Saint Martini

Had a good game, allowed a lot but that suited us. We managed to controll the midfield because of it. Other referees might have given a lot more fouls against us when we got the ball back high up the pitch. Lovréns yellow was a tad harsh but understandable. Olsson was never going to get a red for that challenge and nor should he have. It was high yes, but in the end he only really blocked Lallana. A red would have been a strange decision. All in all, a good match since there weren't any glaring mistakes and both teams got their share of 50-50s.

THE SUN: Maya Yoshida is looking for a way out of Southampton in an effort to boost his World Cup chances with Japan. He is in talks with Yokohama Marinos. Source: http://www1.skysports.com/transfer-centre/ So lets say this is true and Yoshida leaves, where does that leave us? Only having Hooiveld as back-upleaves me terrified so I suppose we'd have to go out and get a new CB. Any candidates?

So why did it take 4 matches for them to take a decision? The Newcastle match seems ages ago, even with a "normal" schedule we'd have managed 2 matches since the incident.

Hear hear! Ofcourse the team will have the possibility of instantly subbbing the player and goallies will have to be exempted from the rule.

I see some people are questioning why Pochettino took off Cork. There's one reason and its the yellow card he got. Last seaso he took of Cork very early and whena sked about it he said he didn't want to risk a red card. In short, he doesn't trust Cork to be able to play with a yellow card to his name. if that is wrong or right is up to debate but it is not unmotivated.

The first goal was decisive. If we had gotten that (we had plenty of chanse) then the match would have gone another way. It was an okay performance from us but in the end Torres' running killed us. He kept opening up the backline for others to run into. In the end Chelsea needed a fluke goal to get the breakthrough and counter-attacked themselves to two more. All in all it was a decent performance against an in-form team. Our form is not that good but its not like we lost a lot of matches against teams we should be beating (the only really dissapointing result is Villa at home). Otherwise we got a point against City, a point at Newcastle and we beat Cardiff. Its not that bad, especially considering the injury problems we have had to key players. The start of the season when we were third was not an actual reflection of the quality of this team and neither is the currect form, it is something in between.

My MotM as well, but he should have scored. His chance was probably bigger the. Osvaldos in the scond half.

Two goallies? Which goallie of "international quality" would like to be sitting on the bench for those days Boruc isn't up to his best? Goallies make mistakes some of the best make mistakes just like Boruc did yesterday (see video), it doesn't mean that they're crap all of a sudden and need to be sitting on the bench (how is that going to make him play better?). [video=youtube;Uj-rr1cKOLA]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uj-rr1cKOLA What was Ferguson thinking when he bought this guy... Boruc deserves the criticism he is getting but we do not need a new goallie. Its not like he is flapping at crosses or letting in easy shots, which would be harder to correct.

Couldn't have said it better. A shame we didn't win but with the injury to Osvaldo we didn't have that many attacking options. We worked hard, played well in patches in very difficult conditions and I don't get how we didn't get that penalty. That is definitely not a natural position of the arm!

Michael Svensson had pretty much the same impact on Lundekvam as Lovren on Fonte.

Lallana looked absolutely knackerd after 80 minutes yesterday and should have been subbed instead of Rodriguez in my opinion. Rodriguez has not played as much as Adam has this season and should be more rested. He played very well and perhaps "deserved" the full 90 mins but why risk injury if the game is pretty much won. For me one of the reasons our performance dropped the last 10 mintues was because Lallana din't have enough running left in him to be thelink between midfield and attack. There's no shame in being subbed in this situation.

"So, Scott Parker comes up to me and tells me to mark Lambert but one second later I had lost him."

Its the kind of passes he ****s up that are soo annoying (as well as making him a liability in some ways). He mostly plays low risk balls like a CB would do and rarely passes forward. As a result of this he should have a passcompletion near to 90% which is usual for. CB. VW manages to **** up the easy balls a bit to often for my liking by not puting wnogh pace on the ball and/or mis-hitting it by a few yards. I think he tried to pass to a wide-open Shaw 3 times yesterday but every time Rafael got in between. Its sloppy and if he doesn't improve this part of his game I'd prefer Cork or JWP over VW in matches against defensive teams.

Correct. Correct. I don't think he has actually talked to journo's concerning Hamad. He made some comments in the summer on the Nigerian guy but as you can see there's only one quote in the whole article. I wouldn't surprised if some journo put together to bits of info to create a new story (The two bit of info were Norwich, Fulham & WHU interested in Hamad and Saints having a scout that covers Scandinavia and in all likelihood someone spotted Grip watching Malmö at some point).

You are correct. We were interested, he wasn't at all.

Its also bull****, if we look at the Netherlands for instance then this was the first time in years they played regular senior national team players in an U21 squad. Its quite common that U21 that play for the senior team do not participate. I also understand why they wouldn't want to participate. They're not really regulars for their club teams so I understand them wanting to take part in the whole pre-season (which isn't really possible if you played in the U21 Euro's). Its very easy to judge them for not having enough pride but the fact of the matter is that they played a summertournament 2012 and will probably play on in 2014. At some point the body needs a rest. They're choosing with their heads and not with their hart.

Isn't there some new rule that requires a player to have a dual-nationality at the time of him playing U21 internationals for his birth nation if he wants to change to the other nation later? In other words, if Morgan had been born with an English nationality he could have changed but because he's already represented France before obtaining the English nationality he cannot change. I can't seem to find this online but I'm pretty sure I read that FIFA changed this a while back.

Not sure if it was the high pressure from Norwich and the fact that they managed to get past our pressure so easily over the flanks but we were poor today. We created a few chances when we finally did get the ball in the final third but all in all we played sloppy and the whole team seemed disorganized. In earlier matches we seemed to playlast years 4-2-3-1 system but today that seemed to be totally out of the windows with a 4-1-2-1-2 formation with one DM, two very narrow wide players in JWP and Morgan and one attacking midfielder in Lallana. It didn't work, especially with Clyne and Shaw not starting we didn't have the width they provide. Chambers got forward from time to time but Fox was to scared to do so and I swear I could someone in the staff shouting at him to get up high and wide (watching it on TV). I think we should have played a more traditional 4-2-3-1 formation with wide players (not wingers, just players that start out wide and can drift inside from that position). Plenty of positives and we hade a few short spells of good football but for the first time this season we were second best (and by quite a margin). Back to the drawingboard for Pochettino.

Agree. All in all we've been poor. We didn't get the ball under control in their half too often but when we did we did threaten (even if we didn't create any real chances). The team is lacking width (even if it became a bit better when Chambers started pushing up a bit). We're missing Shaw on the left, there's acres of space there and no-one attacking it. For me Rodriguez could provide that width from a more attacking position but who should come off? Lallana has been good do perhaps JWP could come off with Lallana becoming a right winger/inside forward? A real shame because his deliveries from freekicks are awesome.

Seems to me he supports anyone playing us. Awful decision considering where he was standing.

Have you considered that we haven't really played with wingers since Pochettino took over? Its a bit useless to have a winger if you aren't going to use them. I still think Puncheon could have been valuable for the team but if the coach doesn't plan on using him then what's the point on having him around?

Did we just buy Osvaldo just to get Ramirez a friend?

I thought we missed a certain creativity in midfield which we did have with Cork and Morgan. Defensively he was a rock chasing people down and winning the ball but in possession he didn't offer that much apart from the occasional surging run.

Am I the only one not that impressed with Wanyama? He did ok but his passing was suspect at times and looked lost for ideas. Most of the time he solved this by just passing the ball to Morgan but quite a few forward passes resulted in WBA having the ball. Now I'm not saying he was bad, just that I hope there's a lot more to come for 12,5 million!