Wes Tender

I didn't include the two goals against him by Chelsea in his ire at the MLT lobbed goal. I included it in the statement he had a torrid three games. His ire with the MLT goal was probably because he had let in 7 goals in two games at that point and it was the second time he had been lobbed audaciously in two matches. As you say though, 11 goals conceded in two matches sounds much worse than 13 in 3.

The credit he gives Southampton rather p*sses on that idiot journo who maintains that he already wanted out of here to play in Argentina. He sounds very content with life here and his comments that he was also becoming much fitter are probably down to the coaching regime here too.

Misguided Missile won't have that said about Pochettino How were we expected to know about him when he arrived here, if a Sports Journalist from a major Red Top newspaper had never heard of him?

Schmeichel's ire at Le Tiss chipping him probably had some basis of the circumstances surrounding it. Bearing in mind that he was reckoned by many to be the World's best Keeper, he had a torrid three games, starting with 5 goals he let in against Newcastle the week before, 6 against us and then two against Chelsea the following match. 13 goals in three matches before he steadied himself and reverted to his old self.

It will be, what with the expense of European football too.

What was that song called? I didn't catch it.

Yes, I do claim it. If you don't agree, then who cares? I think that you're just a bit miffed that Southampton is the UK's largest Cruise Liner port and not your beloved Liverpool dump.

Well, having done the same exercise, the Yanks cannot even agree between themselves, half say Annapolis and the other half says Newport, Rhode Island. But other claimants say the British Virgin Islands, Kiel, the Abaco Islands and Stockholm. But as lots of the Yank Google sites are written by self-publicising Yank towns, then one would expect them to glorify themselves. The Yanks always like to have the biggest, including heads and mouths. But as there are such events of importance as Cowes Week, the Fastnet Race, the Round the Island race, the Tall Ships race and Around the World races starting in the Solent area, then we have plenty of grounds for claiming that the Solent is the Capital of World Sailing

So in your mind, one cannot list the position of a city within an attractive environment as being a merit?

I usually have a flake in my ice cream.

Did I say Southampton? No. I said the Solent area. Cowes, the Hamble river, (Hamble/Warsash to Bursledon, Ocean Village, the Beaulieu river, Hythe Marina are our direct area, and slightly further afield there is Lymington, Christchurch on one side and Portsmouth harbour/Gosport marina the other side. I would call the Solent area the greatest in the World for sailing/yachting and it is centrered around Southampton. Where did you have in mind as being more important?

It is one of the reasons that Southampton is a great place to live. You are close to the sea, the Isle of Wight, the New Forest, three major cathedral cities, the south downs and if you fancy some serious shopping, theatre, the biggest and best museums in the land, they're all just an hour away. Unfortunately, Liverpool is much further away from London, which is probably why you're a bit fed up with us in Southampton having it as an option if we wish to go to a World class capital city when we feel the need for a cultural fix. But then it is always nice to get back home afterwards.

And yet we have the annual International Boat Show based here for the past few decades, growing ever larger and attracting some seriously wealthy visitors to the Solent area all around us, which is the yachting capital of the World. As Whitey GD says, we also have a theatre of some eminence and an art gallery with a collection better than those in most cities. And we have our share of decent hotels and restaurants either in the city or nearby, thanks. You can take the number of tourists as a barometer of how good a city is to live in if you wish, but I suspect that most residents don't put too much store on that. But then again, the Cotswolds is awash with tourists and yet Chipping Norton is deemed crap by the imbecile who compiled the list and so is York inundated with tourists too.

I might as well ask you the same about Liverpool. But of course the smaller the city, the fewer the number of nice areas there are, logically because if they were of any size, they would constitute a larger proportion of the city. But nevertheless, there are several nice areas of the city. Bassett, most of the area towards the Sports Centre/Golf Course and across the road around Glen Eyre area, quite a bit of Highfield and behind Portswood opposite Waitrose, Ocean Village, Chilworth. But of course, as with most cities, a lot of the residential areas where people commute from are on the outskirts of the city, places like Chandlers Ford/Hiltingbury, Hamble, Romsey, the Southern Parishes etc, which have very nice residential housing.

Yes,the one that was posted earlier:- http://www.redcafe.net/threads/manchester-united-vs-southampton.377978/ I can't recall a Man Utd forum giving a smaller club team like us as much respect pre-match.

Is the debate about crappy towns to live in, or crappy towns to visit? If the former, then as I say, once you've visited the museums, art galleries, and other tourist attractions a couple of times, your interest begins to wane and you realise that you live in a sh*t-hole. And from that perpective, Portsmouth is a far bigger sh*t-hole than Southampton.

What a change in our fortunes that United's own fans' forum is nervous about them playing us. If Shaw is available instead of Fox, then we have every chance of producing an upset. They have better players than us overall, but I still believe that we may have the advantage in midfield and defence over them and if we keep them bottled up in their own half, we can frustrate them and nick a result. I genuinely don't think that we fear them and team confidence must be sky high at the moment. There really can be no better time to play them than now.

All very well citing those museums as reasons why Skatesmouth is better than Southampton in your opinion, but that misses the point somewhat. A lot of the quality of life in a town or city isn't about museums, but about the actual environment, the housing, parks and gardens, the attractiveness of its hinterland. I suspect that once you've visited those attractions you mentioned, the city will begin to look pretty dismal with all those mean little terrace houses and shabby streets full of pikeys. And since when does Gosport get lumped together with Portsmouth?

Liverpool? Better than London? You're on a wind-up, surely? And I presume that you mean the Halifax in Nova Scotia, rather than the English one.

And also 4th in the Premiership too. How fitting

All the fuss about the lack of the slice of cheese is probably misplaced anyway, as it is perfectly possible that the thin yellow slice of "foodstuff" that you assume would be cheese, might feasibly contain no cheese in it at all. Certainly the probability is that even if it did contain some actual cheese during the manufacturing processing of the product, that it still could not be called cheese, but a cheese product The caterers are probably doing you a favour healthwise by leaving it out. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100107162948AAiMGxQ And a very amusing article about other stuff that you might also eat elsewhere,if you're the sort of person to partake of Burgers in a football stadium catering outlet. http://www.cracked.com/article/113_6-fake-foods-you-will-wish-you-didnt-have-in-your-kitchen/

That must have been praise from other sources than the one that labelled him an accident waiting to happen then. And isn't it feasible that any who criticise him do so within their mental capacity, just as those who praise him do? For some reason you appear to believe that those who accept mediocrity are somehow mentally brighter than those who don't. I thought that Michu was their best player, although Dyer can't be far behind.Fox got better later in the game, notably when Ward-Prowse came on to strengthen that wing. Praise for the back four should go mostly to Boruc and the other three defenders, who had their tasks made much more difficult by the weaknesses of their colleague. And why cannot it be argued that those who are critical of a weak link in the team care for the team more than those who believe that he is not a liability?

The number of times that there was a collective groan from all around me in the Northam last season when Fox's name was read out in the pre-match team, tells me that he was not considered to be a player of Championship standard. And just as now, any tactically astute manager would have identified him as our weak link and exploited that flank. Because we are now in the top flight, his shortcomings are magnified by better and faster players and more tactically astute managers to exploit any perceived weaknesses in a rival team. Yesterday we had one of the fastest wingers in the division employed by one of the most tactically astute managers to exploit Fox's wing and we were extremely fortunate that we had not conceded a goal or two before Pochettino brought on Ward-Prowse to shore up that side. I would go as far as to say that because of one player, we were unable to play our high pressing game to the extent that we would have liked because of the worry that we would leave ourselves too exposed down the left flank. That tactic requires two fast fullbacks with the speed to both maraud forward and then track back to defend and if one of them does not have the speed or the defensive ability, the whole formation is lop-sided. We were able to change the formation to deprive Swansea of their width and protect our lead having gone ahead, but how we would have reacted tactically had we gone behind, God knows.

A really tough match against a team very much like us in many ways. We would have beaten them last year at St Mary's had it not been for Dyer coming on late to equalise for them, but this season we are that bit better in defence and although Dyer ran amok against Fox, he generally came across a brick wall against our central defenders, particularly Lovren. It was inevitable that nearly all of their really potent attacking moves came down our left flank, with our weakest defender facing their paciest wide player. I'm sure that Dyer would have found it much harder to threaten against Shaw. The result could easily have been all three points to Swansea but for a bravura performance from Boruc, some dogged defending and some pretty poor finishing from Swansea's attack. Their assessment of the match will have been similar to ours when we came up against Jaaskelainen when we played West Ham. On the plus side, we generally played some attractive passing football and had a few chances to have increased the score beyond the two goals. I eagerly await watching MOTD to see why a second goal was disallowed before Rodriguez made the match secure later on. Wanyama continues to be a dilemma, giving away possession several times again, but then putting in a solid display by being a rock in midfield. Tactically Pochettino got it about right, strengthening the midfield to hold our lead when Swansea were threatening to gain the upper hand and with the introduction of James Ward-Prowse, we had five across the middle for a while to deny Swansea width. Lambert and Osvaldo had been reasonable until they were substituted, but it is encouraging that Lallana is getting back to his tricky best and took his goal really well, whilst Rodriguez scored a great poacher's goal, forcing a mistake from their defender with his quick thinking and a good finish. So now we are above both Manchester teams, having conceded only two goals in seven matches and following three clean sheets. OK, arguably we have only played Liverpool of the glory teams, but we beat them with a clean sheet too and frankly, I don't know which team we ought to fear playing.

A request for support to a petition by the self-publicising cockroach Alistair Campbell:- I'm sure that some of you on here will appreciate the opportunity, in the same way that it is a great opportunity to have a pop at the odious Campbell, who must be extremely naive to believe that a petition, regardless of how many signatures it attracts, will bring Dacre to a face to face debate with him. I'm sure that there must have been numerous occasions when the press had wished to have a face to face debate with some Labour Minister or Blair and were palmed off with the hypocrite Campbell spinning the story. He is plainly only doing this to raise his profile, which is currently as yesterday's man, returned to semi-obscurity, certainly not the "major public figure" described by change.org.