Baird of the land

Was sceptical when he first signed but he''s been an excellent signing. On the balance considering how we want to play its the right time to part ways.

I can see why a former footballer would be impressed by a player's cleverness in terms of initiating contact to make it look natural. I thought Benteke was good for them, we really struggled to deal with him at times despite our height at the back.

If you let him leave on a free you are left down £20m in terms of replacing him, which makes that so much harder. If we had a half decent owner that might be an option but just don't see how it's a feasible long term plan given the current ownership. Still keeping m fingers crossed that the optimistic beats coming from the club aren't just for our benefit and that there's a chance he'll sign the new contract.

Yeah the poor u23 crop is surely a factor. While we do need some more depth, I do hope we don't swing too far back in the other direction in being loaded with mediocre dross.

Looks about right.

Had one atrocious flap. Made some decent blocks and the penalty save. Still prefer McCarthy of the 2.

Bizarre, I think a headless chicken would have been more effective than minamino

Hopefully no minamino

Prowsey really dislikes Palace

How is that a foul but the bearhuggiong of the first half wasn't.

Can we please take off the passenger(Minamino) and get Tella or Djenepo on.

For once the penalty graphic makes it obvious which way our keeper should dive.

Thought we could have had a penalty from the bearhugging going on at that corner

Made the mistake of thinking i could switch on a couple of minutes late without Saints collapsing. Since then we've showed zero intensity so far.

Because surely he's off in the summer.

Good, Ings back. Bad, Minamino back in.

I long for a change from the awful unrepresentative fptp system, which mean voting is a post code lottery in terms of being worth the effort. Not sure I see a way Labour gets in, in short term but would be good if they firmly committed to system change if they do.

Macca, kwp, bednarek, vestergaard, salisu, jwp, Armstrong, djenepo, Tella, Adams, Redmond

Nice to see Obafemi back. He looked a decent option. Hopefully whatever went wrong previously, the time away makes him more determined to really push on.

I more thinking green jobs. See Labour have instead identified a scape goat. Yeah its all that Rayner fault, lol.

Decent performance but glarring lack of clinicalness in the absence of Ings.

Sending a remainer as candidate to hartlepool certainly seems to have been a tactical error. You'd wonder if it was a case of rewarding friends/allies rather than making the right choice. Still i feel they probably would have lost anyway with the timing of the election and some of the local issues. Starmer's unlucky in that i thought he did a decent job of criticising tories for their Covid failures last year but the success of the tories vaccine decision has washed away all potential issues with their original mistakes. I do feel he needs to clarify what his labour stand for policy wise. I''d say Tories are very weak environmentally, so that would be an area i'd suggest to push. The whole stupid woke nonsense is certainly an issue for the party. I generally think he's less prone to swaying to the beat of that crowd than others in his party but he's got to find some way beyond superfificial flag waving to get out in front of these culture war arguments otherwise the tories will keep handing labour defeats outside of areas like london.

That's extremely damning. As someone who's very passionate about Saints giving youngsters opportunities i really hope they can get things back on the right tracks quickly.

I can see the logic to moving on from Bertrand. Ralph clearly wants dynamic fullbacks like KWp and Bertrand isn't really that anymore. He's been a very good player for us and will probably carry on doing a job in prem for right team in right system for a couple of years. Furthermore if he's holding out for a long deal and that's why he's rejected the contract offer i can completely understand the club's stance. I felt giving long a 2 year deal was odd and that's come back to bite us. Let's just hope whoever the club buy ends up looking as wise a purchase as Bertrand was.

Didn't realise Vokins contract runs to 2024 and Valery's to 2023.