The9

I think you'll find points 1 and 2 are negatively affected by number 5 and vice versa, and we'd scored 17 goals at home by 11th December, so I have NO idea what you're on about there. We've actually scored 28 home goals this season, and 35 away.

Apart from it being utter cobblers pulled from outright making stuff up from Ralph's interview where all he said was "the football side debrief next week".

I'm still impressed that Bailly managed to stand with both feet in the box yet handle it outside - or was it actually "on the line" (or in this case above the line), in which case it's still a penalty? Haven't seen the footage yet, so genuinely asking.

I thought he did very well when he came on - I remember 4 separate occasions he got the ball in the centre circle and ran right at the centre of the Man U defence before realising the only pass on was to the right wing, where we proceeded to do the usual, overplay it and Man U cleared. Anyone criticising that performance just wasn't watching. He's also cut down on the biggest problem he had previously as well, which was overenthusiasm to get involved and almost chase the ball sometimes when we had players already in those positions - to that end the standing still in space was a good thing. He ran when he was meant to. I will accept that his one shot was pants, though that hardly makes him stand out.

The point you're missing of course is that getting to the EFL Cup Final gives you as good a chance of making the Europa League as coming 7th, and it takes about 30 fewer matches. Plus you get a Cup Final, and you can still have a go at making the Europa League in the Premier League too, unless you're a fair bit adrift because of already being in Europe, of course.

I'm looking forward to us swapping back next season when they're in Europe and we're not. Which is literally the only difference apart from the last 3 games of the EFL Cup run.

Er, *we* were all talking about things that weren't Saints related, this season's been over since the EFL Cup Final.

That was the bit of the season where Mane was scoring the goals instead. With Pelle linking the play. Still playing to their strengths. The only player I think Puel misused at all was Austin when he was asked to defend in the first couple of games before he was left to do what he does best. There was a lot of weirdness in the first couple of games tbh, as if Puel was teaching how to play Europa aways and the players were implementing it for Sunderland home.

He's in the lift that goes from the main reception, to replace the pic of a few players which had Fonte in the middle of it, that happened after Norwich FA Cup but before last Monday. It's a posed one with the changing room text behind him, strangely the text behind him isn't the same as is actually on the wall of the changing room, it's a faked up backdrop. Not a big deal now anyway as the kit's being replaced within a couple of months.

Anything under 4 days is (very generally) running a risk of not being at peak performance. The effects are magnified when playing against a side which have had appropriate recovery. We have had it before, but this season we've played far more games without a week's rest, plus we've been unlucky with the Man U, Arsenal and Chelsea games getting shifted to midweek due to Cup runs, ironically leaving us with way more recovery time than necessary for the 4 league matches we had in the 8 week period of February and March - two of those games we scored 4 goals in, as well as losing at Spurs.

You can't just ignore that Hull didn't have a game the midweek before and had much more to play for either.

Also, if you want an illustration of our problem in front of goal this season: https://public.tableau.com/profile/paul.riley#!/vizhome/PremierLeagueShotDashboard2016-17/PLShotDashboard2016-17 xG (Expected goals - being a rating of likelihood of a goal being scored from the same situation as our chances this season, based on historical data). Data is a little bit out of date but valid for most of this season. Prem goals only, selected players only. Gabbiadini: xG 2.674 actual open play goals scored (aG) 4 Redmond xG 5.855 aG 6 Rodriguez xG 4.302 aG 4 Austin: xG 6.089 aG 4 Long: xG 4.241 aG 3 Romeu: xG 1.762 aG 1 Van Dijk xG 2.299 aG 1 Tadic: xG 5.022 aG 2 Davis xG 2.56 aG 0 We've been making enough chances to be doing much better, but Gabbiadini and Redmond aside we've been below average in execution. Of course ability to execute drops off significantly with fatigue, though theres' nothing specific in the data to show WHY we've been so poor at this compared to the average. It's the same at the other end too, we've conceded more than average from the shots taken.

Conserve energy for one of the other games we played with 4 or less days recovery time this season, which happened 27 times.

Hull was 4 days after Chelsea away, and was the one time this season I'd say we didn't create due to being unmotivated compared to the opposition, rather than tactically conservative. West Brom was 3 days after Spurs home and 2 days before Everton away and a weary performance was completely understandable.

Watched every game, yet apparently seen nothing. The possession stuff was for specific games, usually in with the Europa League fixtures, when we needed to conserve energy. There were two dull draws at the start when the players were learning the system, a couple late on when the fixture pile up was a factor, and otherwise we used it well against Liverpool. The rest of the time when fitness and freshness allowed we've been attacking, overlapping, creative and just bloody awful at the specific actions of actually scoring goals and preventing them.

They should try watching our play when we haven't played 3 days earlier compared to when we haven't, then. It's like night and day. Even the first half against Arsenal we played some superb football - no way we can keep that up for 90 minutes with our schedule though, and made perfect sense to play possession and reduce the amount of running required when we had a lot of games (which was for 6 months of the 9 month season).

No, but I know a man who has. There was a video shoot for Virgin last Monday and also some people on the crew were happy to chat about what they'd seen when they let the extras in to do the crowd shoot later. It took the team 9 takes to film them coming out of the tunnel apparently. We probably won't debut them in the Stoke game, IIRC you're allowed one deviation from your normal home kit a season, which many teams use to plug their new shirt at the end of the previous season - like Stoke did last weekend in their last home game. But I think the use of the Scope advert on the shirt tomorrow MIGHT use that up - not sure though, haven't read the detail of the regulations for a while.

Rank Xerox was pretty much what was described to me. Makes sense too, especially with the new "no stripes under the numbers" rule giving us a nice wide area on the back. Brighton's interpretation of this is uuuuuuuugleh.

I shall hope Newport show up their poxy 80-something points for the guff it was next season.

It has just dawned on me that thanks to their promotion, my occasional Newport County League Two tangents are no longer even remotely relevant. I'll try and get it out of my system by July 1st. Failing that, there's always the season after next.

Actually I said I wouldn't be surprised to see us having a shout of top 4 next season IF we keep the key players because we won't have Europe to mess up our performance levels, but obviously that's too complicated a concept for some people and will rapidly become "some people think we'll come top 4".

It's a yellow card for the shirt pull.

Good, sensible gamble by the manager to give us the best possible chance of maximising points against Boro and Man U. Pied looked excellent for a player who's been out for almost a whole season too, very similar style to Cédric.

Yeah, sure, 3 pages ago. BTW the away is yellow with navy trim.