The9

I'm fairly sure Lambert will be more interested in getting a year or two's contract somewhere in the bottom two divisions while he still has any value at all, rather than signing a pay as you play deal at Saints in order to crap all over his legacy and not earn a penny at the same time. His time has passed, and thanks to him for what he did when he was here and the money he made leaving when he did.

On a similar note, my freeserve "lifetime" email account finally got canned at the start of June after freeserve were bought out by wanadoo in the early 2000s, then Orange, mid 2000s, then EE circa 2010. Apparently 19 years now counts as a lifetime...

You say "striker", but Boufal did it against Sunderland in the EFL Cup. And against Boro in the League. And Clasie did so against West Brom too. Given that when we have one striker his job is basically to be nearer the goal than anyone else, the chances of him being outside the box and shooting isn't huge in the first place. Luckily we have stats to identify whether we have strikers who even bother to take shots from outside the box... https://public.tableau.com/profile/paul.riley#!/vizhome/PremierLeagueShotDashboard2016-17/PLShotDashboard2016-17 The quick summary of that is over the course of the entire 16/17 season: Austin took 6 shots from outside the box (3 off target, 2 saved, 1 blocked) - and about 28 from inside the box, it's a little difficult to see exactly due to the clustering. Gabbiadini took 4 shots from outside the box (3 blocked, 1 off target) - and about 25 from inside. Long took 8 (4 saved, 3 blocked, 1 off target) - and it's only when you see the SWATHES of chances missed from inside the box you realise how bad his finishing was. Rodriguez took 7 (2 goals, 3 saved, 2 blocked) - about 25 from inside. To illustrate the point further, Redmond isn't a striker, but over the season he took more outside the box shots than the strikers above in total, and Steven Davis, and even Ryan Bertrand took more shots from outside the box than any one striker. Redmond took 27 (11 off target, 10 saved, 6 blocked) Bertrand took 11 (5 off target, 3 saved, 3 blocked). Davis took 14 (9 off target, 3 blocked, 2 saved) Now it might be the case that we could ask for a better goal return from our NON-strikers, but the low number of shots generally taken from outside the box by strikers certainly doesn't suggest it's something we should be particularly bothered about. Strikers hitting shots from distance isn't anything like as important as them having chances from inside it to begin with, due to the low likelihood of scoring a goal from those shots, and is even less important when you consider how few of those shots they actually take. So basically, it doesn't matter than Rodriguez is the only striker who scored from outside the box last season, and lone strikers should concentrate on scoring from inside the box.

It's a shame for Hartlepool, but hey, it was them or Newport.

Rugby is 80 not 90 minutes though... My single experience of a scoreboard-clock timing a match was on a US Soccer Tour in 1994, the 90 minutes was played straight through without stoppages and the game was not extended or stopped in any way outside of half time, as the clock ran for the full 90. Because we went ahead early in the game and the match was played in a bloody huge field, we proceeded to defend our lead by kicking the ball as far as possible off the pitch and feigning injury where possible, all as the clock continued to tick. Suffice to say, actually stopping the clock and only playing the 60 minutes the ball is in play would have been preferable for the integrity of the game.

He played against Bournemouth because he was in rotation with Long. With Austin going off injured against Be'er Sheva, they alternated the following games against Boro, Stoke and Bournemouth, with Long playing midweek and Rodriguez weekends. Gabbiadini hadn't been signed yet and Austin remained injured. No suggestion Rodriguez was picked on anything other than merit. Also, if the only reason to pick Rodriguez was to encourage people to buy him, why didn't we sell him when the winter transfer window opened 2 weeks after his goals at Bournemouth? Presumably because we knew if we waited until the summer there would be enough tv-deal money washing around that someone would pay more than we got for him due to the inflated market.

Long's defensive ability in the wide positions is one of the reasons we signed him in the first place. He's ideal in away games where you don't want to overcommit but want a pacy player for counterattacks - it would admittedly be better if he could finish more often.

Well, as they're only selling out in the first place because they can't afford to maintain it, I think the cost of the repairs is a little bit relevant...

I was referring to the question posed, which was (hinting) about needing to increase spending on health and safety. Whilst the Repeal Bill ports existing EU laws across to UK law, that process still gives the government the opportunity to dump any EU legislation it doesn't want to keep in the slightly longer term - it has to look at anything referencing an EU institution, for instance, and it's not as if they aren't already considering further reduction in safety requirements: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/jun/22/government-backed-red-tape-group-eu-fire-safety-rules-grenfell-fire . So (assuming of course there's an EU institution currently overseeing this) it's perfectly possible that subsequent ground construction regulation changes will reduce the level of safety clubs will have to meet. They're also showing all the signs of doing this to get out of the pan-European corporation tax regulations, which is indicative of a certain degree of pragmatism about things they've decided aren't needed for the greater good. The other impact will be the reduced funding of local authorities meaning they don't have the resource to effectively police safety to begin with...

I didn't even mention him in the post you quoted.

Gatwick South terminal JD Sports have had them the last couple of years too. SportsDirect was only something like Southampton, Whiteley and Eastleigh last year, I think. That doesn't mean it won't be more widely available this season though. Kitbag, SportsDirect and others have it online too.

Pretty much agree, I've done the same though I don't think there's much difference other than the shape of the shoulder area.

I'm impressed this was so rapidly dumped in the Muppet Show where it belongs. First time I've been in here for years.

A succinct summary of my views, cheers. Apart from the points... I'm anticipating about 25 more.

You're the target audience then.

Looking forward to the creation of synergy.

The arrival video they've just put up is one of the most transparent attempts to win over the simple-minded I've seen from the club. Looks like a bit of spoon-feeding is in order to stop people making them sack managers they like...

Oops, forgot to post about that earlier. They're hanging on the racks right in front of the door as you go in too.

Last year's ones were *nearly* worth it, and similar prices to the equivalent UA training tees. This year's are U-G-L-EEE ugly, I'm not entirely sure they're also not more expensive (though I may have just forgotten my ST discount) and I probably won't even bother to get them when they drop the prices in the spring. Luckily the masses of people who'll be buying the home kit this season will make up for it.

Won't keep the manager his job...

They also only came 8th. Had he invested beyond the first XI*, they probably would have done a lot better. We now have a team that has finished in the same position and has a squad of similarly able players supporting it. So why does everyone suddenly think we're going to get worse? *Not possible, probably due to him not having enough money set aside from Markus' account for the club whilst the estate was being administered, hence Cortese angling to get more and him eventually leaving when Katharina decided the debt accumulation and overspending wasn't the best way to get stable, middle term success.

We created exactly the same number of chances as Arsenal last season (albeit not with as high a likelihood of those chances ending up as goals). What we need is an attacking midfielder who can shoot, or a way of getting the supporting players in the right positions if we're going to keep attacking from out wide and not finding teammates in the box. The stuff leading up to that was mostly fine. I've already shared the stats-led comments about how bad we were at scoring chances and saving/blocking shots, that data still exists and is still valid no matter how many more times people insist we weren't attacking and didn't create chances (both of which are inaccurate).

My comments in red, obviously.

It actually says his goals were worth 8 points to them. Plus it considers goals scored first less important than winning goals, which is clearly nonsense, because without the first goal, the winning goal is worth 2 fewer points as well. The long and short of it is that if they lose Lukaku, the player they replace him with is likely to be less influential. Either way, 8 fewer points for them, plus the impact of Europe on their points return, and the converse impact of NOT being in Europe for us, plus the evidence about us not converting chances, as opposed to the myth of Saints not being attacking enough, all adds up to them being worse and us being better.

Everton and Liverpool have to contend with Europe and didn't last season and are the prime candidates to drop off as a result of Europe, just like Liverpool in particular have done EVERY time they've been in Europe recently. Everton don't yet have the squad depth to cope with Europa League though they might not qualify. Chelsea haven't played in Europe for a year either, though it's unlikely they'll fall off as badly as they did last time they won the league, last time they had to balance defending the title and playing in Europe they came 10th - can't see that happening but they won't be able to just focus on the League this time around which gave them a huge advantage. You'd expect Man U to be up there, and they won't have to play more games than they did this time around, but if Mourinho does what he did in his second season at Chelsea, they'll be up for grabs too - and they've only finished in the top 4 once in 4 seasons. Anything could happen at Arsenal, they're overreliant on Sanchez and Wenger staying might be a comfort zone for some of the squad. Can't see us catching Manchester City but it'll be interesting to see how Guardiola reacts to not being a contender last season. Spurs are basically "Saints with more money", so given the otherwise level playing field on that front and similar recruitment etc., I don't see us coming ahead of them unless they have an injury crisis and we don't. No reason to think we won't get a boost from not being in Europe and some teams in Europe will fall back as a result.