The9

Bloody popularity contest so vote early and often or some Man U, Arsenal, Spurs, Chelsea or Liverpool tap in will win - Laptop, mobile, multiple votes. Yes, he's been an ar5e, but let's get that goal the credit it deserves.

It's 9 years old and only has 111,417 posts, which part of that sounds infatuated?

Balanced up by one of the worst penalty decisions you'll ever see, in Coventry's favour, late on.

"Birmingham". Haven't had an average attendance larger than our current capacity in 44 years. 23 of the past 30 years spent outside the top division. 2 League Cup wins and 2 JPT-level wins in their entire history. Twice as many seasons as us in the third tier in the past 30 years too. Birmingham would be exactly the kind of club I'd want to see promoted to the Premier League. Then again so are Huddersfield, Burnley, Watford, Bournemouth and Brighton, all of whom look likely to finish above us this season.

I doubt he'll be anywhere near the final decision-maker in the transfer market. None of the other managers seem to have had that much input beyond the obvious "previous club" buys and unlike our previous post-Adkins managers he doesn't have a particular knowledge of players from his home nation that we're lacking intel on. If we sign Joe Allen or Hal Robson-Kanu I'll be furious...

Shouldn't we be aiming to do as well as we can? We weren't bothered about "re-establishing in mid-table" when we came 14th on 41 points in 2013. Straight on up to 8th, 7th, 6th, and 8th.

Not renewing a contract isn't "sacking".

I think that's splitting hairs to be honest. Wigan was about seeing if Gabbiadini could play in the hole, West Ham was seeing if we could play 2 up top (didn't need the Proof of Concept if you ask me), but neither worked very well so he basically reverted to type for the next 7 games.

Three ninths and a 13th before this season with a team that hadn't finished that high since the early 70s... everything's relative.

Bednarek looks like the player they think Stephens is to me, best centre back we've had in the team since January. Romeu's problem has mostly been not having a fixed defensive partner (and what was wrong with Ward-Prowse who grew into the shuttling role so well last season?) - but you're right that selling top 6 players and replacing them with unknowns has not worked as well as it did in 2014 - mainly because there are 10+ other teams sitting in the same recruitment pockets that we are now, and we're in a much worse position to recruit than we were then too.

I'm not being funny but everywhere he's gone he's implemented a very defensive version of something like 5-4-1 to begin with, right from his first appointment with Wales, and that's exactly what he did here. He has literally asked the players to fit into a system he's used multiple times before. The fact it was "anything different" has helped us a lot, as our predictability was a big part of the problem.

My concern is that whilst he's been allowed to change the formation in order to keep us up, when Koeman did that to stop a run of 9 games without a win his parting gift on leaving was a "not bought into the club philosophy" from the club - I question whether Hughes is the kind of manager who'll take a job where he's being told what formation to play and what he can and can't do regarding how the team plays. Whilst I'm not sure Reed should go as the structure has been successful previously and we can progress and improve within the existing framework, the overall philosophy and tactics have been overtaken in recent years by clubs spending more on their players and far more teams' tactics moving to 3-4-3, and we've stood still tactically and become incredibly easy to defend against. Part of our recent resilience has been clubs not knowing how to play against our new formation having prepared for something else. But not only do we need a manager who is allowed to challenge that, we need an overhaul of what we do - more money for player recruitment to match that by the other 13 non big 6 teams, and addressing the key areas of weakness that have been identified in both the system and its execution on-pitch.

Like Huddersfield, Brighton and... well maybe not Newcastle I guess?

It was basically doing that all game, we just weren't stuck in it until afterwards.

It was probably him sliding in front of the Itchen after scoring when playing for someone against us a few years ago - may have been Leicester in the Championship, can't remember. Personally it doesn't bother me, he's a crap Championship-level striker.

I was over the play-off defeat as soon as they had the worst ever Premier League season when they went up. 9 months of hilarity. I'd quite like Fulham to go up because it's a decent away day, though the wife hasn't been to Derby and we've both been to the others. Also I want us to sign Tom Lawrence and that isn't happening if they go up.

When we needed to sit down during the cup game and all the Saints fans were standing up, we got moved to the neutral zone. It was... there. Mostly empty for that match though the half-time divot diggers sat in the row in front of us in full Fulham training kit.

Can I suggest St Sabuvyu Day? It's a much better name.

Jesus so much guff in that quote - Villa were obviously going down for 3 seasons before they did, and we've only been a bit crap for one after 3 of the best seasons in our history. He then says "when we drop they'll hopefully be in the Championship waiting for us". So seeing as that's not next season, he's assuming (again) their promotion and our relegation in the forthcoming season, even though we haven't finished this low since 2012 and they haven't finished anywhere even in the Championship since 2012 (different club). Also, it took them another 37 years to finish above us last time... we've only had 7.

Amusing use of Disco reference, as we were singing it a LOT in the buses leaving the Liberty on Tuesday.

Last year they had to find £5m just to pass the safety inspection, and they also signed Brett Pitman from the league above, who won't have come cheap. As we said when they were all being delighted to own Fratton, the cost of maintaining and replacing all the fally-down bits will be one big albatross that will weigh them down. Same old same old.

It was there in 1992. I played football against them for Southampton University in 1992 as it happens, just after they and every other Poly changed their name following the Further and Higher Education Act of 1992, which had the effect of blending crap Polys and good universities into the same pot, and merged UCCA and PCAS admissions to form UCAS. We lost, FWIW.

I don't think either of them are up to much, but getting rid of Long, who does a decent job defending from the front, has great workrate for the odd isolated away game where we don't see the ball much, and occasionally even scores - rather than Carrillo who just looks lost and aside from one decent effort on his debut has shown nothing at all to suggest he'd even trouble a League One defence (he didn't) - is bonkers.

*coughs*.