Sour Mash

Would all his back room staff get new contracts as well, or are they just left to negotiate separately?

Do Chelsea ever bring any of their loan players back to play for their first team? Such a weird tactic, not sure what it achieves for them, apart form maybe helping to control the market and their opposition a bit.

He wouldn't have got much playing time at all though. I've just picked him as an example, but it can be applied to many players; what we're saying is at the age of 18/19/20, you either need to be good enough to do a decent job in a top 10 Premier League squad, or you'll not be getting a properly competitive kick of the ball. Some positions it'll affect more than others, but I think for Centre Backs and Keepers it's something to look at, they'll rarely get offered a 15 minute run out.

He might get a "sniff", but any player's learning curve needs more than that. He'd have had plenty of training with internationals, so why not mix it up a bit with a 6 month loan. I'm sure Schneiderlin has talked about how the lower leagues toughened him up. Plenty of people would have written off Lambert when he was younger, he just needed to develop in reality. The point is I think there must be some players that would benefit from the competitive environment of first team football, but aren't yet ready to do a job for us.

But if Osvaldo had still been here, what would Gallagher have been doing for the last few months? Playing the occasional Under 21s game most likely. Extrapolate that for a year or two and that's not great development for him. Fully agree with your 2nd point though.

Fair play for writing all that up. Does seem that we're not a fan of loaning out our young players to the lower leagues if we genuinely think they've got a chance of making it. Not sure I agree with that policy itself, especially if our squad grows in the next couple of years in terms of Premier League standard players.

Can't see us signing him regardless of what our situation is this year.

What sort of side do they tend to put out?

Probably approaching about half of the Premier League charging £40+ for a ticket, even we do for some tickets for some games. We're actually releatively lucky,as those following the top 6 get charged Category A prices everywhere. Only way to stop it is if people stop paying for it, but easier said than done and London, the Manc and Scouse clubs, all seem to have a plentiful supply of people that will pay that if asked.

The post you quote isn't referencing the respective ability of that team against our current one, but the relative achievements - it's a fair question to ask and a hard one to call.

Yes, we are bigger than those clubs. What does it matter that we spent so long at the Dell?

I can't remember us being linked with most of those players.

I reckon this flight never even existed and the whole thing is one big admin error.

Bit pointless reading it all and commenting when the subject matter is obvious.

We didn't have 17 players selected by England at various levels.

I don't know what is goaled or agreed behind the scenes at the club. But it looks pretty weird that he never does a single minute of media work for cup games, it doesn't help with the impression that he's not too interested in them, regardless of what may or may not have been agreed behind the scenes.

How many other managers don't bother witha single bit of press/media work for cup games? I can't think of a single one, apart from MP.

What does "moved on" mean? I don't think anyone is still hanging around outside the Stadium of Light.

How is that typical of the modern fan? Your comment doesn't make sense.

We had more there then we did for the league game - despite short notice, early kick off, on tv etc.

Exactly that. Not seen such a p****d off Saints away crowd for years, understandably so.

Not really a thing of dreams. Great results never the less.

Remember when our support worshiped every touch Lambert took....?

We are hard to break down and solid away from home. Have we really never won more than 5 away games in a season before? Amazing achievement,

Thought we looked worse when he went off, we went backwards. Great loss if he's seriously injured.