shurlock

The goals are one thing - and dont really say a lot. Blaming individual mistakes also misses the point. More worrying is that Arsenal were able to get into similar, dangerous positions - in between our midfielders and defenders and overrun us down the wings- with regular ease. If we had cut out individual mistakes, they would have almost certainly scored from other chances.

Again as discussed before there are good reasons why things happen late on, especially with premier league transfers. I would be surprised if lack of planning was the main reason given the recruitment dept works all around the year. NA has gone on record as saying that the club looks at players not only for the current or forthcoming window but also future ones.

Failed? S**t happens - players don't want to come to us; we don't meet teams valuations -there are an endless number of reasons. Would things have been different under a different set up, perhaps slightly but I doubt it would have been vastly different. Newly promoted teams need to establish themselves before they can attract a certain calibre of player. Ramirez is the exception not the rule, a spectacular coup yet some think we could have repeated that success for a defender if only we had put our minds to it. Utter ********, the fantasy of football manger games. Of course, we have had no problems recruiting NPC players -Jrod, Clyne- but to date (though its still early days) those players have been as much part of the problem as the solution. Just look at Derby - they strengthened all the required positions -hell they virtually replaced an entire team. But without sufficient quality, where did it get them?

Agree - we're still desperately short of pace (look at Arsenal) and Mayuka can play off the right as well as down the middle. Guess its more about combining that with defensive responsibilities as is required under a 4-3-3.

Did he mention two CBs - I never heard that? We have no way of knowing what's happened -and there's no reason to think Adkins hasn't been supported with his transfers. Its not irrational that transfers are done by committee -its done on the continent and in other sports- and there's no reason to think it was harmful in this case. And we were linked with various CBs (Davis, Kana-Biyik, Dann, Fontas) and LBs (Olsson, Boilesen) - and no doubt many others we'll never hear of. Arguably, there were more rumours linking us with defenders than attackers. For whatever reason, none worked out. Misguided priorities is one possible explanation but its not the only or even the most convincing one. Large transfers are complicated things, especially when we're punching above our weight to attract quality. If anything we set our sights too high, though if we hadn't, we would have been shot down for setting them too low.

Your buys look like they've come from a chairman who has ADD and wishes it was christmas morning everyday of the year.

Yoshida looked much better as the game went on, bailing Fox out a few times. By the end, he was looking more than useful. That said, most of their attacking play went down our right in the 2nd half.

Gorkks, the lynchpin of our defense in a parallel universe - touch of the fonte about that one.

Well Lallana got called up, so that's one down in the first month. ...he says in MLG autistic box-ticking tone.

Same old story - they're getting done by pace on the wings. lennon vs. harte.

3 positives and 1 negative and all that

Wasn't Butland a no.1? We were also linked with Green early on. Who knows if there was any substance in these rumours.

Would you welcome him back if he kept us up?

Not if its a foreign manager - they're much more used to working with DoFs, transfer committees and all the other organisational paraphernalia that tie the hands of managers.

Wrong - the London games usually have the best atmospheres. If anything, the problem is the opposite: they attract too many pencil-necked wannabe casuals.

Dont think the location helped. Bottom tier bent around the corner of the pitch, effectively splitting our support. Probably the worst place to watch football and get an atmosphere going.

Such conspiratorial looney tunes - can't help but think you look like your avatar in real life.

TBF, happy to take the rough with the smooth. So what if we have a few pikies - better than Arsenal's sterile support all day long. Was stuck on the bus with some public school types who must have forked out three figures for designer arsenal scarves. Never trust anyone with a tasteful, immaculately clean football scarf or (to a lesser extent) a retro shirt...

The first goal was absolutely shocking- how Podolski outfought our 3 CMs to come away with the ball. Set the mood for the rest of the day.

We are trying to play like Swansea and retain possession -and pick a team around this principle. But its much harder to implement away from home, even after taking into account the quality of the opposition to date. Lets not forget that Swansea had a pretty poor away record (16/20) compared with their home record (9/20).

Also see that we're indebted to the mancs for another chant. Only Saints fans could take a song they were taunted with a few weeks ago and make it their own.

He did give the ball away a lot, though at least he tried to make things happen. Unlike our CMs, he was happy to look up, take responsibility and drive at players. JWP, Davis and Morgan all have a tendency to sit on the ball and prefer to wait for others to make a run etc. For a flair player, he's also more physically powerful than the other three - that's the biggest and most welcome surprise.

Shoot me down but I'd almost want Guly back in the team -straight swap for punch.

Time for something different: Davis Clyne - Fonte - Maya - Fox Schneiderlin - Davis Mayuka - Ramirez - Lallana Lambert

NA was discussing his beloved KPIs after the game - in particular, the fact that we enjoyed more possession at the start of second half (more accurately we were probably gifted possession). It seems central to NA's gameplan that we can go away from home and retain possession for long spells -and the team is picked on this basis. Lallana and Punch can be passengers without the ball while JWP and Davis are tidy passers of the ball but are not particularly powerful or combative (Arsenal without Diaby won every second ball). In short, the emphasis on possession away from home might have worked in the NPC but it seems wildly optimistic in the Prem. To make things worse, we dont have the pace to counter teams.