The9

It was the equivalent of the Football League for about 5 years from 1900-1905 before the northern sides went professional and Arsenal decided to play against them instead of their southern peers, opening the door for the FL to go national gradually. Hence the number of Southern League clubs in the FA Cup Final at the turn of the century - that thing about Spurs being "non-League is a bit misleading, they were playing in a league that was practically the equivalent standard, and Saints were winning it three years in a row in 1896-7, 1897-8 and 1898-9 (as well as losing two FA Cup Finals in 1900 and 1902 which would make the modern stats a bit more interesting). Spurs, Bristol City, Reading, Swindon, Millwall and Brighton all played in the top division at that time, with Watford, Brentford, Fulham and Wycombe all in the second tier by 1899 along with Thames Ironworks, the future West Ham.

The story I heard in Newport on Saturday afternoon (before getting sh111111tfaced until 1am, what a day and up yours Doncaster), was that Doncaster's management told the players after they confirmed promotion that congratulations on getting their promotion bonus, but they weren't going to be getting the title-winning bonuses if they won the league. They then lost the next 4 matches. As for the worst three sides, tbf they were comfortably the best three sides in the division all season long, only Exeter when on their 10-match winning run even came close. Oh, and Newport's for the last 12 games of the season, of which they won the required 7 - though ideally they should have lost by 15 more goals to Plymouth in the 6-1 humping on Easter Monday.

Agree with all of this. People have ridiculous expectations and incredibly short selective memories. We've been two headers going a yard wide and hitting the post away from Europa knockouts and winning the EFL Cup this season, which would have put us back in Europe again. I've got an aquaintance who's been slagging Puel since August. We won 4 games on the bounce in September, he shut up then, he shut up when we were in the EFL Cup Final and started up again when he'd forgotten about it. He hasn't, yet, put together a coherent argument why the manager is somehow to blame for this in over 8 months and can usually only manage "he's sh*t" as a critique. I don't mind discussing the tactics, or the rotation strategy, but when the counter-argument is "pick your best team all the time" without any consideration of the number of matches, performance and fitness levels or injury likelihood, it's not even worth the argument.

He's French and the critics are mostly ranty nobheads, as far as I can tell. I wouldn't even say he was doing a "below par" job. We're doing exactly as well as I'd have expected given the fixture and injury problems (and the decision to give Stephens 4 months' development rather than buy a replacement), possibly a bit better.

Maybe you should try reading the rest of it then?

I'm sure Saints are keeping track of plenty of potential future managers. Planning for most eventualities has been one of our key ways of being more competent and efficient than most other clubs.

I think it's fairly easy to see when it's tactical choice and when it's the player's decision - eg in Milan Martina was tangibly taking the ball 10 yards forward, stopping, turning, playing the ball back to Yoshida/Van Dijk, and he NEVER took on the overlap - that was clearly tactical to prevent us getting caught too far up the field, to retain possession in a low-risk way and to burn the clock to try and get a point from the game without expending too much energy. It was similar (but more infuriating) in Prague, and we did it at home to Liverpool in the 0-0 even with Cedric at right back. Meanwhile, at the start of the season when the players were getting used to what was expecting of them, we were incredibly reluctant to cross the ball against Watford and Sunderland - which was definitely player choice (and probably some misuncerstanding of the manager's message), because we were completely over it in the 3-0 win against Sparta, and also beat Swansea, Palace and West Ham without conceding a goal in the next 3 matches. Last night Bertrand seemed happy to cross on most occasions, but in the first half he had one opportunity and didn't despite the lack of block attempt by the defender, and the ball ended up back on the half way line. I think that was just one of those things. What we HAVE stopped doing is playing early through balls to Gabbiadini which had been giving the defence more than one form of attack to defend against.

He had a right pop at the entire midfield for not backing him up when he pressed and Arsenal had 20 yards of space around the edge of the box to half way to escape through, too.

If that's what I thought he was trying to do, fine, but wanging it just to the side of the centre circle at a cluster of relative dwarves has been decidedly ineffective, and yesterday there were a couple of goal kicks we didn't even compete for!

Always difficult to know what the purpose of the decision is when we don't have access to stuff like the player blood tests and the like. Could have been one of those pre-emptive restings. All in all, we're clearly happy to play players with the bigger picture in mind - though after a few sparkling moments early on, Boufal doesn't seem to have come close to his early levels since Bournemouth away when he was taken off after 10 minutes of being absolutely integral to everything we did.

I think we've got a chance of troubling the top 4 next season - provided we don't sell anyone significant and sign at least one CB. We've been up with the top 6 for three of the past 4 seasons and just didn't have the squad depth OR luck with the fixture scheduling that we need to keep challenging the top sides this year. Fixture pile ups throughout the season have done for us. Van Dijk, Cedric, Romeu, Gabbiadini, Redmond and Bertrand are the key players we absolutely have to keep. Davis is key too, but he's ageing and we really need to have a replacement lined up. We also can't assume we'll have fit players in those positions all season, but that is a vital part of a club Saints' size maintaining a challenge. Tbh if you look at the current centre back pairing and the number of times we've played already this season when handicapped by recovery times against our opponents it's no surprise we're midtable. They're both cover players and suitable for a mid-table side but not a top one. The last 7 games is a perfect example of how we've been screwed with scheduling and how it impacts a side with fatigue - we're playing 4 top 6 sides who we need to be on the top of our game to beat with our best players available and fresh (and they won't be fresh for two of those games), and for the 3 lower table sides they won't have played 3-4 days before and we will have. We've won all three of a weekend/midweek/weekend or midweek/weekend/midweek set of fixtures THREE times this season - when we beat Sparta, Swansea, Palace and then West Ham in September with significant rotation for the midweek Europa and EFL Cup games, and in January when we beat Norwich, Leicester and Liverpool, again with the opportunity to rest players for the FA Cup game. That doesn't seem that bad, until you consider that to date we've had TWENTY-SEVEN sets of 3 games in a week fixtures to do that in. It shows the effect of fatigue on a team's performance overall quite nicely. We will not have those problems next season, and instead of being handicapped by post-Europa games we will benefit from them. We'll still need a massive slice of luck at key moments, but fundamentally this season we've had to play within ourselves so many times because players can't risk going all out, and the knock-on effect of playing lots of games on performance and susceptibility to injury, and that will go away next season. Puel has shown his aptitude for balancing the squad for a testing run fixtures and only rarely have the team been able to truly express themselves without an impact on other games soon after. When they have had the chance to go for it, they've looked every bit the side of the previous 3 years, and without the extra games next year I think we'll see much more of that. Key factors will be the takeover uncertainty and possible impact on player commitment, whether Xmas schedule ballses us up as it threatens to every year, and the players who are available to the manager in the first place.

That was probably the one he could have played to Bertrand in space on the other wing as well - can't watch all the runs.

Left out to give Boufal a chance, clearly. Same stuff with Stephens getting 3 months of games when it doesn't particularly matter. You'll only develop players if they're playing, and with the gap to the top 6 that has been there since January and with us not looking remotely like getting relegated, this was the perfect time to do that.

Lots of sense in here. We also kick goal kicks at players who have no chance of winning the ball, too.

Last night I thought he'd already stopped making as many of the kind of runs he did in February because he knew he wasn't getting the ball played to him - which is a self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one. Then Bertrand decided not to cross with players in the box and it ended up being played back to the centre backs, and Redmond played one ball out to the right wing instead of left to a wide open Bertrand, and you could see it wasn't anything the manager had told them, they were just bad split-second decisions. I did see Gabbiadini trying to make an angle for Stephens to feed the ball to him from the half way line too, that's probably not going to help. The other thing was how annoyed Gabbiadini was when he pressed and none of the midfielders closed down the edge of their box, I put that one down to fatigue but it does show the wider problem of the defensiveness of our central midfield (as did Davis' shooting last night).

Dodged a bullet on "missing chances" there, someone isn't paying attention...

Premier League rule to assist with number identification based on the UEFA rules that have been in place for years - though I haven't actually seen the specific regulations yet.

Based on Stoke's kit this season which they designed knowing about the rule (before the Prem backed off it this season realising they hadn't actually told the clubs in time for the design process), it's just the panel behind the number, so we could have a broad stripe with the numbers on, and two smaller stripes at the side.

Oh and home kit has a collar. i.e. a wing collar. I haven't seen anything but does sound like a Patrick style kit is on the cards.

I don't think there's any difference tbh. My Adidas shorts came pre-unstitched, so I'd hardly say it was a bastion of quality. Also, I think you underestimate Under Armour rather a lot, they've got loads of high profile sponsorships with American personalities and a huge growing market share already.

I don't believe there was a white kit as part of the shoot.

Saints have tended not to recently but they can if they want to, especially this season with no change in sponsor or kit brand.

It'll be solid *something* due to the rule change. Whether the design will incorporate a wide enough "stripe" to accommodate two of the new font Prem numbers, dunno yet.

Heard they did an advert at St Mary's last night, which involved the players being filmed in the new kits. Rumour has it the stripes will be broadly seen and there will be no complaints about the choice of away colour.

Little update from the Skate OS with all the appropriate spin: http://www.portsmouthfc.co.uk/news/article/2016-17/portsmouth-football-club-statement-about-fratton-park-3700883.aspx#x8QAJFrgZK65FbW0.01 Strange timing, we've been talking about the £5m needed for the safety certificate for about 2-3 months already haven't we? It's as if they need to sell the idea to some of their fanbase - maybe the ones expecting their "shares" to be sold to any investor?