shurlock

But there's a massive difference between sheepishly letting slip you're an away fan and brazenly and provocatively celebrating a goal in the home end.

Not really - Morgan's dive apart, we were pretty honest, perhaps too honest. Thought Ramirez had a decent shout for a free kick/pen in the first half but stayed on his feet. Dean was very kind to them. Hard to believe Carroll was the first of their players to go into the book -and that was for dissent.

Game was crying out for pace - Jrod's cameo showed what we were missing. And if you have Fox in the side, at least benefit from his setpiece delivery. Ramirez should have ceded responsibilities much earlier. Otherwise thought we were comfortable - Wham offered little, if nothing. Good to see us roll our sleeves up and go toe to toe with them in horrid conditions. But they were disciplined, got a slice of luck (as did we) and we didn't quite create enough to have too many regrets.

Absolute priority is survival- my dream scenario right now would be mathematical safety going into past two games. Even assuming safety and steady progress, we're some way off a top six finish.

Grew up just around the corner from me in Iford, played on the same football pitches at the Littledown Centre.

Excellent news. southampton through and through. hopefully he can kick on next season.

I love all irons fans, especially for providing me with one of my favourite saints memories. Utter helmets

Best thing we can do is get at their keeper who's suspect, score early and force them to open up. Otherwise it has a QPR/Sunderland caginess about it. Jrod's movement and pace would be a massive loss - Collins/Tomkins/Reid couldn't deal with him at their place (when he was still finding his feet) whereas Lambert has never really shone against them. Diame's pace through the middle will be a threat; otherwise Clyne and Shaw have more than enough to handle Jarvis and Vaz Te. If I have criticism of MP is that we've been poor defending setpieces/crosses, so up to Jos to do his job and Morgan, Maya and Cork to be alive to the second balls.

Shaw's no better than James Tomkins if you believe some hammers fans

What does this show? Its to be expected that a newly promoted side will spend more as there are more needs to fill. Am sure Everton's net spend over the last few seasons ( e.g. Fellaini £15m in 2008 ) to build their current squad is much higher than ours and will remain higher even if we go on a shopping spree in the summer.

Hadn't seen this (which I guess is the article you're referring to) http://kickoff.blogs.lequipe.fr/?p=493 Going to be an interesting summer.

Written a decade ago but still one of the best and most balanced pieces on privatisation. http://www.johnkay.com/2002/06/01/twenty-years-of-privatisation

Or South Korea.

Which is in contrast to their rabid and vitriolic match thread earlier in the season - now Adkins who supposedly winds everyone up has gone, perhaps there's a bit more 'respect'. And, of course, we play football the right way. But no doubt their 'respect' is partly opportunistic. Fact is -once again- we're higher than them in the league, we're the top promoted team. And regardless whether they ultimately finish higher than us, the gap won't be as large as they were boldly and smugly claiming in October. So yeh, they've piped down. But if we were well below them in the relegation zone, no doubt, they would have been talking up this game more and relishing the opportunity to help send us down.

And everything 1980s and 1980s Britain was not about either - hence the popularity (and slight wishful thinking) of books like the state we're in etc.

Good article

once again in all its glory.

True though that goal had been coming all second half.

For me, its the usual s**t of throwing points away at the end: Stoke, Wigan, United, City, very nearly Norwich. I think the shoe's been on the foot only once -Fulham (h).

You havent got a pdf of it you can bang over?

Me too. seriously.

Wish somebody could dig up their forum discussion in the buildup to the first game - they were frothing at the gash to beat us. The fixation seemed pretty one way to me.

Agree and reckon its one of the biggest differences between NA and MP. MP wouldn't let us get away with stat-massaging, possession for possession's sake.

Fact is we didn't play badly there - were the better team in the first half. They were b*****ks. We conceded a poor goal virtually from kick off; but even then, after we got the score back to 2-1, we were the more likely to get the next goal *****il Fonte couldn't resist having a yank at the gypo's ponytail). Even the stats show we dominated possession and had more chances. Not a 4-1 game, that's for sure.

Is Nelson Mandela a terrorist?