hughieslastminutegoal

Absolutely. Knew exactly when to put the pressure on and deliver the encouraging backside boot. Cup "success" was making a few just a bit complacent.

Nice One.

"They" being all Pompey fans? I didn't realise so many Saints fans consorted with that many Pompey supportes to know what the majority of them thought.

We aren't forever going to make that our excuse for losing to the skates, are we?

Yes, anyone can, though not necessarily will.

Don't talk nonsense. We are chock full of premiership carpet gliders, remember we have spent millions.

Yep, long gone are the days when The Dell was our fortress....

the trouble is they only have one pan to cook it in, and the skates are firmly stuck to the bottom.

So much quality since when, exactly? Since we bought Lambert? Since we bought Connoly (injured)? Since we bought Fonte and Barnard (a tiny handful of games ago)?

Do me a favour. O'Hara scored and created goals for others, and was the only midfielder on either side who looked as though he could call the shots. Lala couldn't strike a ball properly all game. If he could kick a ball properly he'd be taking corners and the odd free kick, instead of us having Lambert out of the danger area so often. He's got some skill, and tries hard, but he is a poor striker of the ball, and his heading is weak (reminds me of Ormerod's heading). The coaches really need to work on that.

To be fair fewer and fewer keepers try to catch a cross these days. But also we don't know what Pardew's instructions are. We don't really try to work the ball through midfield, so that being so I can't see why we'd want to KD to play it out short. Also, Lambert wins many of the long balls, but we are slow in getting midfield support up, so he more often than not heads it on, hoping for the wide® players to get it. Given the way Pardew seems to want us to play (upmarket long ball), KD is the better option IMO, BECAUSE he is the better shot stopper. Personally I hate to see goal keepers kicking from 10 years outside their penalty area, but that seemed to be one of our main tactics yesterday. I thought we must have got Dave Bessant back as goal keeping coach!

To be fair fewer and fewer keepers try to catch a cross these days. But also we don't know what Pardew's instructions are. We don't really try to work the ball through midfield, so that being so I can't see why we'd want to KD to play it out short. Also, Lambert wins many of the long balls, but we are slow in getting midfield support up, so he more often than not heads it on, hoping for the wide® players to get it. Given the way Pardew seems to want us to play (upmarket long ball), KD is the better option IMO, BECAUSE he is the better shot stopper. Personally I hate to see goal keepers kicking from 10 years outside their penalty area, but that seemed to be one of our main tactics yesterday. I thought we must have got Dave Bessant back as goal keeping coach!

Absolutely right. Hammond harried, but his final balls were often poor. Schneiderlin also in my book failed to stand out at all. He is generally accurate with his passes but he has no real cutting edge for me. We also paid the price for indecisiveness for their first two goals (I discount the last two, we were looking to equalise in a cup match). Thomas stood too far off, showed too much of the goal and let him shoot with his right foot from the left side - poor defending, and we had three other defenders watching him. Their second goal also was caused by Harding momentarily watching the oncoming midfielder play the ball and then almost stopping to watch Perry slide in, rather than carrying on to follow the winger and get goal side of him. It's that pausing to watch that undoes us quite a lot, Harding’s main fault, which I’ve posted about before. And just what was the purpose behind Lambert taking corners and (poorly) floated free kicks? Antonio for me was better than Waigo and always looked likely to get in behind, but Lallana's finishing is very weak - no power in his shots or headers. But we should raelly have buried them before we went one behind.

We closed down well enough in the first half, but O'Hara wouldn't have won m-o-m if we controlled midfield. He was doing what Schniederlin should do but never does. We did well considering our L1 status, but we do need to improve our creativity in midfield, it doesn't really look as though it will deliver a killer pass.

I think you are mixing up a billionnaire's business requirements with those of business small fry (like Lowe, though I'm not for a second implying that it was even possible for Lowe to indulge in such offsetting). In the context of Liebherr's businesses, such tinkering would have all the impact of an ant's footprint on the planet.

Why? Do you think they need to put a gloss on things?

ich liebe dich, liebherr nic

These guys rescued the club from oblivion. Staplewood was Lowe and Woodward's pride and joy, and the new guys come in and quickly find it isn't up to scratch. The new guys wanted to take the opportunity to do a bit of public presentation of how they want to move the club on. The Echo deliberately stole their thunder having been asked not to do so. I'm not surprised Cortese was displeased. However last night's Echo (3rd Feb) was full of articles which had a distinct a*rse licking feeling about them. I think someone at the Echo is belatedly trying to rebuild bridges.

Got any left, Scotty?

He said he just came. Now he says customerS. The boy's got stamina.

How on earth did your brother in Chapel touch it too? Who is he, Mr Tickle?

Could spawn imitators?

Goal kick, isn't it?

Well, that'll give Keane something to moan about.

..and probably getting players a fair bit cheaper at the moment, too. If we can get a playoff place then everyone else in the playoffs will be very worried.