Wes Tender

The Match of the Day pundits were divided about the disallowed Ramirez goal. I thought it looked marginally offside, but was disallowed because of a push by Ramirez. Dublin said rightly, but Lawrenson said that the goal should have stood, as the Arsenal defender reacted like a leaf in the wind or something like that. Ramirez hardly touched him, so same old Arsenal, always cheating.

We are entirely justified in considering that a point gained, whereas Arsenal will surely consider it two points lost. I came away from the match feeling much the same sometimes as when we have won. But in reality, looking at the stats of shots on goal, we certainly had it within our grasp to gain all three points. Any neutral observer asked to identify which team was the star-studded glory team and which was the one only recently languishing in the third division would have been hard pressed to choose Arsenal as the better team. Tactically, Adkins got it spot on today, as he had against Stoke. He played each team in such a fashion as to neutralise their strengths. In the case of Arsenal, we had to be in their faces, denying them the space to play their fast passing game. Time and time again we tackled the ball off them, or saw their passes go astray, so it us who played the neater passes and kept possession to better effect. Sky would have scheduled this match expecting a goal-fest and if they were lucky, a high-scoring Arsenal win reminiscent of that against Newcastle the last time they played. What a disappointment we must have provided them, with Arsenal unable to score and our increasingly mean and well-organised defence improving with every match; and we didn't even have our first choice right back available. Tonight I feel a real sense of pride in our manager and our team. Playing like that against Arsenal, if sustained, gives cause for optimism for the second half of the season, especially if we can fine-tune the team a bit with a good signing or two in this transfer window.

I don't see anybody disputing whether a move to the Arse would be great for him and his future. All I see, is opinions as to whether the time is right at the moment and incredulity at the figure of just £5 million being mentioned. But as you've suggested, Cortese isn't going to let him go without squeezing Arsenal for mega-bucks, as we don't need or want to sell him.

It took quite a while for Walcott to get going with them though, didn't it? In fact he was playing for the national team before he got much match time for Arsenal. Bale got off to a slow start at Tottenham too. But my main point was that his chances of playing for England wouldn't be harmed if he stayed with us, or necessarily improved if he went to Arsenal. If he is deemed to be better than other available players at left back, he will be selected regardless. And I stand by my opinion that he will get more first team football with us, at least initially, because Arsenal will be better able to attract and buy top defenders as cover for that position.

I'm fairly confident that Roy Hodgson will select the players for the national team based on their abilities, rather than for which club they play. Besides, he is likely to get more exposure playing for our first team than he would initially playing for Arsenal's reserves, or warming their bench.

There is stuff on Google about Aunstic and KrypTix

Yes, that's the one, trousers. Now it's changed to something else. Perhaps an idea to retain that screen capture to see whether it can be used to track the perpetrators. Anybody know how to contact Granty or the site owners and notify them?

Has somebody hacked into the main forum? I'm not getting the normal screen.

It amuses me that the red tops are so confident that the Arse will sign Shaw and the figure of £5 million really is derisory enough to gain the biggest belly-laughs of all. Doesn't it occur to them that apart from anything else, the top glory teams all want him, so it is suggestive that the price would be forced up to the level that the club that wants him most would be prepared to pay for him. And that is even if we were prepared to sell him for that amount, when we don't need the money. So either Arseanl can raise their offer to a ridiculous amount, or they can go and take a running jump.

And Stoke must also be cursing that Kenwyn-Jones' even worse miss might possibly cost them a higher league position at the end of the season. Personally, I suspect that come the end of the season, if any individual player's negative contribution will be considered in our final reckoning, so far it would be Hoiveld's own goals. I doubt that any players' missed shots will be remembered.

I don't think that we need to be more aggressive necessarily. I would like us to be a bit more cute to gain an unfair advantage, something that pretty well all other teams do, but not so much us. I detest this form of cheating, but everybody else does it, so why not us? So let our players roll around theatrically, as if they're mortally wounded. Let them collapse to the ground when a player just brushes against them and harrangue the referee to have players sent off for minor transgressions. Lambert in particular is far too honest and tries to stand his ground when defenders climb all over his back. He ought to take a leaf out of Carroll's book and go down if somebody breathes hard behind him. The extra free kicks and penalties we might gain through this gamesmanship might be the difference between survival or relegation.

OK, 6-5 to them then.

For all those moaning that we ought to have got all three points because we had a chance that Guly missed to make it 4-1, that we were playing against 10 men for the last 20 minutes, let's be a bit more balanced and take account of a few factors that would have levelled up the "what if" side of the match. There were two clear hand-balls that we got away with, that would probably have gained Stoke two penalty goals. Guly's miss was cancelled out by Kenywyn Jones' even more glaring miss from 3 yards out. So I make that 6-4 to them, if we're going to place too much credence on chances missed or penalties not given. Yes, on the face of it, it was disappointing to miss the opportunity to go 1-4 up and then only get a point, but credit must go to Pulis for going for broke and gambling on 4 strikers up front and three defenders. Adkins countered with 5 defenders, but it can be argued that we should have continued attacking ourselves and held a high line, exploiting the extra man advantage. Otherwise, we should have kept possession better and passed the ball around. But Stoke's home defensive record is phenomenal and having only conceded 4 goals all season, we managed to put 3 past them and should have made it four. Because of our natural bias, we will have seen it as points dropped, but the neutrals and our immediate rivals in the table will have seen it as a hard away point won by us and that scoring 3 goals against Stoke was a very creditable achievement.

A typically rambling demonstration of the thought processes of our Barry. There are two ends of a stick and as usual, he unerringly grasps the wrong one. Sensible people might have misgivings about how the second half of the season might shape up, but they have enough sense of balance to reason that just because the first half of the season might have been difficult, there is plenty of time for action to be taken to turn things around. They also reason that there are only three relegation spots and that there is also potential with a run of bad luck and injuries/suspensions to key players in other teams for them to be sucked into the relegation spots. The transfer window is shortly to open and the squad can be strengthened to improve our chances. Believing that we are doomed at this stage is not seen as an act of treachery; it is a position that reflects poorly on the ability of some to apply intelligent thought and reason to a situation over which they have little inside knowledge. Quite what the connection is here between one's support for one's club and any supposed religious leanings is so tenuous as to be beyond my comprehension, I'm afraid.

Does the dole know you're on here, Scouser?

Of course you are a long time Saints fan, having watched them since you were knee-high to a grasshopper, used to go with your Dad as a regular in the chocolate boxes, followed them in Europe, was there when Benali and Lundekvan scored and other major milestones. Pardon me for my scepticism when you arrive on this board with a handful of previous posts, the majority of which are critical of the manager or the club and then you expect us to believe that you are not a Skate on a wind-up. Yes, you are entitled to your opinion; we even allow skates on here too express their opinions. The abuse wasn't because of your lack of computer skills; it was because of what you said as a newcomer, starting a thread critical of the manager. Personally, I'm a fan of the previous system whereby you had to pay to become a full member before you could start a thread.

The club used to see it as an income stream under Lowe. That is no longer the case. It may be that bringing through our own future stars via the Academy into the first team will save us a considerable sum of money by not having to buy them, but if they are rated at ten million or more, then why wouldn't we want to keep them for ourselves? We have no need to sell them. Obviously if stupid amounts of money were offered by a glory team, then we'll sell, but not otherwise. The Academy is not that expensive to run in the scheme of things when compared to the cost of buying players of the quality of some of those we produce.

Is a fiver a lot of money to you Barry? 10p a week to have a laugh at your rivals on their main forum doesn't seem to be bad value to me, especially when there are people offering free grammar coaching to boot.

How did your team fare against Crawley yesterday? Did you help to fill the Park? Which is your favourite ground in the third division?

Merry Christmas Troll.

Well, there's the difference between us. I wonder whether it had occurred to you that just around the corner is the January transfer window? You know, the one in which a club can assess where they have shortcomings and address them by bringing in other players. Anybody with any intelligence would wait and see what action is taken during the January transfer window before making assessments about our prospects for relegation. After all, we've still got just over half the season to go yet.

I'm entirely happy with Christmas and also with Adkins and the team. The only thing I find boring is you. It's you who seems in need of some festive cheer.

You're firmly to the right, that's for sure.

I must have been watching an entirely different game to everyone else. I thought that we dominated the first half and won most of the 50/50 balls. Our passing and movement was mostly quite good and we played with width. What was missing was the final ball in the box and the willingness to shoot at goal. Of course Sunderland changed their tactics having gone a goal up and came out in charge for the first 15 minutes or so of the second half, where they were first to the ball. But we came back to dominate most of the match after that and kept most of the play in their half. Several praised De Ridder and thought he did well, but I thought that he was pretty rubbish and was surprised to see him play for us again in the first team frankly. I would have preferred to see Rodrigues up front myself. Apart from allowing Fletcher too much space to score their goal, I thought that the defence was good yesterday and showing signs of really becoming a tight unit. Shaw had an outstanding game, as did Fonte. Cork was also solid in midfield, but Schneiderlin had an off day and Davis was an improvement when he came on. We laid siege to their goal in the last ten minutes and could have got the equaliser at least, which would have been a fairer result. In particular, Sunderland made a clearance off the line which kept them in it and there were several goalmouth scrambles where anything could have happened. Credit to them for dogged defence when under the cosh.

Incredible maturity for one so young. The last few games have shown why the very top teams have been looking at him. He'll play left back for England one day and make the position his like Cole did. As long as he isn't injured, he's a league above Fox in ability already, which is really saying something when comparing a 17 year old with an experienced Scottish International.