Window Cleaner

Lying ? perhaps not, just being economical with the truth.

We don't have a SD, don't know if we'll even get one anytime in the near future. Anyone who may or may not have been "interviewed" for that post is just a manager in waiting. Someone told us so last week rightly or wrongly I couldn't say.

The "playmaking midfield" is Lallana and Puncheon, Hammond is the relayer (or water carrier). If Hammond doesn't do his job then the supply is reduced. Hammond seems to be getting forward a lot just of late and perhaps he doesn't have the physical condition (after 40 odd matches) to get back as he should. We have played nigh on 50 matches already this season,young lads have clocked up 40+ of those, it's too much and the wear and tear will sometimes show up.

Let's face it, great as it was two of Lambert's goals were the fault of their keeper (aided and abetted by a useless defender for the first) and the other was a penalty where if the defender hadn't done anything at all nothing would probably have happened. That's football, worked out for us on Saturday but another time we might have got absolutely zilch from those 3 incidents and something from something else. Serendipity.

You could at least have the decency to complain about the colour or the envelope:) or the pikey postie's shoes or something. Otherwise people might think you were taking the p*ss.

Lambert won't know whether he is PL standard until he actually gets there and tries it.Plenty of substandard players earning a diamond studded crust in the EPL. If you do simple things well you've got your chance same as anyone else. One 35 yd lob same as Saturday would set him up for a couple of months, just as it did for that Hull or Wigan bloke earlier on in the season. No-one can say RL isn't PL standard because he's never had a shot at it.He scores goals, shedloads of them, if he just got half his usual total (or even a third) he'd be a valuable asset. Ormerod wasn't PL standard but he did a good job for us and even scored some goals.I could make and endless list of players who don't really fit the job description but who are doing AOK at 20K a week.

It's not what I'd like, it's what I can see happening simply because it usually does.We should not be playing in this woeful division, that's the fault of past managers and directors who didn't have a f*cking clue what they were doing. I don't want to see players' careers wrecked because we have a manager that I don't really believe in or because the fans deserve better than the team that we should really have (if you see what I mean by all that). To me League 1 is woeful, we shouldn't be in it and for a bit more consistency and aptitude from the manager over some of his player and tactical choices we probably would be on our way out. Southampton FC doesn't deserve to be in League 1 and we should have at least made the play-offs this season, that we haven't(or won't) I am regally p*ssed off, probably same as the owner and the chairman. Morgan got booked on Saturday because Hammond screwed up and he had no other choice (think it was 1-0 at the time), if he had been sent off and missed Wembley (as he could have) do you think Hammond would have given him his medal?

Morgan does what he's supposed to do the majority of the time,win the ball, hold it up and distribute it as necessary.Classic milieu recuperateur play in the tradition of Giresse and Deschamps.You might like to compare him with Jérémy Toulalan who plays the same role for France and Lyon, has scored about 3 goals in nigh on 400 games, it's not his job.

The relatively calm on transfer activity in January is because many EPL managers don't believe in that window any more.Far too many damp squibs bought for far too much money and no results.The summer transfer activity last season was pretty hefty as usual with loads of cash being spent on unknown qualities from nowhere.Many of them have failed completely but they're still hanging about the EPL waiting for next summer to move on. I'd bet Newcastle take Lambert off our hands rather than stroppy Beckford.

I've not had the benefit of a HD slow motion feed on the Fonté incident but to me the MKplayer appears to clip his ankle, that's a foul, in the area it's a penalty. From the little I've seen of Saturday's match there could be any number of penalties (under today's rules) for either side because of all the holding and shirt pulling that goes on every time there's a dangerous free kick or corner.I think it was the 2002 WC when refs were told to pay particular attention to shirt pulling and there were so many fouls that in the end they ended up ignoring it most of the time. http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/2734579.stm Here's a piece from 2003 where a ref explains himself. On Saturday Dave was continuously on about all the elbowing that was going on, he obviously saw it but the ref either didn't or thought it was 50/50 anyway.From a couple of weeks back on that bad bad penalty I'm sure it was given because Seaborne has his arm across the other blokes throat and was probably holding his shirt to stop him turning. Your average ref is no mug though, just because they can't see it it doesn't mean that they don't know that it's going on.

to be honest you can't compare a player in a side like Newcastle to a player in a side like Saints. You can only compare performances in sides of roughly equal ability. If you watch Arsenal or Man U (which I'm sure you do from time to time because it's unavoidable) you'll see players hit passes into space knowing that their team-mates will get there, with us it's different, you can hit a pass to say Puncheon and he'll get it 2 times out of three and the other time he'll mistime his run or screw up the control or just not move at all, same with recovering the ball in midfield,if someone hits you a hospital ball well you're probably in the crap and it'll look bad.Good players may look bad in good sides just as bad players may look the real biz in good sides.Football is a team game and until you have equal ability all round individual performances are hard to judge. Morgan needs to move on for his own sake as does Lallana,they'll be targets for aggression as long as they stay in this division.

No I don't think there is in the football league, could well be wrong though. I've never heard any mention of position having any great financial relevance.

Why should I be ITK over it:cool:, it's just the way things happen and human nature. NC has already dealt with it in one of his interviews,if he talks about players "asking to leave" not being retained I think you can be fairly sure that it's not just a hypothetical situation. Anyway we have at least 2 players who have had their budding international careers nullified by being in League 1, both were "thinking" about moving on last season. AP talked them into staying, don't think he'll succeed again this time.Lambert? well his dad said he wanted a stab at the PL and I don't think we'll get there soon enough for him, he'll probably want to cash in on his season with us now rather than later.Lambert unlike many 3rd division hotshots still has potential for improvement on top of his obvious ability to score a lot of goals and I can well see an EPL side taking a punt on that at 3 million or so which is, let's face' it chicken feed for the EPL where clubs regularly waste 5/10 million on complete non hopers.

what we do at the end of this season will have little bearing on next season because as likely as not our team will not be the same.Players will leave..count on it, some are way too good for this division and will want to move on.

Of course nothing is impossible..yet. This case is not so simple though, it's not about 1 team making up points on another team ,it's about us surpassing no less than 4 other teams who are more or less points ahead of us.Only 10 wins will do us any real good and even then I don't see any 2 of Colchester,Huddersfield,Swindon,Millwall and Charlton going into complete free fall and Bristol Rovers and MK Dons only getting average results.

we only have "must win" games left this season. Won't be enough anyway but we need to win them all, including the two that we've lost recently.

But your argument shoots itself in the foot a bit. Should Charlton lose to say Huddersfield and Colchester that puts those teams into Charlton's place not us. This whole play-offs discussion is a bit ridiculous, we aren't going to make up 13 in 10 on Colchester, 11 in 10 on Huddersfield and 17 in 10 on Charlton, they may wobble and waiver but at the end of the day 2 of them will be above us.At this moment in time there are still 7 teams in this division who have obtained more points than us , ie we haven't caught them up in 36 games so why anyone should think we will surpass 2 of them in the last few games beats me.

I bet we sell for more than we buy this time round.Not from any will of the management but just because it will happen that way. Something like 5 million out and a less than a couple of million in.

But then again there is no real reason for that to happen. You could put most pro footballers in any position on the pitch (apart from in goal) and they'd do a reasonable job, maybe not brilliant but reasonable.

Seaborne can cover at left back for Mills and Harding can stay a right back. We have James as a cover at RB if absolutely necessary unless his ankle isn't quite right. I expect us to line up for the JPT final as we did yesterday though,well in respect of ful backs anyway. Connolly in for Barnard and perhaps Papa for Puncheon.

Better the loser you don't know that the one you do. Very common occurence in Football. Anyway the side is crap, you could get Sir Alex or Mourinho to manage it and it would still be crap.

But to be fair they only wanted someone who would agree to a 9 game contract at first.Their options must have been severely limited.Why I don't know but that's what their chairman said.

Having won either of those two would make things look really interesting.

James can't be really fit then, expect he's had some sort of setback with that floating bone thingy.

I expect their programme can't handle anything else than Chelsea,Man U Arsenal and Liverpool being in the first 4 places of the EPL.System overload.