david in sweden

well a couple of (interesting) slightly mixed PROVERBS there, Duncan ..cutting your coat according to their cloth ( Hindu mystic Baba Ramdevji c.1400) ....but I do believe they may well... " whatever you sow, so shall you reap " . BIBLE Galatians 6 v.7 but I agree....IF they don't get it right this time....it may be RELEGATION, or ADMINISTRTATION .... or both.

well I'm not ! Sitting here waiting to be shot at. West Ham have HUGE money problems, not to mention high-salaried players to be paid, and the parachute payments may disappear just covering those wages. They MAY start the season well, but I don't think they'll even make the play-offs! See how wrong I can be ...I think either one of the other two relegated sides will look good and go back up - as will Leicester. Sven-Göran Eriksson is very shrewd and will have a good squad and is a team we have to watch IMHO.

I think that football has advanced to the stage that players over (say) 22, 23 who haven't made it yet are on the wayout..Gobern? Our U21 side is often "good" 18/19 year olds who have finished their Academy time, and are in line for the first team bench. The remainder..are on their way down to L2 /Conference sides.

more contemplative I think. I find myself thinking of many different aspects of the game rather than raw statistics. .....but I do object to the idea of spending MILLIONS on players who can't do either... (score / make assists), always seems like someone missed the last link sometimes. I loved watching Osgood play, but for his goal-scoring reputation... his scoring feats with Saints were very few, as was Charlie Georges'....... and I don't want to go into the fiasco of £3 million Delgado. The goal-plundering Mark Hughes who was with Man.Utd and Chelsea only succeeded in picking up the average of one yellow card for each game he played for Saints and managed only 2 goals in 52 apps. VERY disappointing. He might have been a low fee / or FREE... but I bet his salary was BIG ! A good team player can both score goals and provide for others.

TRUE, but how many "strikers" end the season in single digits just because they don't get passes, or assist in the the final third ?

Thank you. Thats really the point I was (clumsily) trying to make. Even after the season that Rasiak scored 20 goals everyone was still calling him a lazy Pole !

Thanks for that St.Neil, that's obviously something I seemed to have missed. Pity isn't more made of it. The Ice Hockey example I gave has a merit table. 2 pts.(?) for a goal....and 1 for an assist. On the basis of those ratings we'd see (goals+assists) Lambert 21+12 = 54 pts. (not surprisingly) Lallana 11+13 = 34 pts. (you're right that man , he did give most assists) Barnard 15+3 = 33 pts. (typical greedy striker - goes for it himself - thank goodness). AOC 10+8 = 28 pts. (a good wingers job, supplies to others and scores himself.) Guly 11+6 = 28 pts. (one in the eye for his critics ! - he seems very effective overall)

I was thinking in terms of a players value to the team as a whole. Whilst most of the names above were strikers, but Terry Paine (187 goals) was a right winger.... and I've never seen MLT (212 goals) described as a striker but .... an attacking MIDFIELDER. David Peach (in the late 70's) was a goalscoring / penalty-taking LEFT BACK , who scored far more than some of the "supposed " strikers we've had in the last couple of decades.

To be honest .... I wouldn't want to make too much of that experience if it was on my CV, However to be fair to him, I thought he was very loyal behaved very correctly when the world was coming own around our ears. Good luck Mark!

I didn't expect him to go in goal at all...tbh. He was the last player I would have put in. Surely there was a better choice from the other 10 on the field. My point was that while some fans praised his " non-existant " goalie skills, it was obvious that he'd never played there before -even in training. It was not a criticism of Blackstock but those fans who thought .." he was good in goal ". Do teams no longer train with having outfield players in goal for kick-abouts in training ? In bygone days we always managed to find suitable replacements in emergencies, but nowadays with 7 subs to choose from and one of them a goalie ... obviously no-one does so anymore.

....surely Anderton was a youth player at Pompey - wasn't he? ..... although I know he was born in So'ton.

On the contrary..I always felt that some managers put their own interests before those of their club, and do a deal with the agent first. Is this the agent's way of saying they can't do this sort of deal with us ? .. if so...it's one-up for Nicola Cortese's ethical stance.

....and sad to say. the majority of our record signings have been " flops ".(A few exceptions like Ron Davies (1966-1972) and a quick glance at our list of record scorers shows players who signed for relatively small sums and Paine, Channon and MLT started as teenagers and cost nothing. There are differing opinions on Delap's value as a player. His famous long throws seem wasted by successive Saints team, while at Stoke they became the scourge of the Premiership. He was a versatile player and (like an earlier Jo Tessem) was willing to play anywhere in an emergency whilst seldom having a fixed position of his own. Managers love these type of utility players who can fill a gap anywhere, whilst fans ridicule them when they make a poor pass, and say ..he's not a RB. LB, winger etc, He was always a 100%-er willing to die for the cause and sustained a number of bad injuries in that battle yet always came back. I recall in 1967 we sold Martin Chivers to Spuds for a record £125K (a LOT at that time) but gave away a third of it to get Frank Saul in the exchange deal. Nice fella Frank, but his honour of scoring in FA cup games (he scored a Cup Final winner for Spuds) followed with him but little else. In retrospect he contributed little else to the side ( in 61 starts he scored only 12 goals -10 of them in cup games). In selling Alan Shearer to Blackburn £3 mill+ (our top selling at that point), we got shafted with the exchange deal of Speedie and Dixon who scarcely played a dozen games each ..before they both departed. As for the others, the likes of Agustin Delgado (£3 million) shouldn't be repeated, and I find it hard to convince myself that in the end the £3.25 million + big salary we paid to Kevin Phillips was money well spent after such a short stay. IF we spend £4 million (or more ) on Maynard how will we judge his value? ..should he "outscore" the likes of Lambert and Barnard ? because if he doesn't it will be a lot of money for a meagre return (goalwise).

reading a site earlier I noted that they stated " Rickie Lambert netted 21 times last season AND made 10 assists." (to other players). This is a seldom quoted statistic, and although from match-to-match, some journo's and commentators say " so-and-so scored after a centre from whatsisname " there still seems to be very few football stats. that give a season figure. Goodness knows how many of Ron Davies' goals would have been written as " assist from Paine / Sydenham " . Brett Ormerods humble goal tally (11 goals from 98 games) looks rather poor until you consider how many goals he " made for others "... like James Beattie. In Ice hockey there are always lists of goal scorers AND assists. It does at least give a better showing of the value of a player to any side than simply looking at apps. and goals. Why don't we have similar lists for League football, I wonder ? Who are the best suppliers in the Saints squad?

.....or a second-hand car salesman?

I'm sure we did but we were still a Prem.side at that time ..

thanks for the update....don't some rules really scr*w the game ?

maybe so, but like Facebook once it's out there ..it's fair game for anyone to use / misuse....!

I didn't mean to suggest that NC wasn't savvy to such deals, but it sounds a large sum to pay for a player who isn't even their own. If we do go in for such loan deals, we really need to know how it will work. No CCC club can afford to pay those sort of levels, and there are some very highly paid contracts from one or two of the relegated teams. I recall than part of the Wayne Bridge deal was that Chelsea stood for the replacement high salary, and a similar sort of deal when we had Kevin Phillips, I think.

so I hope that NC looks very closely at the deal if we borrow someone BIG ! and if Todays BBC story about Jimmy Bullard is to be believed. Ipswich won't be buying / or continuing to loan Bullard (ex Fulham) from Hull. the four month loan (16 games) cost Ipswich about 20K week and so that short term loan put them back over 300K ! At a time when Hull were Prem. and spending big they bought Bullard from Fulham (at what price I ask myself?)... and seemingly gave him a contract worth 45K a week. Not big money by Prem. standards maybe but now that Hull have come down to our level it's beginning to hurt as the already 32 year old Bullard has two years left on his contract. At 45K week that's roughly £2.3 million a year + employer costs and for another two seasons. Hull will need the parachute , or whats left of it , because they are going to need almost ...£5 million until his contract runs out in 2013. Embarrasing enough, but a season in CCC won't give him much value on the transfer market either. Hull ought to cut their losses and "give him away" to anyone brave enough to continue paying him 45K a week - and hope he stays fit. I am sure Nicola Cortese (who must know the value of money if anyone does) doesn't fall foul of one of these disasterous deals, and I certainly hope that Bullard isn't on Nigel's shopping list !!

At the time of his departure..Blackstock was the (youngest) and FIFTH choice striker at Saints...and the fee was too good to refuse. But you can't keep players forever without playing them, and then expect them to come on and be top class in the middle of a game on a wet November afternoon. Good for Dex that he 's got a career now, (but I have to say his "goalkeeping " sub appearance v. Newcastle (?) in that televised game was almost beyond description.. (At the time, people praised him for being brave enough to stand on the line, but his performance was atrocious).

...well he's wasn't the only goalie with that problem. Of course he made a few mistakes, but some of us older types can recall that Peter Shilton wasn't the " best goalie in the World " every week. Still Paul Jones will forever be remembered as ..the answer to a question in the alltime Pub Quiz. Q- " Which goalkeeper kept a clean sheet in an FA Cup Final ...and yet only got a Loser's medal ? "

Agreed...Academy, or reserves or U21 , whatever you want you call it . If a player is so good he can force his way into the first team (Bridge, Surman, Walcott, Bale AOC ) ..then the youth programme has achieved it's aim. Those who don't make it ..with us..and there have been quite a few of late, move on to other sides and make some sort of a career. You can't expect every good 18 year old to automatically move up when their Academy time is over..nor can we hold on to them all until they're 21/22... before deciding what to do. Someone has to make a judgement call (as with Oscar Gobern). I hope (for his sake) he has a good career ahead of him but that he doesn't play against us so often. .

ironically, when I looked at that table it occurred to me that the table might well end up in reverse at the end of the season. With some of the " S and W " clubs finishing at the top ....and some of the " B" 's at the bottom.

Does this mean that a club might (theoretically) win the Premiership title but not be allowed into the Champions League? If so ..it might mean that you have to drop down to a midtable side before you find one who qualifies " financially speaking ".