SaintJackoInHurworth

I'm a fan of stripes, but just as some of the 80s shirts were quite radical at the time, I would like to see us doing something radical with the stripes this time. Perhaps we could in some way blend sash and stripes or something seeing as some people like the sash (personally I am not that keen, but could see a merger of the two working). The other issue of course is having something that would work with the aap3 logo. With this in mind, I wonder if Umbro could come up with a stripes design based on the stripes on their boots? Something like this: Perhaps it would need thicker stripes or a few more, but would be a radical variation on stripes and has a sort of sash-like quality to it. What do you think? (Apologies this is not a fully developed idea but I have only had MS Paint to work with and not paintshop pro or anything fancy!)

I am more than happy for Saints to have teamed up with a growing local business. I just hope that a three year deal will not limit us if we manage to get up to the Prem within that period of time. I doubt that will be a big issue. My bigger concern is what the sponsor's logo looks like and how it will be laughed at by other fans... SO... in order to beat them to it, here's what some of you are already thinking...

I have to say the abuse of Flinders was rarely if ever funny, but he took it VERY well and somehow saw the funny side. The songs about the steward though were not abusive - just funny. Yes, it was a bit childish, but like people have said, that was about all the fun we were able to have for the whole game. There was nothing homphobic about the chanting - the fact that Alan Carr is gay wasn't mentioned as far as I can recall and, personally, it didn't even cross my mind that anyone might be implying that the steward was gay. In terms of what actually happened, it started with a few fans chanting Alan Carr, Alan Carr, Alan Carr, etc. (to the same tune that is used to sing 'Here We go, here we go', etc.) At first I don't think everyone (myself included) could work out what was being sung, but gradually more people began to work out what was being sung and joined in, pointing at the steward in question. Then it changed to 'Alan, give us a wave, Alan, Alan, give us a wave', etc. with boos when he did not. As it continued, so the other stewards began to realise what was being sung and who it was being aimed at. They began to laugh, but tried their hardest not to do so. I think that was probably when it really began to get funny as they struggled not to laugh. Finally, as we left, there was another steward (or it may have been the same one, but I'm pretty sure it was a different one) on the pitch near the exit from the stand out to the eating area, who also looked a bit like Alan Carr. Someone spotted this and pointed at him and shouted something like 'another Alan Carr!'. Consequently, everyone started to sing the same songs to him. Personally, as I say, while the Alan Carr Chants might have been a bit childish, it was quite funny and imo harmless.

I share with you some doubts about Adkins, but like any manager he does some things well and some things not so well. I think that he had a hard job tonight as the players had gone for a while without a game, whereas Hartlepool played on Saturday and had a stinging home defeat to put behind them. I believe the lack of a game on Saturday affected the performance of some players and certainly did not help those who have recently returned from injury to get back to match sharpness. I need to comment about one particular comment you have made though... you seem to be suggesting that we would have been better playing three players in the middle tonight - Chaplow, Hammond and Schneiderlin. I can assure you that that would not have helped. Our midfield was already too cramped and replacing Guly with Schneiderlin would have compounded the problem while leaving us short up front. In addition, you suggest that Schneiderlin should have played instead of Guly. In fact, Guly was at times our main creative outlet - especially in the first half, so to have not played him would also have been a bad move! Having said both of these things, I would agree that Schneiderlin was missed tonight - but mainly because Hammond was so poor. If I had known that Hammond was going to play that badly, then I would have played Schneiderlin instead. Obviously he couldn't know that beforehand, but I think Adkins biggest mistake was that he did not take Hammond off and replace him with Schneiderlin in the second half. If you were not meaning that Schneiderlin should play instead of Guly and did indeed mean instead of Hammond, I wonder who you would play instead of Guly. Would you have preferred to see Barnard play from the start? Or would you have gone for N'Guessian?

I have just read Adkins comments after the game and have to say I don't know what he is talking about! Lallana made some cahnces but they were no more than half chances - I don't know how Adkins can say he nearly had a hatrick - that makes it sound like he had a bad game and missed some sitters! I would say, as above, that he had a game in which took a little while to get up to the pace of the game, but gradually improved and then showed glimpses of his usual brilliance. As he got up to the pace of the game, he then worked hard to get into space and when he received the ball made the defenders work hard. The facts are that we did not create enough to win the game. We did not need to play such negative tactics (not allowing the full backs to work the wings) and it nearly cost us. The only part of his report that I agree with is that Kelvin did well in goal. But even then, I don't think he had a huge amount to do! Adkins comments make it sound like they were raining in shots on our goal, when in fact during those spells when they were on top it was more often than not Fonte, Harding or Butterfield who dealt with it before any shot could be made! As to whether this result is a disaster, I personally don't think it is. On paper we had the hardest fixture of any of the teams at thye top of the league and we did no worse than any of them except Brighton. If we can get the team playing to its potential then we will get promoted. My only question is whether Adkins away tactics are right for a team with such a lot of flair. I hope he will rethink his approach and realise that we can win games away (as we did far more often under Pardew) because it is there that teams are more likely to open up and attack, thus creating the opportunities to play to our strengths.

Just got home from the game about 45 minutes or so ago and have just spent ages writing my analysis of the match!!! Here goes... Well, as you will already have worked out, it was a pretty dire affair. We had few genuine clear-cut chances and didn't do enough to win the game. In fact we were lucky not to lose as one of their players managed somehow to balloon the ball miles over the bar from about 8 yards with the goal gaping in front of him!! Nevertheless, I think a draw was a fair result. Tactically I think either Adkins got it wrong or the team did not play to his plan. I suspect it was a bit of both. Our midfield seemed quite packed in the first half with Chaplow and Hammond seeming uncertain of their respective roles and offering little. Meanwhile Chamberlain positioned himself wide on the touchline ready to receive the telling pass which rarely came. Hammond rarely featured and certainly did not provide the ammunition for the forwards and wide players. Lallana was left having to come inside to get the ball and then sometimes he would receive the ball. Sadly at times this ball was received even when Chamberlain was in a better position. Chaplow improved a little in the second half, but Hammond continued to be disinterested and it seemed like we only had nine players on the pitch at times with Hammond offering so little and Chamberlain getting such poor service. When Chamberlain did finally get the ball it was not when he was in space but where play was tight and he had little support. Inevitably he tried to use his prowess to get past four players but the third or fourth player would usually tackle him. On a more positive note, Harding had a great game and was by far our best player. Fonte too put in a towering performance and Butterfield played very intelligently at the back, though sadly offered less going forward than he has done in the past. Guly had a very good first half and a very mixed second half. In the first half, he was the only Saints player to offer any threat, but in the second half while he did some good stuff at times at other times he made some poor choices and lost concentration. He was not helped by a seeming lack of communication between him and Lambert. Lambert himself also had a mixed performance. At times he would do some intelligent play with the ball, while at other times he seemed to lack a yard or two of pace and the drive to work the space behind the opposing defence. He was also frequently getting dragged out of position, leaving Guly more often than not as the main striker. Lallana took most of the first half to get up to the pace of the game, but once there he showed glimpses of his usual brilliance, but as I hinted above I sense that the rest of the team are becoming too dependant upon him and are not ready to play the ball out wide often enough and use other players like Chamberlain. Jaihdi had a poor performance and got caught in possession a number of times. He looked like a player that was short on fitness, confidence and pace and/or like a player whose career is coming to an end. It was a sad sight to see. Kelvin Davis had little to do, but he dealt with everything thrown at him and cleared up when there were one or two moments of indecision in the defence. In terms of subs, Barnard ran around like a headless chicken trying to use every ounce of energy he had but as a result was rarely where he was needed in front of goal. When he came on the side finally woke up to the need to pass the ball out wide to Chamberlain - who, of course, had by this time gone off so there was no-one out wide!! Overall, we still looked the better side and dominated possession, but we had little passion going forwards and had no-one to make the intelligent passes from midfield up to the forwards and attack-minded midfielders. What would I have done differently? I would have taken off Hammond and brought Schneiderlin on in his place with clear instructions to get the ball out wide to Chamberlain more often. I would have also suggested that Lallana vary his positioning a bit to keep them guessing, going out wide a bit more to receive the ball out there occasionally. I would also have pushed the full-backs forward a bit more. Defensively, I don't know what I would have done. Hartlepool play the ball in the air a lot and so Dan Seabourne could have been a liability as on past evidence, he cannot handle that very well. Finally, as a last throw of the dice I would have considered bringing N'Guessian on to bring something a bit different in the last ten minutes.

Poor refereeing decision cost us the points imo - no way that was handball at the end.

Absolute rubbish - Kelvin has also done some great work for us in this game and the blame for the two goals must be mainly placed on the shoulders of Seaborne and Harding - especially Seabourne. It is not the first time this season that Seaborne's suspect defending has affected the performance of the rest of the defence as they attempt to compensate. He is getting better, but still too prone to mistakes.

I know what you mean when you say our away form is better than our home form, but actually our home form (W4 D1 L1) is better than our away form (W3 D1 L2). However, our position in the form tables is better for away form than home form, in other words it is better in relative terms. Also, I find it interesting that there are discrepancies between this form table and the one on the Saints website: http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/page/CurrentForm/0,,10280~201025,00.html It appears there is some disagreement about Brentford's statistics! The OS has them with W4 D0 L2, while this other site has figures of W3 D0 L3. Not sure which one is correct! Anyway, the all-important statistic is that we are the form team in League 1. Long may it continue!

In addition to all the other positives that everyone has pointed out can I also point out that Oxo, Puncheon, Morgan, etc. are now all cup-tied, so maybe we have also managed to reduce the likelihood of another team wanting to sign them in January.

For those commenting that the end of the decade was last year, you are actually incorrect. Strictly speaking the decade runs from year 2001 - 2010, although this is widely ignored nowadays. You may recall some people making comments about it back in 1999 when we were (incorrectly) anticipating the new millennium. Of course, the argument is fast becoming academic as populism redefines what is 'true', but it is nonetheless worth noting. A similar argument is that about how we define a 'billion'. Traditionally, a billion was always 1 followed by 12 zeros - i.e. a million-million, However, at some point in relatively recent history, Americans had begun to referring to a billion to define a 'thousand-million'. While this used to be known as a US billion in recent times the media have begun to ignore the traditional numerical notation and just refer to it as a billion. Anyway, aside from these arguments, which will probably bore most of you, my opinion is that our best player of the decade is... Michael Svensson. I accept what has been said about how few games he played for us, but it is still more than many other players who could be considered and the facts of the matter are that with him in the side we reached the cup final and Europe. As soon as he became injured we began our slide into near oblivion.

I have to say there are some simplistic arguments on here... people argue that if we accept £10m or £3-4m we would then be able to go out and buy a team to get ourselves to the Prem. Excuse me, but as I understand it, having the money to buy the right players is not the issue! The issue is finding the right players who are prepared to drop down to League 1 to play! Ultimately, the sort of players we would want should we sell AOC are currently playing in the CCC or Prem. Those sort of players are not going to wish to drop to L1 level, no matter what money is being offered. If we are to mount a bid for promotion, we need first and foremost to keep hold of our best players. Then, maybe if we can find one or two purchases who might improve the team or at least the squad, then maybe we can become serious contenders. Otherwise, we end up with an unsettled squad who don't know each other and we have to waste more time molding the squad together. My hope is that whatever is offered we will not sell. My assumption is that comments about the need to pay crazy money in order to be able to purchase AOC or others are to keep Prem and CC teams from knocking on the door and unsettling our players.

The thing is though, the whole bid has been a farce right from the beginning when they didn't allow Saints to apply to be a host because we were in administration. Yet, now that the bidding process has come to a conclusion we find Plymouth as the club who are in danger of going into administration! Surely, they should have allowed Saints to apply but had a reserve option should they fail to exit admin? Just think what the committee must have thought when they were taken to Plymouth! It's like they say 'First impressions last' and that would not have been a good part of their first impressions. I couldn't believe last night though when they were saying that they were hopeful England would get through with votes from four nations including France!! I mean, when have the French ever stuck up for the English in anything?!! lol

Interesting that Adkins took Oxo off to bring on Butterfield towards the end. Was that a recognition that he had made a tactical mistake with earlier subs or was it that we needed beefing up at the back to withstand a Brighton onslaught? Could he have brought on Gobern or Doble instead in the hope that one of them could have nicked a goal or were we under siege or something?

There seems to be a lot of people having a go at Schneiderlin when last season he was the one who could do no wrong! Personally I think he has always been slightly overrated, but I think the issue is more to do with what strengths the different midfielders bring to the team. Schneiderlin is not great at going forward, but he is good at picking out a pass, whereas Chaplow is more attack-minded but perhaps not as good as Schneiderlin at passing. The question for me is where does Hammond sit in this conundrum? My guess is that there will be some matches where the best combo would be Spider and Chaplow, whereas at other times the other two combinations of these three players will be preferred. It is NA's job to work out when to use which combination. Perhaps tonight the Chaplow-Schneiderlin combination would have been used if Chaplow had not been injured. Who knows?!

I notice you conveniently cut your time span down to 20 years! It was only just over 20 years ago (24?) that we actually finished second in the top flight! I'm pretty sure at some stage in that season we were actually top as well.

There was a very similar thread to this one ages ago just before the 'Baby give it up' song got poular for Lallana. Another simple suggestion for a Lallana song was the Smurf Chorus: La-la lalalalala- Lallana etc. Extra words could be made up for the verse.

Hmm... I assume you mean the match in 2004 not 2005 and to be fair, we still had plenty of time to change it around after that match and did improve in the New Year. After losing on New Year's Day, we only lost two more games before the end of March and in fact we won ALL of our games in March culminating in a superb performance away against the same Middlesbrough side, including two cracking goals from Peter Crouch. It was after that match that the problems began. You could probably forgive a defeat to Chelsea in our next match, but in the following match against Blackburn we just completely capitulated against a team that were around about the same position as us in the table. Morten Gamst Pederson was given the freedom of the pitch to run rings around our defence and we lost 3-0. That was the match where we got relegated - Redknapp had failed to get them motivated for the match and it completely knocked the stuffing out of us.

Even if you put some of the blame for one of the goals on Fonte, it doesn't get away from the fact that Seabourne was shocking last week and not faultless as was being claimed! I'm not the only person who says that either. If you read last week's match thread there were a number of people who felt Seabourne was poor. In fact, there are even some for today's match who have said he wasn't great and that Martin would be a better option. In terms of Fonte being to blame for that goal though, there were very clear signs that Fonte was not happy with the system and particularly with having to cover for the shortcomings of others - especially Seabourne. As to this week though, I can't comment as I was not there!

Except that he was woeful and completely at fault last week against Huddersfield!! I'm surprised that he wasn't dropped for today's match. I suspect Adkins approach is to give players another chance. In that way he seeks to build players' confidence. Maybe this is also why Lambert has not been dropped.

If it's the incident I remember seeing in the match, then yes. The referee was awful all afternoon and made a whole load of dreadful decisions. Did the players not appeal though? I don't remember from the match itself whether they did or not! I don't have a subscription to Saints Player so can't look at it myself.

I was at the game and made brief reference to this incident in my comments on the post match thread. I'm pretty sure others have made reference to it as well. I take it you were not at the game and haven't read the post match comments?

I'm surprised how little feedback there has been on here, but that is perhaps a sign of how poorly we played today. I'd agree with some of the comments on here, but I think there are a few more important things to be added: 1. Huddersfield got their tactics spot on. They were first to almost every ball (especialy in the first half) and didn't give us any chance to settle on the ball. We didn't know how to deal with this and it's an area the coaching staff will need to work on. However, their aggression was helped in no small part by the fact that... 2. The refereeing was atrocious! One minute he would completely ignore the use of hands by a Huddersfield player to shove a Saints player off the ball and then the next minute he would award them a free kick for something that looked completely innocuous. Many times he awarded them free kicks that looked like they should have been awarded the other way. He completely missed a stonewall penalty for us. 3. The team seemed to lack coherence and shape - especially in the first half. It looked like they had been asked to play in a particular way with which they were not comfortable. It seemed that their natural creativity was being stifled in order to play to a rigid system of football. 4. Until the second goal the team lacked any passion and determination. Hence with Huddersfield's tactics we were beaten to almost every ball. 5. I sensed a disunity among the team and noticed Fonte and Davis exchanging sharp words early on. 6. Fonte looked frustrated by having to cover for other players short-comings and by having to operate under a system that placed them under unneccessary pressure. 7. One of our biggest weaknesses was our total lack of movement. Time and again we lost the ball from thrown-ins, etc. because there was no-one creating space. The whole team were guilty of this, not just a few individuals. Again it felt like they were trying to stick rigidly to a system which caused them to forget basic things like this! Finally, here are a few comments about individual players: Davis - Didn't actually have a lot to do, but was put under pressure too often by having the ball returned to him from defenders. This was in part due to the system operated for passing the ball out and in part due to the high pressure game played by Huddersfield. Harding - Mostly anonymous in first half and despite not coming into the game in an attacking sense much was occasionally still out of position. Improved in the second half and became one of our more creative outlets. Butterfield - Mostly solid and put in some ok crosses. Would have liked to see him develop more of an understanding with Puncheon to release him to run to the byline and put in some crosses. Fonte - A few mistakes, possibly due to having to cover for others and because of the sytem being played. Seaborne - Woeful! Should have been subbed at half time. Got his timing wrong numerous times and it was embarassing the number times the ball bounced over his head, nearly resulting in more goals for them. Was largely at fault for both goals. Hammond - Mostly pretty anonymous. Provided little defensive cover and little going forward. Chaplow - One of our better players. Worked hard for the team and tried to create space for others. Some nice touches of the ball and reasonably good passing. Puncheon - Received a lot of criticism from some fans, especially one foul-mouthed OAP (Probably the oldest chav I have ever come across!) but actually made some good runs down the wings when he was provided with the right ball, which was too infrequently. His crosses were generally excellent and if he had been given the opening to provide more of these could have done some damage. Sadly, though, his work rate sometimes left a bit to be desired. He seemed also to be a little low on confidence, which impacted upon his touch once or twice. Lallana - at the heart of all our best passing movement, but needs to work on looking for an outlet for that movement and passing - i.e. providing that telling ball to the strikers or wingers, etc. Guly - Similar to Lallana. He was also frustratingly inconsistent. He went past several players at one point, exchanged a great one-two with Lallana and then fluffed the final pass! Lambert - Heavily marked out of the game and barely received a pass from any of our other players. It wasn't so much that he did badly as he wasn't given anything with which he could do anything! His work rate was not sufficiently high to compensate for this. Subs: Barnard - A bit languid at first but then got into the game, worked hard, created space and provided a menace. Sadly received little service from midfield in the form of a telling ball that would release him to have a shot. Bignall - Worked hard, created space and looked promising. Would have liked to have seen more of him in the middle, but without the service he wisely went looking for the ball out wide. Schneiderlin - Added much needed composure to the midfield, but it was far too late in the game.

I think there was a far bigger issue than just playing it out from the back. The issue for me was that we spent a lot of time trying to play 'nice football', whereas we need to focus on playing winning football. Obviously, being able to pass the ball around helps to do this, but not if it is just for the sake of looking nice. The simple facts of the matter are that we had about three efforts on goal in the whole game and that is simply not good enough. While a few passages of passing had promise, sadly there was no end product and we tended to over-complicate things. There were too few occasions when we actually got a man wide to use pace to get past defenders and whip in a cross, especially in the first half. Don't get me wrong, I am a fan of passing football and letting players use their flair to express themselves. But we are not Arsenal and if they struggle to walk the ball into the net, I don't think we are going to manage it either!

I'm getting a lift to Huddersfield from someone who is going on to Old Trafford, so I have been working out where I can be dropped that is not too far from the motorway. In the process I have come across the Woodman Inn. I am thinking it might be the ideal place for him to drop me as there is a bus stop outside from where I can get a bus to almost right outside the ground. Does anyone know anything about that place? Is anyone going there?