The9

I'd pick Bertrand at left CB and McQueen LWB or just play a 4 of Bertrand/Hoedt/Bednarek/Cedric with Stephens at DM with Romeu, rather than putting Stephens and Hoedt together in a back line ever again. Though on the bright side, only their centre backs will win headers against us and they're not up the pitch most of the time...

I was sat on a wall eating a kebab on County Road in Walton with my Saints shirt on. If Saints had a point for every Everton fan that said to me that we deserved to win/apologised/said we should stay up, we'd be in Europe again next season. Mind you, even if we had a point for every bloke with his shirt off that looked like he didn't know anything about football but was going to kill me we'd be above Huddersfield too.

No, no it isn't. By any measure.

And he was right. They just couldn't do it with a fackwit like him in charge.

I'd be disappointed if the EFL clubs do away with the regulation to print a programme. Having said that I only buy them at away games and never for matches I haven't been to - somewhere spread across a load of carrier bags in my garage is therefore a record of which matches I went to in the 80s, 90s and early 2000s. More recent stuff is being tracked online. I might even organise them at some point if I ever get somewhere indoors to keep them.

That was right in front of us and I thought he could have done a lot better too. Literally just ran into the corner and poked it off the pitch, he didn't have to do anything other than "not that"... still, no individual blame after a fantastic performance when we dominated for 95 minutes...

"No reason" other than Cedric having treatment for 1 minute 15 seconds, 1 minute 6 seconds of which had elapsed after the minimum of 4 indicated on the board when they scored. I know, because I timed the added period, and noted the stoppage duration, and my 4 minute timer was showing minus 1 minute 9 when the goal went in. Having said all that, ref could have blown with the ball out wide which was past the 5 minute mark. He only added even more time after the goal to allow the kick off to be taken, which it has to be according to the laws.

There's been nothing to share of note... but finally an Under Armour shirt has been launched for next season, so there's something to speculate about... though it won't be for long, they usually launch something soon. AZ Alkmaar home for 2018/19.... Apart from that, the only other "new" UA shirts are our third, which may as well be a t-shirt... And Villa's "after the season started" third, which is the same style as their away, but has a different collar to anything we've worn. Feel free to merge with the hundreds of other kit threads that have no doubt popped up in my absence... UTFS.

I don't recall it being anything like as loud as Camara's goal against Norwich, but I suspect we'll never know.

Well, no, it was already beyond tits up at that stage thanks to the ill-advised expenditure on the promotion-chasing failure, and Lowe's efforts to cut costs kept us out of admin for a while but were eventually were in vain.

Labour gained 40 Councillors, Lib Dems gained about the same, all (overall) from UKIP who lost 90+. The Conservatives right now appear to exist in an electoral vacuum where everything happens around them rather than to them. Seems like their share of the vote is set in stone no matter what anyone else does, which is probably as a result of their support being largely older people who are less likely to change their voting intentions. https://yougov.co.uk/news/2017/04/25/demographics-dividing-britain/ It also shows that UKIP have served their purpose of a protest vote and disappeared, and everyone else is waiting for Brexit to hit before deciding who to vote against.

I was hoping we'd picked up on this, saw it earlier in the week, a share on one of my friends' lists prompted about 10 people in the Northam (including myself) to indicate that it definitely didn't happen, and Steve Grant chipped in to point out that it doesn't even scan and fit the song... I can only even remember Defoe getting one "you Skate b'stard" when he came on for that matter. Add it to the pile o'myths.

They have about a 1/7 chance of going up as it stands at the moment. About 50/50 on making the playoffs and a slightly less than 1/4 chance of winning them if they do.

Strange, they weren't singing that at Oldham when we went to watch it the day before Wigan v Saints in the QF... eventful day that, ref took the teams off in the snow and the Oldham fans were chanting "OFF OFF OFF" as they were 2 down at the time. Still, we had a laugh with the weather being as mental as it was... away fans in the background here... In case anyone's wondering it was ground 86 for me and we weren't doing anything on the Saturday.

Seriously though.

Apart from the bit from around 2010 until 2016/17, yeah?

Jesus, another pointless cosmetic rebrand for the hundreds of places they slap their badge all over the stadium... expensive business for a decision apparently on a whim.

He's FAR too argumentative to be the yes-man we've recently insisted on.

For a six month Premier League management career before Saints fans decide he's boring and negative and was a rubbish player and they want Europe now, etc.

We've got one of the top 30 incomes in world football, there are a lot more than 30 managers better than Hughes.

Nope, I saw his approach with Wales at first hand. Build a defensive unit, think about how to score after that. We're already terrible at scoring goals, what we need is a balanced approach that motivates what we have and maybe has a bit more confidence in some of our creativity to be allowed to pass through the middle.

Our best chance of winning is to not concede a goal. Basic stats. Concede 0, worst case scenario is 1 point. Score 2, and you still need another goal to average as many points as for conceding 0. Of course there's an element of complacency that our system will always work, when actually some of the reasons it worked before have gone (eg Mane and Pelle switching roles in open play, the ability to finish chances, players not just running down the wing and crossing to no-one every bloody time), but what's required is flexing within that system rather than entirely overhauling it - the basic principle of defensive stability throttling opposition chance creation and Saints having 4 attacking players doing their thing at the other end is still good in theory, it's just the practical execution of it that's lacking.

We didn't need 2 up front as a starting formation at any point in the past 4 seasons when finishing in the top 8, so why do we need it now? What we actually need is someone like Sims to run at people and create a bit of upset and space in opposing defences. The predictability is doing for us, every team knows what we're going to do before we do it. The odd pass through the middle might be an idea as well. Also, Carrillo isn't "awful" by any stretch of the imagination.

Didn't make any difference with the exact same (lack of) atmosphere two seasons ago when we made Europe.

If they don't get any more points from their next few matches their final 5 games are all against top 7 teams. 36 will be fine, they have 34. It'll take a hell of a run but they're not safe yet.