madsent

Although we think of ourselves as a big club in the FA Cup, having won it, our record proves otherwise. Since the start of the Premiership, we've been pretty poor and have lost to lower league opposition 6 times - Port Vale in 1994, Reading in 1997, Fulham in 1999, Tranmere in 2001, Rotherham in 2002, Bristol Rovers in 2008. What makes it worse is that 3 of those defeats were replays. Our record against Premier League opposition is also appalling. In that time, we've won 3 and lost 11 against Premier League teams. We've gone out in the 3rd round 8 times and we have won a grand total of 23 games in 17 seasons and 2 rounds.

Isn't he meant to return to Preston before the 3rd round ?

The only disappointing thing in that lot is that we've conceded the first goal in 4 of the last 5 league games. It would be nice to take control of games early from time to time. We won't keep recovering from deficits to win matches.

The last time I remember us getting a goal through blatant cheating was Marian Pahars diving for a penalty against Everton in the 2002-2003 season. He then had the bare-faced cheek to score the penalty himself. Obviously, I'm not complaining as it was our first win of the season and undeserved wins are often remembered more fondly than deserved ones. I'm sure Henry was similarly derided after his dive against Barcelona in the Champions League final set up Arsenal's goal. The only reason that it wasn't discussed so much is that Arsenal eventually lost the match. As for the FA Cup Final, I seem to remember Henry, Ljungberg and Pires playing keep-ball in the corner for over 5 minutes, trying to run down the clock. That's my overriding memory of the day and sickened me because Arsenal were so completely dominant that they didn't need to resort to those tactics. Even Arsene Wenger looked frustrated with it. It reminded me of the old Liverpool tactic of constantly playing the ball back to the goalkeeper when they were ahead in the days when there was no back-pass rule.

Graham Potter doesn't immediately come to mind as one of our worst ever players. He was an okay player who was better suited to the lower leagues. Ripley, McCann, Marshall, Almeida, Kanchelskis, Todd, Dixon, Speedie, Davenport, Maskell and Rosler are names that spring to mind as experienced players who were complete flops at Saints. Paul Moody was appalling for us but had a decent career in the lower leagues. Some like Chala, Bleidelis, Arias, Sarmiento and Tejera barely played a league game between them. Others like Hurlock and Colleter were committed but rash and error-prone. Time will tell with Lancashire as he is is still learning but his major hamstring injuries from a couple of seasons back have really hampered his progress.

No. Swansea paid £400k in 2 instalments for Dyer. Lambert cost us £1m up front plus potential extras if I remember correctly.

Last I could find is 1953-54 season when we lost 3-1 to Bournemouth in the first round. We played a few times in the 1st round after that but always won.

Some how I lost him when I was rearranging my post

Spurs v Stoke had more ex-players, if you include the bench. Spurs had Bale and Crouch while Stoke had Beattie, Fuller and Higginbotham. Spurs also had Redknapp and Bond in the dugout.

Really? Our team has scored the first goal in 9 of the 12 league games this season and only Yeovil have failed to equalize.

We had some very long runs with no wins but no very long losing streaks. We did finish one place above 2 teams that lost 8 in a row though. Man City lost 8 in a row under Alan Ball and we stayed up on goal difference. Charlton lost 8 in a row in the great escape season. The last of those was the 3-1 loss at the Dell.

We've had a few clusters or 3 wins in a row in the last few years. Last time I can remember 5 in a row in the same season was under Hoddle. I'm pretty certain we haven't won 6 since the original great escape season under Branfoot when we won 6 in a row and stayed up having been completely stranded. On the subject of Lambert, he's clearly an decent striker at L1 level but he has no real history of big scoring seasons. He scored 29 in 45 last season but only 13 in 46 the season before and 9 in 42 in L2 the season before that. His only other 20+ goal season was with Rochdale in L2 in 05-06.

Once you've represented your country at full international level, that's it. You can't change your allegiance. There have been exceptions since that rule was brought in, notably when the USSR and Yugoslavia split into their constituent countries. That said, I'm still not entirely sure why the Ukranian members of the USSR team were allowed to play for Russia and why they would choose to. I'm also not certain what FIFA would do if another Tony Cascarino situation happened and it turned out that a player was not in any way entitled to play for a country they have already represented.

Actually, most of Saganowski's sub appearances under Burley and Pearson were 20 minutes or longer. Even discounting the few games where he had limited time to make an impact, he went close to 1000 minutes without a goal before the Sheffield Utd game. As I mentioned before, his low scoring rate is a symptom of his curious inability to shoot, on target or otherwise. The fact that he has 4 start and 1 sub appearance so far and a total of 6 shots, 1 on target, bears this out. When he first joined on loan, he seemed to have confidence and shot whenever he saw the goal. Who knows whether that's been coached out of him or he's just lost confidence or motivation.

If Saga was our penalty taker, we'd have lost at Stockport and drawn against Yeovil. I've never seen someone so good at missing the goal by inches. His record of 1 in 5 is poor enough but his inability to shoot on target is his biggest weakness and that's when he actually shoots which is an occurrence that is becoming rarer every game.

I assume you're being sarcastic there. When Charlton beat us at St Mary's last season, Racon scored their second goal and Bailey scored the third. They are 2 of the best midfielders in the league and Bailey is also a major goal threat. I never believe it when the opposition team says they have key players doubtful. They usually make a miraculous recovery. I'm sure we'll see both players in the starting line-up on Saturday.

Youssef Safri is from Morocco. Pele is from the Cape Verde islands which are off the coast of West Africa. We had the occasional African before. Hassan Kachloul and Bruce Grobbelaar being examples.

MLT was certainly not the only one in on the act. I heard several people mention that they thought our players were betting on the timing of the first throw-in in the game and I'm sure it was commented on by some radio and TV pundits at the time as well. I saw several games in the early-to-mid-90s where the ball went out first or second touch after we kicked off, even when MLT was missing. In fact, I was shocked when MLT scored the opening goal against Liverpool when we beat them 4-2. Maybe he had a bet on the timing of the first goal-kick and got his angles wrong

I noticed that Charlton's ex-striker, Jonatan Johansson was released today, as was Dejan Stefanovic. It could be one of them or Jaidi.

I've also heard that the owners of Notts County had to provide a bond that ensures the salaries of Sven and Campbell are paid by them in the unlikely event of them selling up so the club is protected from Gary Kelly syndrome.

Surely his season is only over if he's done his anterior cruciate ligament. Looking at the cause of the injury, I think he's more likely to have done his medial ligament which is more painful but takes 2 to 3 months to recover from fully.

Does provide one explanation as to why we ended up with a 6'7 goalkeeper with no experience on a 5 year contract.

How are we a month behind ? Or pre-season was actually a week longer than usual. The ownership of the club changed and so did the manager but that didn't stop the fitness training and the coaching whether it was by Wotte, Henderson or Pardew. Clearly the problem we have is that the kids aren't ready and the experienced players aren't good enough. We're seeing why Wayne Thomas rarely even made the bench despite being fit at the start of last season. Add the squad's lack of height and it's a disaster waiting to happen. Against Swindon we had 3 outfield players (Lancashire, Harding and Lambert) who are 6' or over. As for Kelvin Davis, he's been great and is the reason we've not conceded any from open play yet but he's not big for a keeper and is of no real use at free kicks and corners without a dominant centre back. He lacks the height and physique to bash attackers and defenders out of the way in order to get to the ball.

No he didn't. He spent most of the season troubling the Stoke physios and played a total of 7 league games for Stoke and Preston. He's too head-strong and gets himself hurt through unnecessarily physical play. He has no subtlety at all and is constantly out of position. In L1, he would only play for 10 minutes before he broke something and was out for a month.

I'm still trying to work out how Notts County are paying all their new recruits when they have the wage cap in L2 set at 60% of turnover. I've come to the conclusion that they're being clever and either the new owner has bought his season ticket for £5m or their new players are all playing for free but are being paid a large pro-rated signing on fee.