The9

Blimey, I've just spent 4 years repressing those memories, only for someone to post the scoreline wrongly and me to have the inner turmoil of whether I should correct it or continue pretending the whole thing never happened. It... was... four... one... :smt013

They'll only let us have 114 of them though.

In normal font, broadly agreed with ! The point I was making with Wayne Thomas is that we know what his skillset is, and pinpoint crosses into the box and beating players down the line probably isn't that. Accepted that Mellis, Lallana, James and Thomson had little more success than the meaty defender, it was just that the gameplan probably shouldn't have relied on an erstwhile centre-back being our creative force in the first place (though relatively speaking he actually did quite well at it). As you can probably tell, I'm in constant bewilderment that XI professional footballers haven't got the tactical nous to work out stuff like "run more and try harder and you will be more successful" for themselves.

Rasiak ?

Me too, other than I felt exactly the same about "steady improvement" as the kids got experience last season, and look what happened there. The bit in bold I don't agree with. What worries me is not now that our signings haven't gelled, etc., its that they've shown they can perform by putting in the effort against Birmingham and being so impressive then, and have now reverted to type. This worries me because it's nothing the manager can do anything about once they've crossed that line - he has to somehow get them to fear the kind of humiliation/show they can perform at a Premier League level that they had against Birmingham as a driver for their effort in every match, and we've already dropped from that high back to turgid, slow, unimaginative "wait and see" football. Nothing happens in football without effort all over the team - it's what Strachan brought us, Sturrock kept it for a while, and since then, it only happens when the players want it to. We're nearer turning Hammond and Lambert into plodding 4th division players than they are to turning us into successful League One challengers with current attitudes.

Trouble for me was we never actually looked like scoring until one rebound melee in the box and Hammond's good late effort. We dominated possession so you'd expect us to have clear cut chances rather than 30 yard shots and maybe-he-might-reach-this-crappy-cross lunges. I don't think it's even pace that's the issue, rather urgency and the desire to shift the ball quickly to open gaps in the defence. Even parks teams can defend effectively for 90 minutes if you give the 9 outfield players time to get between the ball and the goal.

Indeed. And Lloyd James then spent 15 minutes crossing to the first defender from halfway into Colchester's half, with Thomson standing still outside him. Sideways, sideways, sideways, cross. Lambert didn't have a hope.

I've only seen one person have a go at Pardew to the extent that they think he should go so far, and there's always one. It seems reasonable to expect that Charlton's manager was appointed with a view to either miraculously keeping them up or being given time to get them back up, given how far adrift they were when he came in - which is not quite the same as buying a load of the best players in the League and failing to have them repeat their level of performance they're shown at previosu clubs. I don't think Pardew's to blame as much as the total lack of effort and imagination the players have shown on too many occasions. Their abilities when trying were displayed against Birmingham, and I haven't seen them repeat anything like that in the 5 league games I've seen so far (missed Brentford and Stockport). Once they cross the line, whose fault is it then ? Strangely the one I can't criticise for effort on Saturday was Wayne Thomas - and you can make a case to blame the manager when HE is our main attacking threat via overlapping right wing crosses and set-piece headers for most of the first half.

First one was a fairly comfortable clearance that anyone but a complete donkey would have made, and was only made possible by Paterson not putting enough on the ball, though that was understandable given that he was leaping and poking the ball at around chest height. The second one was a jammy slice from a fast cross that evaded everyone except the defender, which could have gone anywhere and the defender barely knew he'd done it, never mind how. You're right that those chances would have changed the result, and the outlook, but they didn't go in, and you can argue just the same that Colchester's 2 on 2 breaks (two of them) could haev made things a lot worse. We can only deal with what actually happened, which was that we dominated 10 men for 60 minutes without looking remotely like scoring from inside the box.

Well, there's a lot of that on here, anyone saying any different is kidding themselves. :cool:

I spent the entire game wondering what the hell he must think of this league... there was one period of head tennis in the first half when I started to get embarrassed for him !

The "new players and relegated last year" argument doesn't hold much water when you look at Charlton's start, does it ?

I don't think I've ever read a thread on here where I've disagreed with so many of the opinions on our performance. We were uncreative in front of goal, but not in the way so many people have been saying. We didn't play hoofball. In fact I don't think we hit a launched hoof out of defence in the whole game. What we did was throw a lot of crosses into the box from wide midfield positions, the vast majority of which were dealt with comfortably by Colchester, who by the way are better than us at the moment and in the Play-Off places, not sure why people have this "but Colchester???!?!?" mindset. Having said we don't play hoofball, whoever said we also don't have the team to play hoofs is also utterly wrong, we've got a big target man who wins most balls in his direction, and a couple of nippy wide players in the squad who'd thrive on flick-ons - so if we WANTED to do that we probably could. I also thought Mellis had a pretty decent half, other than the fact he ran straight into the second defender three times having turned his marker - no end product yet but he gives us a pace and quick passing that few others do. Paterson looked a yard off in his head and I can only assume it was lack of confidence or tiredness. Lallana must have been glad to get up front after having seven shades hoofed out of him for 60 minutes, he did well. Having Wayne Thomas as our main crosser and creative force with overlapping runs just isn't going to work, is it ? Disappointed in Hammond, who looked like Lee Holmes infield and only seemed to pass sideways - I hope that's not The Wilkins effect ?! He did well to keep his cool though, he was obviously getting a fair bit of verbals out there. Lacked urgency though, which cost Lambert, who must have been fed up of getting fouled and having to make his run too late to have any effect as we delivered the balls too slowly. Problem in that match was just that we didn't find our players with the balls into the box - but at least those balls were getting into the box quicker than last season, when we'd have been playing it square for 30 minutes first. We are, however, running out of new blood to have that miraculous impact, and the effort was 70% less than for the Birmingham game, for which most players should be ashamed. I am now, completely fed up with people claiming that Lowe / administration is responsible for our slow start - a month ago there might have been a case, but it wasn't responsible for mostly the same players upping their game massively against Birmingham, so why is it to blame now for us being lazy on the pitch ?

My match tickets are all in the original Euro 1996 paper wallet, which is starting to get a little bit overcrowded now - basically the pile of tickets is about 6 inches thick and the wallet... isn't. Might get a couple of those for storage... not sure I'm going to invest in the screw-in the wall glass display frames though!

I actually agree with him, but just because he's stated an opinion and used the word "I" doesn't mean he's arrogant ?

Plenty of booing at the end, soon followed (in the Northam at least) by a lengthy round of applause for Davis, who after all, had kept a clean sheet. The only booing that annoyed me on Saturday was a smattering of it when Paterson went off - he was a bit slow to react to a lot of stuff, but he was at least working hard some of the time and didn't deserve that. Ironically he was replaced by Jake Thomson, to a loud chorus of cheers - Thomson being the last player I can remember to have been booed at St Mary's at the end of last season. :confused: They deserved booing after the Swindon performance as well. The long and short of it is that nothing the fans say or do makes the blindest bit of difference. I thought we put this one to bed losing 5-2 in Watford when we were getting relegated from the Prem and they were in the CCC. The majority of Saints fans started cheering for Watford at 4-0 down and the team won the rest of the match 2-1. It makes no difference what we say or do, what disturbs me is how quickly we've made the likes of Lambert look comfortable with our slumber. We've brought in 8 players and the team still looks like it sleepwalks its way through games. Saturday was the first time I've seriously considered we might actually be in the 4th Division next season, because all the problems and the total lack of effort just haven't changed, even the pattern of results is the same - draw at home, lose away. As far as I can see, we currently have 2 remaining straws to clutch at : 1) Papa Waigo is brilliant and his Serie A conditioning, skill and attitude infects the rest of the team (hasn't happened with any of the other signings yet) 2) We have only played two teams in the bottom half, Stockport (95th minute equaliser) and Millwall (in form when we played them). I am so TOTALLY sick of turning up to matches thinking "we'll win this - if the players try" and having us fail to do even the basics.

Ah stats and FIFA games. Why on earth would you believe that ? Now if he was the best on Pro Evo...

The point here is that only you and the philosophers who come up with this stuff in the first place are ever going to take it to its extreme form. The rest of us are living in the real world, where the Man on the Clapham Omnibus may or may not have obtained his Oyster Card at a discount rate from a bloke in the pub, and may or may not be otherwise unable to visit his dying mother without using it. Sometimes that stuff is just accepted, whether due to impracticalities of policing or a lack of desire to impose punishment on minor offences if the majority are in acceptance/defence to the law. It all depends on whether society deems it acceptable, and in the current "society" based on an (admittedly biased) sample on here, you'd have to say most people don't think it's worth harping on about, and nor, judging by Le Tiss's actions of the following 10 years, does it seem to have been the thin end of the wedge. The FA have outlawed it since too, so there's not even any remedial action on their part. Equally, I'm sure that if the bookies were bothered they'd have just stopped offering bets on those kind of events too.

Or not, depending on how bothered people are about it. Let's face it, at the point when the Premier League decided money was more important than integrity in sport we probably all should have given up and gone home (or stayed there on Saturdays). Carlos Tevez case anyone? The fault still lies with the bookies for making such a stupid bet available. And for the record, the couple of matches that were abandoned circa 1998when the lights failed definitely WERE part of a betting scam, but none of the players were implicated.

Lloyd James not getting picked for Wales (I think he still barely scrapes U-21 qualification as I think he's only just turned 22 this week, but I'd have to check), and McLaggon being injured so not being with Wales U-21s has kippered us up there. Just checked, Soccerbase has James as 16 Feb 88, making him still 21. Eligibility for the 2007-9 tournament is : WARNING PDF !!!! http://www.uefa.com/newsfiles/19078.pdf for players born on or after 1st Jan 1986, so logically eligibility for the 2009-11 competition would be people born on or after 1st Jan 1988 - which means he is still eligible for the Welsh U-21s. Given that half the Wales U-21 side now plays for the senior side already (Gunter, Bale, Nyatanga, Eardley, Collison, Ramsey, Vokes and Ched Evans), surely he should get on the phone and make it known that he's still eligible, cos he's bound to get a call up..? They're playing Italy tonight and he's already got 9 U-21 caps... : http://www.faw.org.uk/fixtures-events/fixtures/2 Here's the Wales U-21 squad for tonight (there's been one replacement) and even Saints' Ryan Doble makes the standby list ?!?!?!! : http://www.faw.org.uk/news/1418

1987/8 League Cup, lost 3-2 on aggregate. http://www.soccerbase.com/results3.sd?gameid=5917 Before that it was the 1950s. Though strictly speaking the last league match was April 1960 : http://www.soccerbase.com/results3.sd?gameid=91126

Given that we haven't won at home in the League yet this season and its in the interests of drawing/winning away teams to kill time, can I suggest that when we're not winning you get the thing back on the pitch asap whoever you're throwing it to ? I think we may have found part of the problem...

To be fair that goal shouldn't really impress anyone, I've seen parks players move the ball quicker than that and hit better finishes. AND he fell over whilst doing it... bad defending as much as anything. Nice though it is that we're signing someone who has scored against Juve, it doesn't really mean much in isolation. Saganowski scored in the Champions League group stages against Villareal last season, after all. If he starts running the show for fun and drags the rest of the side up to a Serie A level, then I'll start getting impressed. Stupid dance/walk thing, but I can see the back-pat catching on...

Well yeah, but only because he's since proven capable of better at a higher level - at the time he was a good CCC striker who had just started to show his potential - I was always a big fan of his ("KEN~!!!!") and thought he could get a regular game at a BorInG 4 club at some point, but we did well from that deal based on what he'd actually achieved at the time.

Is Kelvin still doing all the keeper training ?