NY Saint

With any luck that will put an end to us making arrogant comments about cricket scores etc. 3 pts would be nice though.

3G was working for me as well and I've switched to wifi as its not making the phone as warm. Was hoping for Solent commentary instead of Arsenal vs. Marseille but its easier to listen to than the constant score updates from Sky Sports radio COYR!!

Not sure how I've not stumbled on this before, the Football League site lists all upcoming televised Championship Games. We've three between now and Feb. I'm sure the ingenious members of Saintsweb will be find links or pubs showing these games. http://www.football-league.co.uk/page/TVGamesDetail#february npower Championship Sat 10 Dec Southampton v Blackpool 12:45pm Sky Sports npower Championship Sun 18 Dec Portsmouth v Southampton 1pm BBC Sport npower Championship Mon 23rd Jan Southampton v Leicester City 7:45pm Sky Sports

Ha. Greeaaat. I've a couple of friends I dragged out to watch on Saturday and the Derby game who both have children of less than a year old, so they were on special leave to watch the game under the premise it was a one off. Think I'll have to find a new excuse for the Boro game. Delighted we got a point on Saturday -Reading worked us out well and denied us any space to play. Even our switched wingplay was tracked and Reading moved their middle over to smother any attacks. Looking forward to seeing the backup plan Nigel has up his sleeve.

Vipstand should have a stream as its on Sky. I'm heading down to Nevada Smiths to watch it - Third Ave and 12th Street if anyone wants to join a few of us.

We're Saints fans we're conditioned to worry and expect something terrible to happen.

The games I've seen with Lallana we look more dangerous, get forward better and create scoring opportunities and generally make the opposition panic a little more at the back. Without him we've looked a little lacking in inspiration as the attacks have broken down and we've then tried the same type of attack only to be thwarted again. Lambert has become a better target, his hold up and release play has improved since he joined and his passing and reading of the game has also become better. Found a few stats that prove nothing but make football geeks; This season our assists are again coming from multiple sources with Lallana currently leading with 6 and Richardson has 5. 8 players have provided more than one assist this season. Lallana led our assists last season with 13 scoring 11 in all competitions, Lambert had 12 assists 21 goals, 11 goals Do Prado 6 assists and Hammond had 6 assists with Oxo assisting 8 times. Previous season 2009/2010 Lambert contributed 20 assists and 36 goals with Lallana offering 5 assists 20 goals. Papa Waigo scored 10 and assisted with 8. We had a lot more assists from other midfielders that season. Source: http://soccernet.espn.go.com/team/squad/_/id/376/league/all/southampton?cc=5901

Story from SkySports.com seems a little like an agent attempting to shake some cash loose from Barnsley's wallet. (http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,12876_7255471,00.html) Barnsley midfielder Jacob Butterfield admits he has a 'big decision' to make regarding his future after being offered a new contract. Butterfield's current deal expires at the end of the season and he is being tracked by clubs in the Premier League, in addition to Championship leaders Southampton. The Tykes are understood to have put a new two-and-a-half year deal in front of Butterfield, but he is in no rush to make a decision. "It's still very early days, I've got to make a big decision on my future," Butterfield told the Sheffield Star. Worked hard "I've worked hard in my career and hard to get where I am now, so I've got a lot of things to consider for my future. "I'm happy where I am at the minute. I owe a lot to Barnsley for the chance they've given me because when I was 15 I was really close to quitting football. "It's great to have been offered a new deal, but I'm not in any rush to make a decision because this is a very big point in my career. Barnsley director Don Rowing added: "Jacob's been offered a new deal and we're waiting to hear his response. "We've had no enquiries from Southampton or any other club for him, but of course we're keen to keep him. He's been excellent for us this season and is a player liked by the fans." http://www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,12876_7255471,00.html

I began to fall into the pessimistic Saints fan view so often owned by Alpine, but am now firmly back in the unrealistic realty (?!) that is life as a table topping potentially Premier League bound Southampton. Waiting for the fiancee to get home to pinch me.

From my perspective, watching on a dodgy internet feed at Nevada-Smiths, we were by far the better team for large portions of the game, passing the ball around nicely but lacking the creativity of Lallana. That's been a concern of mine for a while that if Lallana were to be bought from us or be injured long-term we would struggle to replace his input. Derby/Clough's plan looked to break up our passing game by hurrying us into mistakes or disrupt the tempo of passing we've established this season when winning comfortably. It worked, and they looked confident and well able to counter, it made for an entertaining game. Derby made two goal line clearances and their keeper also played well, as did Kelvin so all in all a good result but still felt like two points dropped. West Ham will be difficult tomorrow and Reading will be tough but when you look at the fixture list its hard to not look at every game as a challenge compared to last season. I'll be at Nevada Smiths on Saturday again with a couple of friends hopefully - a couple of the other regular Saints fans in the area are out of town for the game which is a shame. Chicago celebration party might be cool - but I quite fancy heading back for the promotion party like I did last year.

I'm a Saints fan therefore I'm conditioned to expect the rug to be pulled from under me at some point before the end of the season, so I'm erring on the side of pessimism. I'd love to have seen the Fink Tank predictions for the last few seasons to see how accurate it actually is but its a nice distraction.

Morgan Frannie Benali Spiderman!!! Fantastic stuff. COYR lets steal all three points.

COYR! RLGM needs to get on the end of a little Lallana magic. p.s. was trying to find a link for the game and notice that the text commentary on the OS is of the MK Dons game from April. Definitely need to change the match services provider.

There's a lot of pessimism on the Claret forums about this game some even predicting they'll get walloped by Saints. Personally I'd be happy with a 1-0 win. Not seen any commentary links yet - I'm still boycotting Saints Player.

SDR for Du Prado on 60 mins - get a bit of pace down the wings now that Brum have adapted to pushing up on our walking it out from the back routine. Catch them on the counter. Noticed STILL no Barnie on the bench.

Thanks Golac's Testies - good radio link. The USA Goals is a live feed of a channel that's not broadcasting on Justin.TV. Nothing on Justin.TV, and the firstrow link is also dead.

Yup, violent conduct

I've been traveling for work too much and clearly fallen into a different dimension because I can't find the previously advertised (http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10280~2388402,00.html) televised home game versus Birmingham on any channel. The game now also appears to be on Sunday. What year is this? Do colours and sounds still look and sound the same to me as they do for everyone else? Where are we? AAAarrgh.

In my office near Times Square. Victor, the building's doorman, told me a plane had hit the World Trade Center and in my mind it was a Cessna or other light aircraft. A few weeks before a Frenchman had landed a microlight on the Statue of Liberty and I thought it was something similar. By the time I got upstairs the second tower had been hit by another plane and that's when I began to get a little concerned. NBC, ABC and CNN's websites were all crawling and really hard to get updates from so I logged onto BBC's site which had live streaming video and I was able to let others in the office know what was going on. Shortly after the first tower collapsed my wife at the time called and told me her building in Times Square was being evacuated as there were fears that the Empire State Building was a target and we would meet at home. We were evacuated 15 minutes later, and as I got into Times Square saw the second tower collapse on the giant TV screens and I began a walk that would take almost two hours to my apartment on the upper eastside of Manhattan. No cellphones were working, the streets normally filled with rushing traffic were filled with 15 people abreast walking north up the avenues. My route took me through Central Park as it felt safer than walking amongst the tall buildings. People with dust and blood on them walked everywhere, and at one point a group gathered around a cab listening to the radio. I crossed Park Avenue at 93rd street and all we could see were clouds of black smoke from the South. The next few days were a blur. We volunteered at a hotel that housed the recovery effort for families of people that worked at Cantor Fitzgerald as we had friends missing from there. Eventually we were not required. We went to give blood but were told it wasn't necessary. I eventually was able to call my parents and family. As the weeks moved on we were and are grateful that no one in our immediate family was killed. Almost every car, house and jacket lapel had an American flag on it and NYC was a weird place to not be American. The reflecting pool and the new WTC site looks incredible. I just wish America and NYC in particular wasn't so paranoid and didn't feed into the media hysteria.

Now I know what tourists really like when they visit Few other ideas/tips: Have a look at iStopover.com - apartments for less than the price of hotels. Or try Hotels.com or hotwire.com for cheaper prices on hotels. If you have a smartphone - find a fast food place/coffee shop with free wifi. Download the Yelp application. Make sure you have a map with you, for as easy as NYC is to navigate on the numbered streets and avenues it can get confusing downtown. Rent bikes. You'll not be restricted to bus timetables and you'll be able to see most of the city in a day or two. Top of the Rock is definitely worth it. Staten Island ferry is free - take it for a view of the Statue of Liberty. Brooklyn Bridge walk is a great idea - you only need to walk out halfway for incredible pics of downtown. Ground Zero is going to be a hive of activity over the next month and the free tours of the new site begin next week... however you need to sign up and the waiting list might be six months long. NY Waterway tours are interesting for a new perspective - craning your neck up from the buses/cabs/bikes can take its toll. Bloomingdales on 59th is rather like a poor man's Harrods but if you're budget is tight I would skip it completely. Intrepid Aircraft carrier museum is also interesting but pricey (I live one block away and have a view of it as I write this) Foley's pub near Madison Square Gardens has more sports memorabilia than I've ever seen including rings, hats, jerseys and baseballs from almost all series. There are loads of good pubs and bars and even more crap ones. It really depends which part of the city you are in and if college football is on. Saturdays bars are packed with people watching college (American) football during the day, baseball at night. Sundays bars will have people watching NFL football and baseball at night. Feel free to email me if you help when you're here.. however I generally don't put up bail

I'll be in Atlanta on Sunday for work. Not sure of the exact schedule yet, but shoot me message on here or by email philip.robertson@gmail.com if you're around and fancy a beer.

I'm currently four blocks from Lambeau Field for work.. have passed all the activity and build up to the game on Thursday. Alas I fly back to NYC tomorrow night so will miss the game. Not sure Dallas even with their revisions have any chance, and don't expect Packers to repeat last year's effort. I've a horrible feeling it will be Patriots.

I had no idea Swindon has dropped... but to be fair I'd not really looked at the bottom half of the table after the 3 months. I've heard a few mutterings about Harlee Dean so would like to hear him get on tonight.

Do you mean the aggressive drizzle the Eastern seaboard of the US experienced over the weekend? On another note did anyone else notice that Max Gradel, who I felt was one of the most dangerous Leeds Utd players vs. us this season has been sold to St. Etienne.

Fantastic stuff. Another win with, top of the league and nun against.