benjii

Agreed. James was a cack defender but never held himself out as one and was a victim of Lowe's ludicrous last hurrah. However he is a midfileder with some decent ability and I hope he makes a good career for himself.

@ people crowing about their modest heating bills.

That was my first Saturday evening in front of the telly for a while so I thought I would watch the Football League Show. It is indeed complete and utter poo-balls.

Yes, I agree.

Or a Lambert, Lallana or Connolly. Or Puncheon. Or even Harding. Or Hammond... that's just the way it goes.

Dickson is a better bet at LM than Holmes - don't forget him! We're fortunate in having loads of options. Gives the lie to this strange myth that we desperately need to recruit players. The only area where we might be weak is CM (depending on whether Guly turns out to be any good or not).

That was obviously a concern but then why would the club bother stating that funding was still in place and the family were supportive if that wasn't the case? It would have been the perfect opportunity to pull back if they wanted - people would have been disappointed but they would have understood. There is no reason to doubt we are still strong financially IMO.

Indeed. I am constantly bemused by the suggestions on here that performances have dipped massively from last season. They haven't. We've just missed chances and have been hit by the fact that several players have made mistakes at the same time, whereas last year someone would have stepped up and got the team the result. A good run is around the corner. Quite simply, we are better than most teams in this division and have been the better side in nearly every match this season.

I always temper my congratulations to other teams with a cautionary side-swipe too.

I'll be radical and offer an alternative... Puncheon on the right and Lallana on the left. It just might work...

Maybe it shouldn't but it does. Howard and Hague were always screwed as leaders due to being or looking like gimps or weirdos.

There's venture capitalist Nigel Doughty, private equity boss Sir Ronald Cohen, Lord Sainsbury (as you mentioned), Lakshmi Mittal (£2m) (around the time Blair sought to buy him influence in Romania, funnily enough), Hinduja Brothers (cash for passports, Mandy's resignation).... maybe not donations made in company names but I doubt they were "philanthropic" in the most part! Not really a criticism, just a statement that it's a bit rich to make out there is something unpalatable about the Tory party when all other parties are at it when they can, just to a less enviable extent.

You seem to be implying that big businesses, or the proprietors thereof, never donate to the Labour party? Admittedly, the Labour party are completely dependent on Union funding but let's not pretend they won't accept the buck of capital.

The whole thing is a bit half-arsed really isn't it? Nice idea but I expect 99% of us would rather have a decent discussion forum and ******** to the other gubbins. I didn't renew my membership when it ran out. Then we had the big hoo-haa with Pardew etc so I did but now I'm wishing I hadn't bothered again. From memory, SaintsForever was much more of a laugh. More posts that made me chuckle, better banter, less nastiness... and you didn't have to pay a fiver for the privilege.

Yeah, well we'd have 84 points which is sometimes enough for second and sometimes isn't. Either way, averaging two points per game for the next couple of months would give us an excellent platform and over the season from here on in would certainly see us in the upper reaches of the play-off positions.

PMSL All time classic.

... who looks and sounds like a gimpy toff.

Ta. Enjoy your new year at uni... you'll be gutted when it's over!

We're only 5 points off the play-offs FFS! 6th place is the bare minimum anyone should expect.

Cameron aint wimpy Mr Cap. You can tell he's had proper breeding. He'd birth a cow, give Gerry a good thrashing, score a half-century and see off a pint before lunch.

White, middle-aged, Oxbridge educated, career politician.... I thought Labour hated all that kind of stuff?

Lol - they voted the gimpy one in!?

From any 7 games, we should be aiming to pick up at least 14 points. That's the sort of form needed to guarantee automatic promotion. That's four wins, two draws and a defeat (or five wins and two defeats). We are certainly capable of achieving those results, particularly if we can start putting the chances away at home.

If only Lambert and Lallana hadn't left as well we wouldn't be so screwed. I wish Wenger would leave Schneiderlin alone too.

Not at all surprised. We are much better than most people on here seem to think. Well done Adkins. Well done Barney, who has been quality this season. Well done KD (I always laugh when some idiot wants to drop him for BB). Well done Hammond and Schneiderlin who sounded pretty destructive today. Well done Jaidi who sounded immense. Now, time to put a run together and get up into the top 6 shake-up.