madsent

That's a myth and clearly wrong as our ground proves. Fratton Park, St Andrews and Craven Cottage don't have undersoil heating either.

If you go into administration after the cutoff date and finish outside the relegation zone, then 10 points are taken off your final points total. If that relegates you then you go down a division and a lucky team stays up. Likewise, it could take your team out of automatic promotion of the playoff zone. If you finish in the relegation zone without the penalty then you start the following season on -10 points. As for Luton, their problems were largely caused by a previous set of directors repeatedly breaking FA rules on transfers (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/2325864/Luton-stunned-by-FA-transfer-breach-claims.html).

Smith had 2 decent games in the Premier League and the rest were routine or poor including the 2-2 with Everton when Marcus Bent beat him with a near-post shot. I believe, on average, we conceded over 2 goals a game with him in goal. Lets not forget that he lost his place to a teenager (Bialkowski) and then to a retired lower-league veteran (Kevin Miller). He can't get a league game for Nottingham Forest now.

I think we can do a lot better than Pericard although he'd be a physical presence up front for the times when Lambert is unavailable. Personally, I think we've had more than enough players with driving convictions and bans in the last few years.

Patrick Colleter may not have been great but he was much better than Olivier Bernard who was an absolute liability in a defence that had no leadership. My 11 would be Blayney Thomson Davenport Lancashire Bernard Kanchelskis Bleidelis Folly Ripley Rosler Pericard I've tried to be fair by picking players who were poor for Saints regardless of the division we were in. I wouldn't expect Thomson to be as good as Dodd or Lancashire to be as good as Richards. Unfortunately, Thomson has looked poor for us at RB and RW and Lancashire is a shadow of the player we expected to see before his major hamstring problems a couple of years back.

It's not always necessary to beat the teams at the top to accumulate a decent points total. Man Utd won the league last year largely because they got 70 points out of 72 from the teams that finished 9th or lower. Their record against the other 7 teams would have cost them the title in any other season.

The weather in Britain is nothing like the weather on the continent thanks to the gulf stream. Snow and consistently freezing temperatures are not the norm in December. Statistically, the coldest months are January and February but even in those months the average low is above freezing.

Beckford is a Londoner and only signed for Leeds in 2006 having spent several years in non-League with Wealdstone. I doubt he'd be happy to be the third choice striker with us anyway. We have the best finisher in the league, David Connolly, and Rickie Lambert is too good to drop.

There has also been an announcement that there is a bus strike planned for Saturday in Leeds. http://www.leedsunited.com/news/notice-for-fans-saturday-bus-strike-20091218_2247585_1908664.

He didn't score over 30 goals. He got 29 league goals and no cup goals.

Not even comparable. They were 1 point off automatic promotion under Southgate. Now they're 3 points off the playoffs and 9 off the automatic promotion places (and 17 points behind Newcastle). It's not as if WBA are winning every game either. Even with Lita and Kitson up front they can't score at home. I think the record under Strachan is W1 D2 L4 and they've failed to score in all the 4 defeats, 3 of which were at home (Plymouth, Blackpool, Cardiff). In fact, all the points under Strachan are on the road.

I agree. I keep telling Liverpool fans they've won 3 and drawn 1 European Cup finals and have 1 draw in the Champions League final. One of my fondest memories was our 2-2 draw at Old Trafford in the FA Cup in 1992. Can't remember the last team we actually won there.

Southgate's problem was that he signed decent defenders but he never signed any prolific goal-scorers. He inherited Yakubu and Viduka and they got 25 goals between them in 06-07. After they went, Southgate brought in Alves, Mido, Aliadiere and Tuncay. None of them scored more than 8 goals in a season and Tuncay is the only one who can claim to have played well. It's the opposite of Arsene Wenger who inherited a great defence but has rarely signed a decent central defender.

Apparently we've recalled Ryan Tafazolli from Salisbury as cover. Not sure that a 6'5 centre-back is a like-for-like replacement though. I'm also perplexed that we've allowed Salisbury to retain his registration. Until we can get a replacement in I'd prefer Wayne Thomas to play RB and allow Lloyd James to carry on in midfield or on the wing. I think Thomas is more reliable at defending than James who is actually doing pretty well further forward.

My sentiments exactly. For a local paper, they seem to show no allegiance at all to their local club. Their match reports are appalling and often have no information at all about the match itself. Also, I can't remember the last time the Echo actually printed something positive about Saints.

I really liked Strachan for the first 2 or 3 years. We played decent, if pragmatic, football and were difficult to beat and his post-match interviews were usually amusing. However, I noticed that his "quips" were becoming more like barely veiled insults towards the press and our players after the FA Cup Final. I also had severe misgivings about his man management at the time. We all knew Rory Delap could hurl the ball a long way but Strachan told him not to. He also thought Kevin Davies gave away too many fouls to be a regular starter and was too physical. I was pretty certain at the time that Agustin Delgado would have played if asked and that Strachan actually chose not to play him. The "yoghurt" quip seemed amusing but was probably quite hurtful to the the player especially when translated into Spanish. Lets not forget that the FA Cup run included one great game (4-0 over Spurs) and the rest were instantly forgettable dross against lower-league teams until we met a vastly superior team in the final and they beat us without breaking a sweat.

Obviously, our run was in 05-06 season. It doesn't look like Swindon are one of the teams. Surprisingly, we're not even the most recent members of the club. Swansea joined us last season. The lucky teams in the club are : Torquay in the 1969-1970 season Middlesbrough in the 1970-1971 season Peterborouh in the 1971-1972 season Birmingham in the 1990-1991 season Chesterfield and Southampton in the 2005-2006 season. Swansea in the 2008-2009 season.

So we keep both our records. We're still joint-top in all divisions with 8 consecutive draws under Redknapp in 04-05.

I think you need to do your maths again. 7 losses and 4 draws would be 29 points dropped.

Is that the same goalie who was voted as their man-of-the-match by the Wycombe fans? We totally dominated them and scored 1 goal. He made a double save and kept them in the game while their defenders were all over the place.

The likelihood is that any goalie they would get on loan would also be a reserve with limited recent first team action. Why is that any different to Ipswich playing their reserve goalie ?

Cheers for another insightful post, it is actually different to the other thread, this is not a slagging off Lambert thread. Lets hope it doesn't degenerate into one of the regular Nineteen Canteen slagging off threads.

Try http://www.predictz.com/results.asp?i=3189&l=21&v=0&f=99&t=&s=20082009

We fell into the relegation zone on 28th December 2008 after the 1-1 draw with Reading at St Mary's and stayed there despite 14 points from the 9 games following that game. It's a great relief that we've managed to get out of the relegation zone before Christmas after being 12 points off safety earlier in the season.

What's so special about 11th place ?