Window Cleaner

it's Ancelotti who doesn't appear particulary keen on staying. Leonardo can be a bit difficult to deal with apparently. Then there are the Qataris. It seems to be one of these situations where the owners and the general manager buy who they want and the coach has to make what he can of it. Plus France isn't a great championship and anyone would jump ship if Real came calling.

but in 2006/7 they were a newly promoted side and probably didn't last the pace. If they were 10 points clear it would seem that they didn't get a point in their last 6 or 7 matches. Went down on 38 points. It's what happens in the PL at the end of the season with clubs who haven't invested the PL's riches correctly. The PL gives you lots of money, if you spend it on shîte you will go down and not return.

Joe Hart...well for us anyway.

1950 has nothing to do with today, footballers swilled beer, smoked fags, went to the greyhounds instead of training, worked down the shipyards and were in general a lamentable bunch. Any local lad with a teaspoonful of talent might get a pro-contract after he'd done his national service. Nothing to do with today's modern players.

Training is not playing in matches, you can train with some injuries that wouldn't stand up to the rigours of a match. Something not quite right about the Shaw situation. Not sure what his exact contract status is. Could it be that a player on a youth contract can only play some sort of pre-fixed maximum time in first team matches ?

Nervous football nellies boost bookies profits shocker. We will not go down and you will lose your money. Offsetting any disagreable possibility with a bet at the bookies is a desperately bad attitude.

Don't think Sunderland are out of the woods yet, DiCanio obviously boosted their game for a couple of matches but the old class/effort couple showed again last night, thought Mignolet looked dreadful, been tapped up maybe. Stoke,Saints,Spurs not easy fixtures when you need a couple of points IF Wigan start winning, then again I don't think they will. I can see them finishing on 35 or 36 points.

If Forren isn't fit enough to play in the PL what does that say about Targett, really we need to get over the idea that established players can be replaced by anyone from the youth squads. If Targett was good enough as of yet we'd have seen him by now. Do you think MP wanted to play Fox ? If Shaw isn't fit it's either Forren or a Clyne/Cork switch, there aren't any other solutions really and certainly not in the youth teams. Like the look of Seager though. re Davis...here's a thought why don't we play Davis and Punch and give the ineffective Lambert a rest? Draw would be a good result and JRod is far more dangerous running at Spurs defence than Lambert will be.

wasn't that the year of the Tevez todo ? Definite Utd, can't remember when Wednesday were last in the top flight, 90s maybe.

Might not even be about wanting to go, but a performance like ours on Saturday can leave an ambitious player in 2 minds if there's a realisitc offer. If we are going to give ourself the wherewithal to really back up our sound bites (CL,Top 6 etc etc) then staying is probably the favoured choice. If you're going to have to suffer from awful performances like Jos and Fox last week-end then you might well think wtf. Squad need boosting with real quality so that players don't have to play when they're 60/70 % fit.

Still think that's more to do with our defence than Lukaku's brilliance. Good player though.

Tettey had a good day at SMS but other than that he's pretty average, don't think he's even a regular starter for Norwich now. Any player can play out of his skin once in a while but only true class brings consistency.

nope can't see that, we have our chances. Spurs are fading fast...clapped out no doubt. Dembelé might be out, he's quite influential for them I think, Holtby doesn't have the pace of the PL yet and I don't know what the status of Sigurdsson is just now. .

So then Essex away, not a great batting show from us yesterday but with the hosts now at 73/6 the wicket must be "difficult" to say the least. If we can just wheedle out that stick in the mud Cook fairly quickly perhaps we can even rise up from our 197 all out yesterday.

but when they go into nervous nelly mode nothing sinks in, they just see a black hole and nothing else; It's been that way for years. The best time was the great escape, few expected anything and each game saw a bit more euphoria creeping in.

But this is Saints fans all over, they swing from one extreme to the other at the slightest setback. On the OS the poll showed that over 80% expected us to win against West Brom who are a decent side. A draw was a good result for us even. So we lost 3-0 and now manic-depression is setting in again, perhaps we have a lot of bi-polar disorder amongst our supporters, who knows. We have done well of late but when that happens fans expect it to continue for ever and to be honest we just don't have the squad to win every game. The lads have done fantastically well of late but they're not robots and some are obviously at less than 100 % but our poor squad depth means that they're playing 90 minutes anyway. We will probably get another 3 or 4 points this season but even if we don't the lads have done enough and they know it, pity that a lot of supporters don't.

who is ?

came on as a late'ish sub for Parker on Saturday, Dembelé went off injured fairly early on though, don't know his status.

he might have gone to the Emirates to meet DD and his people if they'd shown any sort of interest in him of late. Morgan is very attached to the idea of playing for France at every level and the idea of the 2014 WC is important to him, said so to several french journalists, feels he's being passed over. CL and international football, for Deschamps the 2 are interlinked.

Jos has had some good games against certain sides, certain types of player. What he can't handle is fast skilful lumps. In the air it's passable but on the deck if Fox doesn't cover correctly Jos isn't good enough to bail him out. Sometimes Morgan has gone to that side to sort them out, that works occasionally if the opposition don't have too much in midfield but on Saturday i don't think Morgan was even 100 % fit, didn't Poch change the sides over Cork left, Morgan right ? and Corky didn't have the best of games and was getting into some scrapes .

Can't see why anyone would think that Wigan will beat West Brom anyway. Certainly not the West Brom that beat us last week-end. I think the relegation issue will be all over bar the shouting this week-end anyway. QPR and Readng gone, Wigan hanging on by their fingernails to a 1000/1 chance if they beat Swansea,Arse and Villa by a shedload of goals. It will let them concentrate on their cup final.

pedantic I know but it wasn't a 5 year contract. It will be about international football and nothing else if Morgan goes. Deschamps could help us out but as he's a knob I'm not counting on it. He was at the Emirates on Sunday, wasn't at SMS on Saturday. Did our players have Sunday off ?

In fact I think it would be reasonable to say tht the modern PL has depassed the physical condition of your average European footballer. Gaston wasn't fit enough, Forren neither but it will come. Remember at the start of the season even Super fit Saints didn't last much more than 65/70 minutes against the steamrollers of the PL. It's why you need a homogenous squad, 25 players of PL quality and not 14 or 15 and 10 hangers on. We have seen this season that our "squad players" just weren't up to scratch when called upon or were just too insufficient to even be called upon.

In fact one of my biggest beefs with Fox is that he doesn't get forward enough and to be honest from what I saw on Saturday we were hoofing far too much, Jos and Fox in particular. Morgan was dropping far too deep to get the ball because if he didn't Jos just hoofed it towards Lambert who had a bad day. We weren't pressing high with anywhere near the intensity we have in other matches of late. When Gaston came on it looked better because he added a bit of oomph (ok maybe a bit too much) and a bit of physical presqence. Personally I would like to see us go back to the Lallanaless side because for me he adds precisely zero to our pressing game.

Then again how do we know that he doesn't have a buy out threshhold in his contract. They seem to be pretty standard in most football player contracts these day. Used to be the totality of the contract, so 4 years at say what 35K a week that makes somewhere around 8 million plus a penalty clause, 10/12 million tops then.