benjii

Don't forget the half a million, plus, spunked on refunds for the United match.

I've done my ratings. Furthermore, I have written them below. McCarthy - 6 - didn't do anything wrong. Didn't have to do anything particularly good. Tino - 6 - Good first half but shows immaturity in holding the ball too long at times. Faded secomd half. Ralph is asking a lot of a guy who never played PL before and is 18. He deserves to be managed better. Stephens - 6 - generally good, but did he lose his man for the first goal? I wasn't paying much attention to the replay, so maybe not. Salisu - 7 - if Redmond hadn't been so good, he'd be our MoM. Handled most things very well. Looks good. KWP - 7 - still one of our best players. Can't be left out of the XI. Romeu - 5 - did some great battling work but got turned over several times. Looking like this will be a tough season for him as he's been fairly poor so far. JWP - 7 - gets an extra point just for showing bottle for the pen. Djenepo - 4 - missed a sitter, missed a very good chance, dived several times. Should not be starting matches. Elyounoussi - 6 - fair play for getting in the mixer and scoring but doesn't have the weapons for this level. Technically good but you need a bit more than that in our system. Hat-trick against Newport doesn't change that. Adams - 5 - bit of an off day. It happens. Armstrong - 6 - not his day but kept showing for the ball and worked hard. Nice run for the pen. Redmond - 9 - best player on the pitch. Poise, effort, dynamism, two great passes, two goals. Felt a bit sorry for Ralph as he got let down by individuals but he's still getting his '10' picks wrong and he should let KWP and Perraud start a few matches. We are still weak at CB and CM so let's hope Lyanco can add something.

Djenepo wasn't offside so it's a terrible miss. Also missed another good chance. Livramento needs to release the ball better. Too greedy in the dribble. Adams a bit slow today. Romeu big weak link. Messed up a number of good positions being caught on the ball. Having said that, we're by far the better team. I'd like to see Dialo for Romeu and Broja for Adams later. Also Tella for Djenepo at some point. Not being in the lead is criminal really after that 45.

Strange team selection, as usual, but let's hope it works.

The reason Biden got elected is because he isn't Trump, so he really shouldn't have just fallen in line with Trump's idiotic strategy here. And if he felt he had to, he could have at least made damn sure he implemented it as best as possible. The whole thing looks so incompetent you almost wonder if it's deliberate and there's something else going on - but I don't think that's the case at all. It's just baffling incompetence. I genuinely worry for the future of the UK and the US if the best our democracies can offer are nasty morons like Trump and weaklings like Johnson and Biden. And we've shown the world that we cannot be depended upon or trusted to do the right thing. This situation is unbelievably sad. Imagine being a teenage girl - or even a boy - over the last few weeks. Your life hopes trampled on by a bunch of filthy degenerates. People handing their children over to strangers FFS; that tells you all you need to know. Shameful.

This is quite an important game, I think. A chance to build some real momentum ahead of two tough matches. On the other hand, lose and then lose to City and WHU and we're looking at one point from the first 5 league games with Chelsea to play in the 7th. If we can get a few points on the board now then after the Chelsea match we go into a nicer run, having played 3 of the likely top 4 in our first 7 matches. Let's hope we can build on last night and get off to a good start on Saturday. No reason why we can't win, although I do still fear we will leak soft goals.

No one is going to give a shit if a player is cup-tied for the League Cup or not. I expect the first team squad players who haven't been playing will get a start but I doubt we'll be bringing Watts/Chauke/Simeu etc into the XI. I'm guessing something like: Forster KWP Bednarek Stephens Perraud Romeu Diallo Redmond Elyounoussi Adams Tella

This is great. We needed another left back and couldn't go and spend a fortune so we could either go for a Cuco Martina / Jeremy Pied sort of signing or get in someone exciting with a higher potential. So I'm very pleased.

It would make KWP’s dropping make more sense! Hopefully he gets back into the team once this nipper signs.

He looks good and obviously has great potential but people are going overboard. Personally, I think KWP offers more of an all round game.

Don't think we have. He's just pushed Stephens to right back. Why you wouldn't bring KWP on, I have no idea.

Shit loads of empty seats.

VAR deciding to revert to pube’s-width offside calls to save him. It’s going to be a travesty this season if they use VAR at a microscopic level in some matches but not in others.

So is Vest.

D to the O to the I to the G Scores goals for Saints and fucking hates Pompey Josh Doigy Doigy Doigy Doig

I think that's right seeing as the protocol isn't even in effect until 1 October. I expect this match will feature a few, but not many, spot checks to see what lessons can be learnt. With the mess over season tickets and the usual shite start to the season I can't see the club being militant over this in practice when they aren't even required to be. I expect it will ramp up match to match ahead of October (unless it causes loads of issues and the PL revisits the protocol by then).

Would this help?

Pretty obvious that we should pack the defence and midfield, play cautiously, and try to do them on the break. So no doubt we'll go gung-ho "4222", surrender the midfield in the second half and get twonked. If I was the boss, I would pick 352 (or "32212" if you want to be ein ubernonscze): Forster Stephens Bednarek Salisu KWP Perraud Romeu JWP Stuey Adams Adam Armstrong

Sounds like a mess.

Does someone really need to know all our pressing triggers to be a striker on the bench (especially with 9 subs!)? If we're a goal down with 15 minutes to go and one of our strikers is knackered then I'd rather this guy came on and tried to score than Redmond come on and do a good job closing down. Sounds like Ralph being a bit of a bellend to me.

I'll definitely stick a couple of quid on some big score lines when we play the top teams.

Stephens let DCL drift off him into space at least twice in the first half as well and we were lucky not to concede from simple crosses then. When the ball is out wide he doesn't keep track of his man and gets caught moving towards / under the ball. Stephens is a League One / Champ quality defender and will regularly make serious mistakes leading to goal scoring chances. Any team with someone decent in the air will find it quite easy to score against us if he is in the team. As 4th choice, and given the ongoing lack of supply from our academy he's ok, because who are you going to sign as 4th choice(?), but as a regular starter he's a disaster. If we don't sign a strong centre back who can play with Salisu and bring him through, or an exceptional keeper, we will probably get relegated. We conceded the second most goals last season and yesterday we conceded three to a team who were pretty poor for most of the match. It's not like they were causing lots of problems or scoring world-class goals. We are so easy to score against that we are screwed unless something changes.

Pretty obvious that we need to sign a quality centre back. We could have conceded a couple in the first half from routine, bread and butter crosses. Unless we do bring in someone who is first choice we will continue to be the team that gives away the most points and lets in more goals than nearly everyone else.

Cheers mate. He sounds like just the sort of style of player we need. Obafemi is a bit of a conundrum. He has shown some moments of real quality in some of his appearances, but a series of managers have felt he isn’t worth a run in the side and have preferred people like Shane Long and Nathan Redmond up front, who are not exactly prolific. There are question marks over whether he has applied himself properly in training or whether he is clever enough tactically and switched on enough to do the work “against the ball” that our manager loves. I’m sure there’s a decent Championship footballer in there, at least, and if he was to prove himself there then you’d have a bargain for 5 or 6m. I think we’d all like to see what he can do with a loan to a decent Champ club and some regular games.

Bertrand is virtually non-existent as a productive attacking threat any more, although he is still a good one on one defender, which left us horrendously lopsided in attack, and Vestergaard is the slowest player I've ever seen so isn't really suited to a high-press game. Vestergaard is good at passing but not very good at defending.