Dark Munster

True. And we may have won!

Don't know if he's any good, but that's the type of player we need. Central striker who can score.

Maybe we could convince Monaco to buy him?

His disallowed goal was well-taken and only mm offside, and he had a very nice assist for the first goal. I thought he did ok. Incidentally Romeu was ok too, not sure he's getting slagged off by some here. He's a good player, but not really suited to park the bus teams. Better suited to ones that come at us (like Leicester will next week). I thought Vest, Boufal and Adam's had disappointing games, although the latter had a nice assist on the second goal. Danso is also getting slagged off, but he's not a RB. I don't think he was that bad, and he's got a nice throw in. Everyone else was ok, even if no one was outstanding. Job done.

So were some of the shirt pulls.

No yellows for all those Huddersfield shirt pulls, but Long gets one for clipping a player's foot.

If he's available I wouldn't mind Saints going in for him.

The may indeed beat us, but it won't be easily*. We're playing well and full of confidence. *Unless it's raining cats and dogs, and Bertie gets sent off early in the match.

Wow, Saints have an incredible number of clans. Hopefully none of them are Klu Klux.

So you're confident Ings won't get injured from now until the end of the season?

... and if we had beaten Burnley, Newcastle, West Ham and Bournemouth we'd already be celebrating another season in the PL and in the hunt for Europe.

I can see in the not too distant future that a computer would be used to analyse the video and give an offside verdict with 99.9% accuracy, all within 10 seconds. The only downside is when it's implemented poor old Whitey Grandad's head would explode!

Me too. I think it was because Kane had gone off.

With Bednarek and Stephens in good form, and with 2 or 3 back ups available, surely a LB back up is the priority, along with a goal scorer if Ings gets injured (newsflash to the club: we're ****ed if he does). Last season there were 3 crap teams at the bottom. This season there doesn't seem to be even one. No time for complacency this time. Which means of course the club will be.

Normally yes, but this season doesn't look normal. Even the bottom club looks semi-decent. On top of that the top teams are dropping more points than usual. Leicester are doing really well of course, and Liverpool are unstoppable. But below those two the usual big 6 are hemorrhaging lots of points. Look at Arsenal's point tally for example, and our wins against Chelsea (and Spurs today). Even the mighty Man City aren't their usual selves, and with the title all but over I can see them taking their foot off the gas in the second half, coasting to a top 4 finish with minimal effort and focusing on the CL. Either way, it looks like a real dogfight at the bottom. Hopefully we're not involved and can sit back and have a good laugh at the ones involved.

As I said, I don't know whether to look up or down.

Could well be. And after that 9-0 maybe Ralph went back to listening to his number 2 again.

Has there been a mass brawl in the WHam - Bompey match yet? With 8 players red carded, match abandoned, and 3 points deducted from both teams?

I think the 9-0 was a blessing in disguise. He may have been too over confident in himself before that, making loony decisions like the constant LB and RB messing around and the Bournemouth line up. It brought him down to earth, but at the same time he discovered the board were still 100% behind him. That last part also sent a message to the players that they weren't going to be able to down tools and force him out.

I'm not convinced 40 points will assure safety this season. Apart from Norwich there don't appear to be any dogs, and even Norwich aren't that bad and have a very good striker. Villa looked awful against us, but are coming to life. And we all know about Watford's revival under nasty Nige and have Deeney now fit. It would be highly amusing if the Hammers went down with 40+ points. I think they were the last team to do so.

I don't know whether to look up or down.

I don't think there's anything wrong with drawing a line and zooming in, but I agree with the gist of what you're saying. Give the VAR 30 seconds max to come to decision, and the attacking team gets the benefit of the doubt.

Exactly this, no margin of error nonsense. It's either decided as offside or not. As others have said, change the rule to use players' feet only as the measure, to keep it simple. 30 seconds looking at the freeze frame of when the ball leaves the passing player's foot, and decide if the attacker's foot is level or behind the defender's. If in doubt, the goal stands. For defending teams who whine that they think the attacking player was 5 mm offside, tough luck. You shouldn't have held such a tight line. If it's that close you can expect both good and bad calls. Be happy that you will no longer be on the wrong end of 1 metre errors. The same applies to attacking teams who lose out on tight calls.

Does it say anything about where Saints will finish this season?

We were lucky they were incompetent.