hughieslastminutegoal

Right back has (more or less) been a problem ever since Dodd got injured the season before we signed Delap. It was said at the time that Delap could play right back (which he couldn't). WGS solved it for a while with Telfer, but that was another "conversion" of a midfileder that worked just about OK, though not without a lot of detractors. But by and large we have been using a succession of players for whom fullback isn't a natural position. We've had this blind spot about full backs for years. I have a lot of respect for Benali, but for years managers tried alternatives to him, only to have to reinstate him when the chips were down. Subsequently we really only allieviated the left back position with Bridge (though that depended on Marsden playing to work properly). Le Saux was an inadequate replacement for Bridge because when he was fit (not often) we frequently played him in midfield. We had a half-hearted attempt to get a decent right back with Petrescu, but that was another example of Saints proclivity for signing injury-prone players. Higginbottom was signed as a central defender, but we converted him to a hoofball left back with average success, and for a very short time a certain teenager did ok until Spurs came calling. All in all, our determination to sort out the full-back positions PROPERLY has never really been given the attention it should. As soon as a temporary fix looked marginally successful, it was clutched at as the solution, and the position forgotten about again.

As all the moaning happens on an iternet forum, the scale must be logonarithmic.

You KNOW your argument is nonesense. Adolf Hitler had a lot of positive support, but the leader failed Germany because his strategy and objectives were sh*te. A lot more negativity from the German people towards Adolf might have avoided WW2? Eastern Europe threw off the yoke of communism through "negatives" continuing to criticise and fight against the regimes. Extreme examples of course, but negativity and criticism, not fawning support can often be the correct approach, even though often not appreciated until hindsight can be applied. Arguing solely about positivity versus negativity is pointless. If an internet forum is about anything, it is about arguing positions based on some kind of analysis of what is actually going on, which may include reasonable speculation.

If there is no heart to a team, by that I mean a core of good players who stay at the club, and all there is to support are mostly 4 month loans looking to get a better move elswhere, I doubt whether such a policy will any longer engender loyal grass roots support. What we do have will just trickle away. An improvement in results will slow the exodus down, but I forsee a gradual withering of interest, unless something happens to makes fans feel that the club really is a second home again.

Fab - I can still hear Cliff Huxford's husky call of "Goalie, goalie, goalie.." to Tony Godfrey when Knapp was going to head it whatever! I can still remember one save of his when his arms seemed to suddenly grow an extra 12 inches** to hold a shot heading for his top right hand corner at the Archers Road end (before he was concussed against Derby County in a 6-4 win I think). Those were the days, when goalies actually caught the ball. ** at first I said "grow an extra foot", but that looked a bit strange!

Greatest in a rather different sense, perhaps? Certainly done his bit for ex-Saints. Legend.

Oh well, if you are going to be like that then I'll say Dave McClaren and John Hollowbread.

Thats called senility, when you can remember Ian Black in goal but can't recall who has been our second man up front this season. Eh? What? We haven't even tried a second man up front this season? Oh.

Nice one - but ask your english teacher about tenses. I said I saw our defeats like that when I was 11 - 'was' (past tense) means I'm not 11 any more. Therefore you should have asked "when was (not is) my 12th birthday" - and the answer: it seems like yesterday! Nevertheless I'm glad you are still at that age when going to the match is a always a thrill; when the ref is always against us; when every challenge on us in the box should be a penalty; when all our shots are on target, but are denied by the woodwork, the wind, a lucky deflection; when our player should never have been sent off. I hope for your sake you carry on seeing it all like that, it makes saving up your newspaper round money worthwhile.

Yep, I used to see our defeats in that way when I was 11. Forget that almost every rational observer thought there never was a penalty shout, over the McGoldrick "incident" or the "handball". The second half was entertaining right enough, and we might have got lucky, but you'd be wearing strange coloured glasses if you really thought you saw any strong green shoots.

A very wierd observation. Whether one agrees with Alpine's overall stance or not, you can hardly argue with a football truism that 10 men often raise their game and frustrate 11. Or haven't you watched a lot of football yourself? Perhaps you'd rather agree with me that Wolves got complacent, took their foot off the gas, and (as 11 against 10 frequently do) failed to make their superiority count? In reality it was the first half performance that spells out our problem - most of the time we just aint at the races. And as entertaining as the second half was, our second half performance will again flatter to deceive - because teams will let us fanny around all afternoon where it doen't really hurt, especially when they are leading.

For a lot of clubs and their supporters this is a very good argument for getting rid of the stupid transfer window farce. We need to get back to allowing clubs to check players out properly without this ludicrous rush at the last minute - which only ever advantages the rich clubs over the struggling ones.

All very fine, and laudable, but you don't do it every game for a whole season. .....Oh, we do.

I agree 100%. The rather amateurish display against Bucharest at home, where the simple gambit of attacking in numbers down one flank showed us up as rather inflexible and a bit dim-witted, should have pointed out to Lowe just how much in need of some real quality we were, but a man and his ego are not easily parted. 30 average squad players is (to an accountant) better than 18 better quality ones worth the same amount, because it spreads your other risks. It's accountant-think, not football-think. Even if we had money, he would still go for quantity rather than quality. It's the nature of the (sundance?)beast.

I'm sure you must realise that things are rotting at Pratton Fark when even Redcrapp can no longer stand the smell.

There's speculation and speculation, isn't there, JFP? One has a rather higher probability of being right than the other. You are not suggesting that people should not indulge in speculation on a fans football forum, are you? I'm staggered if you are here only for fact! Isn't the "fun" of it all picking from everyone else's specuations according to one's own predisposition? No-one comes on here to have their opinions changed, do they?

Crikey, is Wopper really a very big bloke who knows nothing at all? That's not nice.

Sorry, but this is a joke isn't it? An 18 year old no one has ever heard of, and who might be ok if he progresses, is going to sign on the morning of the Wolves game? Is he that special that you have to plan ahead for it? Is it such a special contract that you don't already have a pro-forma version sat on the PC just ready and waiting for the secretary to input the name? 'Cos we've never signed a kid before, have we? And a song and dance is being made about it in the media that far ahead? I think the poster who said the sound we heard was a PR U-turn must have it about right.

Ah, that old trick of turning an element into ... itself. Something I've being doing since I was a baby. Rupert on the other hand, hasn't quite got that trick right yet.

Given his head, he'd have bankrupted us. He's a manager who has to spend loads a munny. He seems to get in a mood when he can't spend on whoever he wants.

I do like the racing analogy - but he never had a plan A anything like that ambitious. His plan A was a kind of Cambridgeshire entry - a horse with very little quality, with a huge handicap and trained by someone who has only schooled a point-to-pointer. And Plan B seems to me more like a novice chase at Kempton with a 3 year old shetland pony, ridden of course by an apprentice so green he still claims a 7lb allowance.

"MS has set the world alight with a series of outstanding displays this season".. Sun "An ever-present in Southampton's side this term" ... Daily Mail ""..has dominated midfield in every game he has played in.." ... Times " .. a series of match-winning displays.." ..Grauniad ".. debut season in the CCC has earned him rave reviews.." .. Lowe News No wonder he is attracting all the premiership clubs. No wonder his price tag has risen from 1.2m to 5m in such a short space of time. BULLSHINE. Good a couple of times, reasonable a few other times, very average much of the time, injured (or kept out of the firing line according to Wenger's requirements) quite a lot.

The difference is "level 2 profesional football club" and "local society", I don't know say £10m+ pa.

My question would be "Just how the hell did you get your shorts THAT short, without cutting off the blood supply to your tackle, Frank?"

Was it a very good spot, this boyle? Has he a good head on him? I'm sure we can squeeze something out of him. I hope he can burst through soon. Come on you red and whites. It's nearly Christmas and pantomime season approaches - "Puss In Boots" anyone? Sorry, couldn't resist that.