The9

He hasn't, he even mentioned it in his post-match comments.

I thought the ref was having a laugh with the added time to be honest, even considering the calculations above (not all of Bellamy's celebration needed to be added on, none of the other regulation time goal celebrations constituted part of the added time) and he was stretching it even within the parameters of FIFA's directive that the game should be in a neutral area of the field when the whistle is blown, which actually allows the "minimum of 4 minutes" to go on indefinitely, basically as long as the ball stays in one of the attacking thirds - and is something that not a single person on Sky, BBC or this thread has mentioned yet. As for both Saints pens on Saturday, I am comfortable that neither was remotely near to being a penalty. Saga dived and was going down long before the tackle, and only the linesman appears to have seen the (accidental) handball which isn't easy to spot even on repeated replay viewings.

Haven't been on here since last week, but even from the Northam it was obvious that that linesman was flagging for positions he was looking at long after the ball was played, which led to about 4 wrong offside decisions, including one where Lambert ran clean past the defender and one when Saganowski was behind the ball when it was played. Waigo looks very promising, we didn't get an end product from anything he did though (except a yellow card and a good laugh when he dummied the keeper).

Strange one this, I thought Saga (and Lambert) did the square root of eff-all against Yeovil, but one of my mates swore blind Saga was working hard. I didn't see it. I didn't see him doing anything good against Birmingham either, in fact if anything he was a yard too slow in responding to everything Lambert won in the air in that match - kinda like Paterson got slated for the following game. I don't think there's much doubt Saga is a good quality player, just as I don't think there's much doubt that he only tries when he feels like it, which usually coincides with his contract status.

Which they have, massively. There are definite leaps and bounds in the style and tactics of teams, and the player card scheme is preferable to the star-ratings too, though still a bit artificial at least it relates to individual skills that player will have that aren't in all players. The lack of commentary was both worrying and pleasantly enlightening to me.

Reading the PES forums you'd be surprised any of them had ever bothered to play it, it's been non-stop beyatching since PES3, and the game's made massive improvements since then. However, give me PES6 for PS2 on a Next-Gen console with full kit editing, photo imports, 64 boot slots, the new style sliders to affect team positioning and choices, 3D player modelling, a stadium designer, a league and cup editor and unlimited team slots and I'd never play another game. As for the **** build, they've probably heard there are better builds out there, hence the response. PS The missus scored from 30 yards with Ibrahimavic past Petr Cech in her first ever FIFA10 game, couldn't believe it.

You're proper ****e.

Here's mine : Compared to the FIFA10 demo (3 or 4 games on Weds), I put the PES2010 demo on yesterday night for a few hours. PES is jerkier, and as a result takes some getting used to after FIFA's smoothness, but on the strategic side, the new sliders for team "style" are awesome (wide or centre atack, support or drop off, distance of players from man with the ball, etc). To play against Spain and have them swarming all over me in midfield with the pressing game, then to play as them and clobber Germany on the counter attack 4v3 and then score a legitimately real-looking square-ball tap-in was amazing. Player appearances are superb too, and the material now flows more realistically on shirts (though not as well as FIFA, certainly passable). Players are clearly going to be very customisable too, and hallelujah they've brought back untucked shirts from kick off, which is probably the difference between wanting to create a team of my mates and not. PES still feels more like football, though the terrible direction changes and rubbisher collision detection in the demo (diving header through a defender's leg) means it doesn't exactly LOOK more like football when players are moving. They are in the right places and mostly do the right things though, and the sliders can completely change a team's style, and are just, as I've said, superb. The new PES Teamvision 2.0 is fantastic when attacking, supporting runs and movement all over the shop, and the skill is now in timing your through balls to already running colleagues, not desperately hoping someone will chase your passes. How that relates to the simplicity of scoring goals remains to be seen (I've found it much easier even on Top Player, but that may be because it's more realistic and I play to recreate reality not to beat the thing by exploiting arcadey cheats, and I'm all about the throughball run IRL so it suits my style). My concern is that defensive AI looks partially excellent and partially all over the shop. My Ribery just speedbursted past a big German defender without the Germ getting close or leaning on him, and my 4v3 Spain break looked great, and the defender was obviously torn on who to mark, but fundamentally it was a Torres sprint through the back line into 15 yards of space that created it. Might be that PES is too easy defensively, but certainly it's nearer real football with the kind of off-the-ball movement players make - I guess if you want to try wading a great big lummox up the pitch and see if people back off that's up to you, but rest assured when he loses the ball the opponent can counterattack realistically and exploit that space (like I did against Germany for my throughball, square ball tap in with Torres). Hate the collision detection issues in the demos though, first one I conceded was when the player poked the ball through my diving gk's arm and then put the open goal in, the first one I scored was a diving header through the defender's midriff - THAT was disappointing. Summary, if they can take the jerky 180-degree turns out it will look 50% more like football, most of the other stuff is spot on, and at least it looks good enough to make editing worthwhile this season. FIFA looks and feels fantastic, but I'm not yet convinced it has the depth in strategy. It's a pick'em, but they're both improved on last season and *I* like to create players with a decent edit mode...

Played the /FIFA10 demo on 360 two days ago, liked the fluidity of everything, massively impressed by the look and feel of the game, much less cartoony than before, and the ball no longer feels like a balloon. No more Jason Euell-style controlling be ball with bandy legs, it all looks excellent. About time they put the effort in on goalkeepers' shirts too... What I disliked the same old "all players are the same" FIFA nonsense - it still feels like there's no difference in players, and strategically I'm not convinced anything makes a difference other than formation. However, it is MUCH better than last year's effort, which I didn't particularly like because of the clown faces and balloon ball, but was still decent. For some reason I still ended up with PES2010 on for 3 hours yesterday though...

If we'd loaned him to Leicester, I'd be all over it. Can't see much harm in this, he's clearly the new Patrick Vieira and the sooner he gets around to doing so for us the better. I'm only half joking btw. I reckon we'll end up flogging him for about £5m to a Prem Club while we're in the Championship and all getting furious about it, but as far as specific predictions go, this one's from quite a range. Anyone want to sticky it for a few years ?

Erm, no. Maybe you're still thinking of someone else, sayyyy Poo-lis ? Jake Thomson is very fast with and without the ball. Definitely.

Rubbish in-joke.

Having seen his positioning on his debut for Saints I'd be pretty sure he scored a shedload of far post headers by arriving late and outjumping the full back, as every time we got the ball out wide he pulled behind the far defender and came back in. I suppose they could have come from his feet off low crosses too though. As for this "can't cross" thing, the ball needs to go in with pace AND preferably a bit of topspin/bend to stop it being easy to read and defend - and its that bit which makes for lots of shanked and mis-hit crosses - trying to do it well, rather than just dinking in easy to clear balls. Actually, as long as Lallana knows Thomas is going to mis-hit it short and reads it and scores, it doesn't matter though ! FWIW, Lallana's floated corner that Lambert headed in at Huddersfield was rubbish as well, slow ball in that drifted and was easy to read, Huddersfield should have cleared it, but it just happened to land on our target man's head 6 yards out and he put all the power into the header as there wasn't much momentum on the ball - so I guess if Lambert can head like that and is attacking wide rather than flicking near post, we can just dolly them in to him until we get more accurate.

Here seems to be a good place for me to mention that despite his old man rapidly becoming a Newport Footballing Legend, Pulis is known as "Poo-lis" in my household. Puerile and completely fair.

Depends, if it's the England/Man City "tailored" ones it'll be chest measurement, for all us no-mark Umbro teamwear monkeys it's probably gonna be the XXXL - or "the OoohTerryHurlock" as I now call it.

Not all that surprised that people don't rate Thomson, based on some of his earlier St Mary's appearances, but he can't keep being that bad forever when he's had a lot of very good reserves matches. He's also a fast winger who can actually defend (and cross, honest), and we could do with keeping the ones who can work both ways. Boyle is the short dark haired kid we got from the Channel Islands last season, I think he was a striker but we've played him on the left wing/midfield the times I've seen him - he played at Eastleigh and Bournemouth pre-season. Quite nippy, uses the ball well, for some reason I know he can finish too, not sure why that's in my head though.

I can't see some of the staff being able to cope with the concept of two queues, never mind having to count how many beers people have... ...to be honest I'd go for 2 queues, one Fasttrack for me, the other for you lot.

Of the "sell" list, I actually think Boyle's been quite useful, certainly worth a squad place and brings variety in our current left side options. He's not a million miles behind starters like Mills (if a very different player) and he's not been involved for long and could yet make great strides.

Yes, saw him last week, he was terrible. Not just terrible, but "what is he doing on the pitch and how does he in any way deserve to get to play against Salisbury reserves" terrible - and we won that game 6-1. Slow reactions, ponderous on the ball, inaccurate passing and... well, his positioning was ok, mostly, to be fair. As I said last week, his two backpasses were the highlight of his performance, both making it to the penalty area without causing an opposition goal. Everyone else in a Saints shirt looked like they were treating it as a training exercise by the 15th minute, Pulis was having trouble coping on the ball. I saw him "play" in midfield last season too, didn't really know he was there, I suspect the other 10 refused to pass to him. The Coaches know Pulis is getting paid and I guess they're making him earn it - the idea of trying him at right back was at least worthwhile given Murty's injury and a dearth of options, but we released Hatch from there last season and he was streets ahead of where Pulis is in that position. To answer the overall question, I'd like us shot of Lancashire, Pulis and Saganowski permanently (two poor players and one who doesn't try), and White, Gobern and Thomson on loan because I think they'll benefit from it - though where we loan players to now when we're at the level we used to loan them to I'm not sure - rubbish SPL clubs ??

And did it again at Northampton. As with most (ok, all) of our coaches who ended up as manager, he was better off being a coach.

What's this "Premiership" people keep talking about ? Is it a rugby thing ? I'm all for the Premier League myself...

Apart from the fact that I got there just before Salisbury scored, with Saints 3-0 up in the first 7 or so minutes (thought it was 3-1 at half time and we were still stuffing them nevertheless), I'd just like to say Pulis would have been out of his depth on their team. He was slower in thought and reaction and worse in execution than anyone else on the Saints team and half of the Salisbury side who were noticably rattled. The only two decent passes I saw him play went back to the keeper. All credit to Henderson for trying it though.

Excellent decision by our fanbase, I am stunned after all the McGoldrick love last season.

There's already plenty of evidence above to indicate that Camara would rather play for any old cack in the Prem than anyone outside it... as he's already a Wolves, Stoke and Wigan reject he's only got you lot and Hull to do and he's got the set. In the interests of impartiality I should point out that Saints' Prem pedigree is such that we have accrued more seasons in the top division than those 5 teams combined.

Story from the Monday after we got relegated, with the Guardian indicating Camara would be leaving: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2005/may/16/match.southampton ~Oh, and here's a story about Camara refusing to play in the Championship for Wolves, which is how he ended up at Celtic on loan in 2004/5, with us buying out the second half of his loan... so of COURSE he'd have loved to stay, and play in the CCC a whole one season later... http://www.thefootballnetwork.net/main/s627/st147747.htm And another : http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-310032/Wolves-tough-AWOL-Camara.html Or not.