Cosmic

According to Wikipedia he's actually about to turn 25. But I take your point. I was pleasantly surprised by his willingness to get stuck in to a few physical and aerial challenges yesterday. Must be worth playing him against Villa.

Interesting. Why?

Agreed.

And never win anything?

On a separate point, I am the only one who thinks FF was a bit overrated last season? Good shot-stopper (as all keepers are these days) but, for a man of his stature, pretty awful in the air? If KD or PG had put in the performance that Forster did at White Hart Lane last year, it would have got a lot more attention on here. For the record, I am not writing FF off or saying he's cr*p - I see no reason why he shouldn't be able to improve the one obvious weakness to his game and become a really top keeper - just think the praise he got from the media last year was a bit OTT and was really a reflection of a very organised defence in front of him.

It's weird - judging by your tone, it seems like you can recognise the ignorance of what you're saying, yet you appear to be serious...? It's also funny how fans on here slaughter players for not showing any loyalty to the club and jumping ship for the money at the first chance they get; yet when the shoe is on the other foot, the same fans are more than happy to say to one of the players most responsible for getting us back to the Premiership: "You're a bit old and sh*t now and you're a waste of our money, can you just pack it in and leave?". What good would 'moving him on' do anyway? He is no longer good enough to be attractive to a club that could afford to take him and pay his wages, so all that would be achieved is alienating and upsetting him (and with it the rest of the dressing room) and creating a load of bad publicity for the club.

Engage your brain.

He is not good enough to play just behind the striker (and may well never be suited to that role) and nor is Davis. Cannot understand why he was moved further up the pitch for this game after impressing against Norwich when playing deeper and Koeman admitting as much after the game. Why Juanmi can't get a game in the no.10 position I cannot understand.

Pass completion rate is the most pointless stat in football. In fact, it's even worse than that because it is often misleading. Last season David Silva's pass completion rate was 85.7% (scored 12, assisted 7). Vincent Kompany's was 87.3% (scored 0, assisted 0). The further back you play, the higher your PCR is likely to be. The large majority of Kompany's passes are across the back four or short into a central midfielder - with very little pressure on the ball or the recipient. Whenever Silva gets the ball, he's immediately closed down and is playing in much tighter spaces. A player's pass completion rate is usually more reflective of how ambitious they are on the ball than it is of how accurate their passing is.

Last season Tadic averaged 2.2 key passes per game and Lallana 0.8. Also, 'retaining possession' is not really what you're looking for from a creative player/forward is it? Surely you want them to do something with it...? The reason people often get annoyed when watching Tadic (and, to a lesser extent, Mane) is because they give the ball away quite a lot. But that's because they are the two players in our team who are prepared to try something different and not just play the percentage pass every time. Gordon Strachan calls it propaganda football - it's what we did under Pochettino. Barry Bannan can run across the middle third of pitch all day long, passing and receiving the ball to and from either full back, come out with a 95% pass completion rate, but it doesn't mean that he's had a good game. Mane was man of the match on Sunday, but (in the first half especially) he must have given the ball away more than anyone else in our side. But then again he wasn't just passing it five and ten yards sideways - he was trying to make something happen.

Lallana averaged a goal every 344 minutes and an assist every 620 minutes during his last season for us. Tadic averages a goal every 381 minutes and an assist every 286 minutes. I understand that Tadic can be frustrating to watch at times but, when played on the left or behind the striker (or basically anywhere other than on the right - don't get me started...), he is a far more productive player than Lallana was. Lallana has always flattered to deceive and his end product has always let him down. He is two-footed and technically gifted, but he doesn't actually impact games enough. At Liverpool he averages an assist every 648 minutes. To give some context to the stats above, last season Rooney averaged an assist every 239 mins, Silva one every 380, cazorla one every 272, hazard one every 375, and fabregas one every 179.

Caulker - a 'panic replacement' who we've been tracking for about four years. 'No Schneiderlin replacement' - Clasie. 'Toby c*ck up' - he decided he wanted to go to Spurs. We can't hold a gun to his head. 'Contract renewals' - we can't hold a gun to anyone's head. 'Toby replacement' - the club and Koeman have said we are still looking to sign players every single time they've been asked. I think you might be confusing silence with inactivity. I also think you might be a bit daft.

I always think this stuff is over-hyped and that the reality has more to do with football than personalities and egos. Elia has been here less than month, during which time he has played two good games and scored a couple of goals. He has also avoided saying anything daft on Twitter. This doesn't mean he is suddenly an angel who has been shown the light by Koeman, nor that he is now a much better player than he was six weeks ago. More likely is that he is (naturally) grateful for the fresh start, has come straight into a winning team (winning at OT on debut doesn't hurt) and consequently his confidence will now be up. Sadly, Osvaldo simply didn't play that well or score many goals when he came here. If he had then I expect there wouldn't have been many problems with him.

You sound like Robbie Savage.

Exactly, RK is on thin ice. It was bad enough when we dropped two points against Chelsea and then missed all those chances against Arsenal, but failure to win this one would surely be the final nail in the Koeman coffin?

I'll take anything that's still going if possible please.

Le Tissier...?

Why does Chambers deserve our eternal blessing? Because he is young and naive? He jumped ship at the very first opportunity. In the big picture, he contributed nothing to Southampton. I have no issue whatsoever with people booing him if they think it might unsettle him and help our cause. He kept getting caught on the ball tonight (although he was dominant in the air).

I thought there were certainly a few more than that - Spurs away springs to mind. For me, he was nowhere near as dominant in the second half of the season but, by that point, Gary Neville and co had already done a few features on him saying how great he was, so he could do no wrong in the eyes of many.

I'm a big fan of Davis but thought he had one of his least effective games for quite a while. Game of opinions.

Cannot believe this didn't get a plug during coverage of our match on MoTD. Pathetic.

That goal under the floodlights and the roar that accompanied it is always the first thing that springs into my mind when I think of the Dell. Can recall that volley past a diving Shaka Hislop far more vividly than any of the ones at Upton Park the other week!

Seems a bit harsh - Rodriguez still to come back remember. Would be nice to have Ramirez available but can't blame the club for getting him off the wage bill. It's not really realistic for a club our size to be able to have about £30m of talent on the bench in those positions (Rod, Ram & Mane). Needs to be a pathway through for academy players too.

I saw it and thought it was all a bit silly. I got the impression that the pre-match agreement (if there was one) was that JWP would take them, but it came during a ten-minute spell when Tadic was absolutely terrorising the WHU defence and looking very threatening, so his confidence would have been sky-high and he demanded to take it (maybe that's not such a bad thing though...?). Having said that, I thought JWP was the best player on the pitch from 45-70 minutes (when he was subbed) - he bossed the game and was the driving force behind our dominant spell in the match, so his confidence would have also been up. But I'm sure the issue has since been discussed and we probably won't see that sort of thing again.

Not content with poaching our young English full backs, United and now Arsenal also seem intent on stopping us replacing either of them. Seems petty if you ask me.