number 102 @ 24%, Soares highest accuracy 83 @ 29%. Width our friend. Less good than the Death of grass, but worth a read nevertheless. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/sport/football/article4672267.ece The death of crossing: why teams all now want to get the ball to ‘Zone 14’ instead that once defined our game Sir Alex Ferguson was unequivocal. Certain things, the Scot always felt, were non-negotiable. “We like wingers at Manchester United, and we always have,” he once said. It was a proud tradition, and one he did his utmost to maintain. Over the course of his reign, from Kanchelskis to Ronaldo by way of Giggs and Beckham, he produced teams illuminated by dazzling wide players. That has all changed now, and not only at Old Trafford. Across the English game, what one of the beneficiaries of Ferguson’s tastes, Dwight Yorke, describes as the “classic style of football” is fading from view. Width has gone out of fashion, replaced by an obsession with possession, lone strikers and inverted wingers. With it has gone a defining feature of the English game. The art of crossing, it seems, is dying. According to figures provided to The Times by Opta, there has been a staggering decline in the number of crosses in the Barclays Premier League in the last decade and a half. In the 2003-04 campaign, an average match produced not far off 42 crosses. So far this season, that figure has slipped to 29 — a reduction of a third in little more than 10 years. That is coupled with an even more marked drop in just how effective crossing is. In 2003, roughly a third of crosses found their target. This season, only a fifth of balls played in from wide areas have picked out a team-mate. Nowhere is that more notable than at Manchester City. Despite spending almost £100 million on Raheem Sterling and Kevin de Bruyne, only 13 per cent of Manuel Pellegrini’s side’s crosses so far this year have been successful. No team in the Premier League have been more profligate in their delivery, and yet they keep trying. Only Southampton and Crystal Palace cross more often than City. “If you’re a full back, when you get into a wide area, you’re looking to see your striker and maybe one of your midfield players in the box,” says Andy Hinchcliffe, who found himself in such a situation thousands of times for City, Everton and England. “But what if that striker is Sergio Agüero and the midfielder is David Silva, and they’re surrounded? You know crossing will not be effective. So you check back in, play a pass, conserve possession.” There is no question, in the minds of those who know the subject, that the profile of centre forwards has changed in recent years. As Hinchcliffe notes, there are few of the old bulldozers left, replaced by craftier, more gifted — but substantially smaller — strikers. It is an assessment supported by Les Ferdinand, as fine a header of the ball as English football has seen in the past 30 years and now director of football at Queens Park Rangers. “Every forward that comes to me now is a No 10,” he says. “That is how they see themselves. They are not No 9s who want to head the ball. Most teams play with one up front and three rotating behind them; the forwards are not trying to win headers and the players behind them are not looking to cross the ball.” Indeed, instead of seeking to reach the byline — as Ryan Giggs might have done — or attempting to whip a ball in from deep, like David Beckham, players are now largely instructed to cut back inside. “In a lot of the coaching literature, the focus is on what they call Zone 14,” explains James Scowcroft, the former Ipswich Town forward now coaching at the club’s academy and studying for his Uefa A Licence. “It’s the part of the pitch about as wide as the six-yard box, around 25 or 30 yards out from goal. A lot of studies have been done to show that is where most goals come from, where through-balls are most likely to be successful. Players are encouraged to get into those positions and wait for an opportunity. That is seen as much more effective than crossing.” Hinchcliffe’s instinct is the same. “Crossing is gambling with possession,” he says. “A lot of coaches, inspired by Barcelona, don’t want to give the ball away. There is a risk-free approach; you don’t want to lose the ball and find yourself exposed, with your full backs high up the pitch, to a counterattack. So you play inverted wingers, whose first touch brings them inside, and everything is focused through the middle.” This is a shift from the way that generation of players were taught to play. “As a kid, I was told to get five crosses in per half, ten a game,” says Kevin Kilbane, formerly of Everton. “That was your job as a winger. That was the primary thing you were judged on. I’m not sure that’s the case now. Players are encouraged to be what they used to call inside, not outside, forwards.” There is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy about all this. Statistics do show that games with more crosses from open play tend to have fewer goals; one study suggested only one out of every 91 crosses leads to a goal. Teams have interpreted that to mean it is not a reliable method of scoring; they play with only one striker in systems that seem designed to prove how ineffective crossing has become. Far better, they feel, to keep the ball, to wait for the perfect opportunity to score, to consign that classic style to history.

The Times reports we had a bid rejected for Coventry's 19 year old midfielder James Maddison but Spurs favourites to sign him, and that Stoke and Everton interested in Long.

Great cross from David Lee at 7'30", didn't know he had that in his locker.

I think that Lallana becoming available for transfer is somewhat more likely to occur than your two examples, and due to both its feasibility and the emotiveness the possibility of his return would elicit, I thought it reasonable to explore and discuss. However do feel free to stick to other threads if this one irritates you by not conforming to your online message board ideology. For what it's worth, like you I'd assess him as per any other transfer and if he'd improve the team, I'd get him in. But i appreciate that others feel differently and it's interesting to see the mix of views, and may of course be even more interesting in the future if Lallana ends up leaving Liverpool and the media link him with a return to Saints - hence raising the topic.

I apologise that discussions on theoretical situations which are a) feasible, b) saints-related and c) provoke discussion do not qualify as relevant in your forum ideology.

Might not necessarily be a bad thing to have someone in the players' camp who has left Saints and discovered that the grass wasn't necessarily greener.

From a purely football perspective, I think he'd be a decent option for us to play anywhere in the 3 behind the striker, and that he'd improve us, so I'd sign him on that basis. Admittedly hard to overlook the emotional aspect and his beard though. Agree with comment that it's unlikely that the Board would entertain it, however from a football perspective there aren't currently a huge amount of options for attacking midfielders who can combine creativity and pressing/tracking back as effectively as he did for us in 13/14.

It's not impossible that Lallana may be surplus to requirements and jettisoned by Liverpool at the end of the season. On 2014/15 form, it's unlikely that he'd be pursued by any of the top 6 and that he'd therefore be a target for the rest. Maybe there's too much water under the bridge, however putting emotional instinct aside, would he be a decent footballing target for a Saints return in 2016/17? I think he'd be a decent buy at c£10m (he'll be 28 in summer 2016), assuming he's acquired some humility and a razor before then.

The Times reporting that we're unwilling to increase offer to Celtic's demand of £12m, and that we're interested in Werder Bremen's Jannik Vestergaard.

Stuttgart fans' opinions (on loan there 2014/15) - seemed to be considered a squad player and views on him fairly ambivalent http://forum.vfb.de/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=5484&hilit=romeu&start=700

The Times today in piece on Ridgers' travails: "Rodgers preference would be to recruit proven British players, such as Ashley Williams & Ryan Bertrand."

Yes yes and thrice yes. Thanks Dan Johnson, son of Don.

surprising to see a stoic on here.

The Times reporting it as a done deal: Mauricio Pochettino boosted by recruitment of former Southampton aide Mauricio Pochettino’s position at Tottenham Hotspur was bolstered yesterday when the club moved to bring in one of his former aides at Southampton. Paul Mitchell, the south coast club’s head of recruitment, is expected to follow Pochettino to White Hart Lane in a move that will raise questions over the future of Franco Baldini, the club’s sporting director. Mitchell has been widely credited with masterminding Southampton’s successful transfer policy over the past two years, which has taken them up to second in the Barclays Premier League despite losing many of their biggest names last summer. The 33-year-old former Wigan Athletic and MK Dons midfield player began his scouting career in Milton Keynes after being forced to retire with a broken leg at the age of 27, setting up a recruitment division at the club before joining Southampton two years ago. Daniel Levy, the Spurs chairman, is determined to overhaul recruitment as a result of the limited impact made by the signings financed by Gareth Bale’s £85 million move to Real Madrid last summer, the majority of which were masterminded by Baldini. The Italian seems set to stay at the club, but Mitchell has made it a condition of his recruitment that he will not report to him directly when he joins Spurs. Mousa Dembélé has said that he has received no explanation for being left out at Spurs and will be further frustrated to learn that the club are confident of landing Fabian Delph, the Aston Villa and England midfielder, in January.

Townsend probably, weren't we after him (and harry kane) in Jan?

immers signed a new deal at feyenoord this week, so don't worry.

Blah blah blah Southampton could face an exodus of as many as eight first-team players this summer, with a growing number of Mauricio Pochettino’s squad nursing concerns over the club’s long-term ambitions. Manchester United and Liverpool moved within hours of the end of the season to take advantage of the uncertainty at St Mary’s. United submitted an offer of £27 million for Luke Shaw, the full back, and Liverpool made a bid of about £20million for Adam Lallana, the midfield player. Rickie Lambert is also thought to be contemplating a move, while the likes of Calum Chambers, Morgan Schneiderlin and Dejan Lovren have all attracted interest for their performances this season. Southampton’s board met to discuss what may prove to be the most pressing decision: the future of Pochettino himself. Tottenham Hotspur have made an official approach to speak to him over their vacant managerial position, but Katharina Liebherr, the owner, intends to try to persuade the former Espanyol head coach to stay by offering him improved terms. Pochettino is thought to be concerned over the club’s direction.

harsh on sturridge Bearsy.

What on earth does this bit of the interview mean exactly? Is it just media babble? >>It is put to Krueger that he must believe the club is in the position to convince Pochettino to stay. "Philosophically, if you look at my leadership style and you make the statement you did, then you can draw a line under what you think is happening," he says. "We have an open culture here."