PokingFun

OK, I understand why you might want Ranieri, Benitez or even Redknapp but what have the others done to earn any credibility that puts them above what we already have? I'm interested to understand why you think any of the others might be an improvement on a man that has achieved at least as much as them and has made said achievements with us.

We were struggling when he was on the pitch as well. Fulham bossed the second half from start to finish. Personally, I would not have taken Lambert off but reverted him to the main striker role as we were struggling to retain possession which is a key strength for RL when he plays up top. The ball sticks when he is there as he uses his physical presence very well. To say we struggled after he went off is plain wrong.

Personally, I think it was the right decision but wrong striker. Didn't have a problem with Punch coming off at all as he wasn't effective anyway. When the substitution was made I thought we were being battered and we needed to go to a 4-3-3/4-5-1 to try to get some initiative back in midfield. Lambert was having a poor game by his standards but I reckon that may have been partly due to being played too deep where we do not get the best out of him. RL has been at his best this season when played up top as a lone striker with runners feeding off him and felt that we should have gone back to that approach. It seems to me that NA is trying to accommodate J-Rod a little at the moment but to be fair to the lad he had a decent enough game. He just looks a little lightweight to me to be leading the line in the Premier League.

A better way of calculating points expectation versus actual would be to take the best of bookmakers odds pre-game and apply them to each scenario of win lose and draw. For example, the Fulham game is 7/4 Saints, 22/9 Draw, 7/4 Fulham. This means we have a 36% win chance, 36% loss chance and a 28% draw chance. Our points expectation is 3 * 36% = 1.08 + 1 * 28% = 0.28 therefore expected points from the game = 1.36 on average if the game was played several times. The Villa game was 6/4 home win, 9/4 draw 2/1 away (roughly) so 3 * 40% = 1.2 + 1 * 30% = 0.3 = 1.3 and so on. Multiplying out the odds in this way (which are a very close estimate of expected results given bookmakers are judging specifically that and are usually very accurate) for each of our games would give us 5.36 points expectation (so between 5-6). Obviously, this early in the season is a bit too early to know if in the long run we will actually end up behind expectation, but theoretically we are currently behind to the tune of a couple of points from where we could reasonably expect to be.

I think the point is that if we can a) improve on those mistakes through coaching and b) we are playing against sides that aren't top 3, then I suspect we will not be punished anything like as much and therefore are likely to still win enough games due to our attacking ability being up there with some of the more decent mid-table sides in the league. That will be a big fact as to whether we can stay up or not. I agree with you that naive defending though needs to be eradicated from our game as much as possible to give us our best chance of getting major benefit from our attacking play. Time will tell.

On what basis do you think the team in 15th is as good as the team in 8th place from 10 years ago? I'm interested to know your logic for thinking this. Is it not simply a case of evolution of the game and therefore a nonsense comparison. Mistakes many years ago may have gone unpunished as a result of the converse of what you're saying above. In short, mistakes were not magnified back then as the pressure on individuals was less (assuming your theory is correct) therefore "basic" mistakes were easier to avoid. In addition, had the players that played 10 years ago been around now then I am sure they will have been able to equally embrace the advanced science, fitness, tactics and technical improvements so would be better players now than they were then. I simply don't understand the comparison between now and then as it has absolutely no relevance whatsoever. Its the here and now that counts regardless of what standard was needed in the past.

How can you say we have been "clueless" against the top three? We have had one game where we were not at the races (Arsenal), and two games where we have been well in contention against some of the best players on the planet. Wigan we played well first half and didn't turn up second half yet still had chances to take something from the game until their second in the 90th minute. Yes, in each game we have made some inidividual mistakes which have cost us a couple of points we were in contention for but to use the work "clueless" is harsh in the extreme. Versus Man City NA made some substitutions that worked well in our favour and then he was let down by poor individual errors when defending the lead. Versus Man Utd he made some dubious substitutions (according to most fans who have no knowledge of energy levels or anything else that influenced those decisions) but again our individual errors defensively were largely responsible for Man U scoring twice late on (Utd were well on top and pressurising us for some time before we conceded or before we made the subs!) and who is to say had he not made the substitutions that we would DEFINITELY have closed that game out. I don't think its that simple against top two opposition unfortunately. You can keep things the same or change them and their ability will still often get them something from the game. I've seen it happen so often over seasons where Saints tinted specs were not on! There are also many positives so far. Whilst we are low down the table on possession (around 44% average this season) the numbers in our three games against the top sides suggest we have more possession than the average team against top sides which bodes well as it means we are significantly above where the bottom sides will be over a season. In addition, we pass the ball well. We pass it accurately 85% or so of the time which is up there with top 8 territory. In addition, we have also scored against all three top teams and against Wigan it seemed one of those days when we had no rub and their keeper played extremely well (particularly first half where we may have been out of sight with average luck) so with the addition of Ramirez this also bodes very well from an attacking egde perspective. Finally, the bottom half teams will not create the chances or positions that were worked by the top three anywhere near as often and are unlikely to be anywhere near as ruthless so we will be under significantly less pressure defensively which should enable the attacking edge to come through more effectively. I would certainly prefer to use a significantly longer number of games to identify us as "clueless" in the same way that I would want a significantly longer number of games to regard us as "contenders" had we won our first four matches. Yes, I am concerned that we have not picked up any points yet but the positives I am seeing against the top sides I believe will still bode well over a season and achieve safety at least. Clearly, the defensive side needs some work but more importantly I think it is concentration levels that need improving in the GK / Defence to enable us to ensure our good attacking play does not go wasted. I guess time will tell and hopefully (at least from my perspective) NA will get enough time to pit his wits against sides where the games are very winnable to show he has the ability at this level. I still think he can do well and won;t change that opinion over a handful of games against top opposition especially as two games were away from home as well.

They also got completely battered by Man C and Chelsea and conceded 3 versus Norwich and 4 versus Blackburn within 14 games or so. First 4 games they didnt score a goal but picked up 0-0 home draws with Wigan and Sunderland. All is definitely not lost and there is no real need to push the panic button just yet. For what its worth they had 14 points after 14 games so it does suggest that like us they had some issues initially finding their feet in the premier league.

Basically, Swansea made sure that they picked up points against sides that were mid-table / lower table at home and nicked the odd result / draw against those sides away from home. They also has the added bonus of winning a couple of home games against the top 4 by the odd goal which we clearly got close to doing versus Man U but were undone with poor defending. Its not beyond the realms of possbility that we could still have a similar season but you can see from their overall season form that winning your home games against those around you is absolutely vital. What you do against the top 6-8 away from home is largely irrelevant because you're simply not going to get much joy as a new team in the PL. The next 6 games will tell us a lot more as we have games against many teams who may end up mid-table / lower. Swansea City league table ranking Home Away 1 Manchester City 1 - 0 4 - 0 2 Manchester Utd 0 - 1 2 - 0 3 Arsenal 3 - 2 1 - 0 4 Tottenham 1 - 1 3 - 1 5 Newcastle Utd 0 - 2 0 - 0 6 Chelsea 1 - 1 4 - 1 7 Everton 0 - 2 1 - 0 8 Liverpool 1 - 0 0 - 0 9 Fulham 2 - 0 0 - 3 10 West Bromwich 3 - 0 1 - 2 11 Swansea City 12 Norwich City 2 - 3 3 - 1 13 Sunderland 0 - 0 2 - 0 14 Stoke City 2 - 0 2 - 0 15 Wigan Athletic 0 - 0 0 - 2 16 Aston Villa 0 - 0 0 - 2 17 QP Rangers 1 - 1 3 - 0 18 Bolton 3 - 1 1 - 1 19 Blackburn 3 - 0 4 - 2 20 Wolverhampton 4 - 4 2 - 2

There's a site called whoscored.com powered by OPTA that gives these stats. An interesting read if you are into football statistics but they have our pass success rate so far in line with a mid-table team. MS was around the 90% mark on Sunday over 64 passes which is absolutely top class. There is also a field on passing that identifies key passes as well as a host of other stats. You have to read between the lines a little to make sense of some of it but it is a pretty objective measure. The other noticeable aspect is that we are bottom half of table in terms of possession (I think at around 42% from memory) but this is no surprise as a result of the teams we have played. We were 50/50 or so versus Wigan, 45/55 versus Man U and 35/65 versus Man City.

Reeves strike wasn't too shabby either!

Pretty much hit the nail on the head here. He looks casual whereas if he were to have an aggressive running style and be a hard looking tackler like Chaplow, people would actually think better of him which is completely wrong. Unfortunately the average English fan prefers blood and thunder to people who can pass it.

I see Saint Lard didn't fancy my charity wager then that Nigel ends up making him look a little bit silly again ..... A couple of wins and we won't see Lard on here very much at all!

Mate, you are a complete waste of space! Frail does not get dual promotions, he has not failed by any stretch of the imagination and arguably not yet been backed with a final squad for this league. You have disliked the guy from day one and I'm sure would take delight in relegation or his sacking but I reckon he is a winner and will prove you wrong again. I'm even prepared to have a little bet for charity if you're up for it?

This is such a massive overreaction once again. We have done loads of transfers in the last three seasons and missed out on a handful where opposition teams or agents/players have apparently moved the goalposts and this is likely to happen more as we go up the transfer target pyramid as we will be in against quality teams vying for some signings as well. It's important that we are never held to ransom for a player in my opinion otherwise it opens the floodgates for us to be an easy touch when it comes to negotiations. I'm fairly sure if we want a player we will ultimately offer the best we can according to the budget we work to and tell them to **** off when they start taking the ****. There may be stages in between where we pitch in at less and try to broker a good deal but at the end if we want a player we know how far we can go and will do at some stage if we can't get them to budge at better. In the Ramirez and Buttner deals I have no real idea what's gone on but seems to me that we have had agreements in place and the goalposts have been moved subsequently by others. No mention of Saints wrong doing at all. We are waiting for the right players, at price and terms we can afford and long may that continue as we will be well served by that philosophy.

So, is there any evidence that Cortese struggles to get deals done or does he simply not roll over as soon as selling club / agent decides they want more than a player is worth?

Do we actually concede a greater than average number of goals from long range than other teams or is it a case of human memory mainly remembering the absolute screamers opposition teams score against us?

Most CEO's I have ever worked for / with in the modern business era simply do not have a holiday as such. They may go away but they live and breathe their work (one of the main reasons they are driven and successful) meaning they will absolutely have access to all relevant information required should an important decision require making such as the agreement to sign a new player or let a player go. They also usually have people they place faith and trust in to get business issues to a point where they can make an executive decision based on the information they get provided from said trusted people. I do not know Nicola Cortese at all, but from what I do know from interviews and his success generally is that I'm almost certain if a deal needed doing for the right player at the right price then he would make himself enough available to ensure that deal got done assuming it needed him to be there / sign something etc. Everyone needs to calm down. Decent post from Adrian above in my opinion and Cortese being away will not mean business cannot be done as I do not know of any business that shuts up shop for 2 weeks on their decision making because the CEO is away.

Good post Ben ;-)

I see his passing ability and the taking of a touch too many at times as being one of AL's weaknesses. He has great control and touch but needs to improve his decision making if he is to make it anywhere near the England squad.

I'm surprised that you have a view that he is a dinosaur, after all, wasn't he one of the earlier managers to embrace sports science and technology. Yes, his sides maybe play football that isn't too pleasing on the eye at times but he has openly admitted in the past that he sets up his teams according to their strengths and I couldn't really see that he did much wrong at West Ham (as an outsider looking in) other than he was possibly more negative than he needed to be on occasions. As TDD and Turkish said, very decent record at Premier League level with limited resources at the clubs he has managed. I think people are confusing themselves mainly with Sam Allardyce coming across as a bit arrogant and forthright in his interviews but that has never made anyone a poor manager.

A pretty nice article I thought that shows Guly in a good light. He certainly seems to feel that more fans are on his side than you might otherwise think from reading some of the slating he gets on here at times. The point about him being quite selfless in terms of where he plays and his role in the side is quite important as I feel it is one of the key reasons that NA plays him so often even though there are often different available options in positions he plays. Personally, I think the fella has done a decent job for us the majority of the time and plays well to his manager's instructions. Even in the premier league I think he will remain a decent option for us although I'm fairly certain his game time will become more limited this coming season. Still a good man to have around in my opinion. Good luck to him.

I'd imagine this will be purchased in the main by smaller companies looking for a way of doing cheaper hospitality for their business partners and employees.

Not really a stitich up, just simply that it was voted for by fans and Man U and Arsenal have more fans than us so it was always going to be won by players involved with the top clubs.

I think you need to take the interview in context. Obviously, the adrenalin will have been flowing in a big way and of course he is going to tell the media that his team have been fantastic since their early season slump and he is correct in that assumption. I think had he been interviewed the next day he may well have had a calmer outlook on the issue and given credit to other teams that have pushed them as well but that kind of thought is difficult immediately after securing such a big achievment. I have always felt Brian McDermott to be an articulate and humble guy and I don't think his comments are arrogant at all. Whether he has got the comment best team by a long way right or wrong (that will differ depending on what you consider to be a big margin), there is no arguing that they have been the best team (based on results) for quite some time now. I think his comments were merely a statement that he felt his side had done extraordinarily well and he certainly wasn't suggesting everyone else is ****e! As far as I am concerned, good luck to Reading, they deserve to be up based on their results. Theyre a decent team and worthy of their place at the top of the league but I'm almost certain he doesn't really think that his team is better than us by a long way and he certainly didn't single us out. He just got caught up in the emotion and adrenalin and maybe used words he might not usually choose given that. He also knows the league isn't won as I have not seen him say anywhere that his team will definitely go up as champions, although happy to be corrected on that one if anyone else has.