Wes Tender

He made errors of judgement during Monday's game and today when he should have been more decisive on whether to go for the ball or stay back. I'm not convinced by him.

This is a reasonable article encompassing the background to Schneiderlin's desire to move on in the Summer, but the article has been twisted to portray him as being bitter about the aftermath of him being forced to stay. The way that I read it, is that he was disappointed/upset not to be able to move, but that events since had made him much more content to remain here. His desire to be playing in the Champions' League is noted, but then he wouldn't not be playing at that level with Spurs, would he? So all the dross about him wanting to go to Spurs is undermined immediately. Naturally, the underlying impression the interview gives that he is now happy to be playing for Koeman, at least until the end of the season and perhaps beyond if we were to qualify for the CL, is not the tone that subsequent articles would wish to convey. They are much happier to stir the pot, portraying Schneiderlin as a disruptive influence in the team because fundamentally he doesn't want to be here. So I for one am perfectly happy to read this article quoting him and to believe that it says nothing new that I didn't know in the Summer and to be content that the general thrust of it is to praise Southampton's performance this season against all expectations and the part Schneiderlin has played in it.

Who writes this rubbish? How much credibility can one place on anything written on Inside Futbol? Not a lot I would imagine. How up-to-date are those quotes attributed to him?

Palace have raised the ticket prices because we're now second and they need to make the most of attracting all the local plastics who want to watch all our glory team stars in action.

He's only recently started to speak English in interviews and yet he is now capable of debating the lexical semantics of the language. The lad's come a long way. But if he accepts that the job of a coach is to improve the style of play, improve the players and get positive results, then patently he isn't doing a very good job, judging on his results so far.

Can you please explain the logic behind this remark, as it eludes me. We are still in second place, but gaining a draw means certainly that we won't finish in the top four? And yet you say that we will improve against City. Will the situation change if the most likely teams to be in the top four at the end of the season all draw their next matches, thus returning the status quo to last night's result for us?

Agreed. We didn't look anywhere as near combative in the midfield without either Cork or Davis there. That is what both do for you, break up play, gain possession and progress play for you. Both of them aren't needed at the same time, but neither is it beneficial to have both of them absent.

You're not even right in this post.

No doubt when we are in Europe we will address the situation by enlarging the squad to cope with the additional fixtures. The game times that wind me up are the weekday evenings. Do you have a problem with me not liking that? If we are in Europe, I'll accept that and attend the additional home matches. The League Cup match is not really much of a problem on 16th December, we were discussing the matches over the Christmas/New Year period, weren't we?

Went to upgrade the junior ticket to an adult one. What a bloody palaver! To recap, queued half an hour on Friday to get two tickets as allowed by two STs, But one was a junior ST so they wouldn't allow it to be upgraded to an adult ticket, even though the cost was higher. So I had to go back today to upgrade the junior ticket to an adult one, whilst they are on general sale. Queued another 20 minutes to be told that I had to pay the general sale adult price rather than the ST adult price, so another £2. Apparently the junior ST doesn't qualify me for the discount that is given to an adult ST holder. Furthermore, they can't just tear up the junior ticket and issue an adult ticket, my son will have to get the upgraded ticket from Sheffield. Had they been prepared to issue two adult tickets on Friday, I wouldn't have to have undergone this rigmarole. It begs the question of what the situation would have been had the tickets sold out before they went on general sale. Presumably the jobsworths in the TO would have refused to upgrade the ticket. The seat was sold, so couldn't have been sold to anybody else, so they either upgrade it, or have my son's mate try and get in on a junior ticket.

Koeman is quite right. Bloody Sky is far too powerful in changing the game to suit their own agenda. Matches all over the place. The thing is self-perpetuating and will only get worse. Sky pay huge sums to the top teams to televise the matches, that translates into high player wages, which in turn means that gate prices rise, therefore too many cannot afford to go to matches, therefore they watch them on the box instead. The game has sold its soul to the devil and there is probably no way that it can be reversed. But the clubs could jointly put pressure on the FA to stop this farcical logjam over the Christmas period, but as Koeman rightly says, the biggest clubs with the greatest depth of quality in their squads do have an advantage, so why would they want things to change?

What a fuss about nothing! The World's gone mad. I loathe the way that the PC brigade have turned into the thought police and they should all be told to go to hell.

Adkins had similar approval ratings. Thank God Cortese isn't here still to replace him with some lesser known manager.

The situation will descend into pure farce if the tickets sell out before I can upgrade on Monday and the club don't allow me to do so. What would happen then? The seat is taken, but they will only allow a kid to sit in it?

I went to the ticket office this morning as son number one wanted me to get two tickets for him and a mate who live near there. Son number two is a junior concession ST and the TO would only be prepared to sell me an adult and a child ticket, even though naturally I was happy to pay adult prices for both tickets. Their argument was that if I was allowed to buy two adult tickets, I would be depriving another adult season ticket holder of the chance of a ticket if they sold out. They said I could buy an adult and a child ticket and then upgrade the child ticket when they went on general sale. This seems to be jobsworth bureaucracy when some common sense should be applied. Having bought the child ticket, that seat is not now available to anybody else. What difference does it make whether there is an adult or a child sat there, apart from the seat being sold for a higher price? The Saints website states that a ticket for the Sheffield Utd match is available to ST holders, one per ST. There is no stipulation that only tickets of the same denomination can be purchased.

I am assuming that those prices are what those clubs would like to pay for those players in their own little fantasy worlds. Tadic and Schneiderlin are the two who in particular could walk into pretty well any team here or in Europe, so the two most likely to command the highest fees raised upwards following a bidding war by the wealthiest clubs. As per our default position, we don't wish to sell them and we don't need to sell them, so the only sales will be based as before on ridiculous sums of money being offered, the offers that cannot be refused because they are so ludicrously high. We will identify replacements for any players who leave, who will cost a fraction of those they replace and be better players. Those players we sell will then prove to be not as good without their Saints team mates and the buying club will wonder why they didn't buy the players that we have brought in as replacements. I see that you have Liverpool down as prospective buyers of three of our players. So you don't think that they've learnt their lesson yet?

Do I remember correctly or did that idiot nonentity award Wilshere Man of the Match the previous game too? Frankly, it was a travesty, as he had quite an average game both times and one therefore supposes that there is some reason like nepotism or man love between them somewhere. Otherwise the conclusion must be that the man is a total moron, which thinking about the way that he rabbits on aimlessly is probably closer to the truth, even though Clyne did get a mention from him along with Welbeck for having a decent game. But as several have already mentioned, Clyne received very little support from his team mates in defence, even though he made the runs to enable him to get into acres of space out wide on the right and during the second half he received little cover from Stirling up front. Hodges is supposedly intelligent enough and with sufficient experience during his career to know how to employ a player to their best advantage. He has seen Clyne play often enough now to know that he is most effective giving the team additional width to stretch the opponents midfield and also that he possesses great pace. It must have been so frustrating for Clyne to make the movement to create the space and to see the ball played to the other wing, or more often played down the middle, into the traffic. One hopes that during the post-match analysis, at least Gary Neville will have the ability to see what many of us have, that Clyne is wasted unless one plays to his strengths and is used as an effective attacking option as well as a sound defender. The defence need a bloody good kick up the backside, as does Stirling for not tracking back and leaving our defence exposed. I suspect that the current Southampton team would be eminently capable of beating that England team. God knows how they will fare when they meet some stiffer opposition.

Yep. I'm totally with the sentiments of the first sentence of this last paragraph. As I said, because his replacement is a better player than him, fortunately I don't miss him. I'm still up for booing him when he comes here with Lovren; if they're selected to play, that is.

I'll reiterate for your benefit, CEC. Nobody is saying that he was a poor player, or that his contribution to the club over many years was anything other than great. The bad taste in the mouth was totally over the way that went about leaving us. The statement made by him that he would be happy to end his career here, his reported comment that when he played at Anfield before he left that the hairs stood up on the back of his neck, the signing of the Liverpool youngster's shirt in Brazil, the crass statement to the poor Favela ghetto kids, the bare-faced performance at the player of the year awards when he probably already knew he wanted to leave, the crass letter of thanks to the fans in the Echo, the way that he reported that his phone calls to the board were ignored, the reticence to put in an official transfer request, the badge-kissing, generally the lack of example that he presented to his team-mates as the team captain. Lambert behaved in a totally honourable manner and gained respect for it and will be remembered fondly by most, with some nostalgia and regret for how he has been treated by Liverpool. Lallana acted like a spoilt and petulant kid and has been treated by derision as a result. His reputation here has been tarnished by the way he left and as a result, many hope that he fails at Liverpool. It is generally accepted that Tadic is the better player, so from one perspective we should be grateful to Lallana for giving us the opportunity to improve our team. That applies also to Lambert and Lovren in particular and Shaw and Chambers to a lesser extent

I agree that he was a fine player and did well for us, but stop trying to defend the snide way that he acted when he wanted to leave us to play for Liverpool. You will just have to accept that it has left a bad taste in the mouths of most Saints fans and if it doesn't affect the way that you see him in any way, then bully for you. I completely agree that duplicitous is quite an apposite term to describe his behaviour, but to call that a serious accusation is a bit OTT. It is an opinion formed on the basis of the sort of things that other posters have highlighted, many of which were reported in the media.

I was there and recall the fans flooding out of The Dell as the 90th minute approached. The general consensus of the fans around me was that it was no disgrace to lose against Newcastle considering the form that they were in at the time. But those fans who had left really must have been kicking themselves when on 86 minutes Heaney equalised, closely followed by goals from recent new signings Gordon Watson on 89 minutes and Neil Shipperley on 90 minutes.

This thought had occurred to me too. After all, he is privy to information that could benefit a direct rival business. Sometimes though there are cases like this brought to court where the employee who leaves claims that this is what he does for his line of work and that he cannot reasonably be expected to do other types of work that he isn't as suited to. I suspect that the situation is similar to that of a manager, and a clause preventing them from working for a rival club wouldn't hold water.

Which is unlikely to be the case this year, as those traditional top four teams apart from Chelsea and Man City would have accumulated many more points at this stage usually. Unless they go on fantastic winning runs, the likes of Arsenal, Man Utd, Liverpool, Spurs, Everton won't be in contention for those last two places with those points totals unless they buck their ideas up and pronto.

Those teams have more squad depth because they are playing in Europe and effectively need nearly two teams. Because of the additonal number of matches they have to play, there is the increased risk of key players being injured or suspended. If they have any significant overlap of players playing both in Europe and the Premier League, there is the additional factor of tiredness. Disappointments suffered from losing CL matches can also affect team morale in league matches and vice versa. So all things considered, their extra squad depth isn't necessarily that much of an advantage. We have adequate cover in most positions for the fixture commitments we have to fulfill.

I want to know which of Man Utd or West Ham is the more likely to be relegated.