Charlie Wayman

Ralph might as well mix and match for this one. No point in playing our "strongest team" when clearly it has proven itself to be useless anyway. Salisu deserves a shot at it, probably drop Bednarek, give JWP and Ings a rest, time for the youngsters to be given another chance. We can't win anyway so might as well use the opportunity to plan for next year.

The people behind this (mostly Yanks) have a global perspective. Their closed shop model is no different to NFL and Formula 1. What they want is a high quality circus - no doubt soon to be called a World Series - that travels the world plying its trade wherever the money rolls in to pay for it, indifferent to moral constraints like human rights abuses and authoritarian regimes. Expect game to be played in US, China, Russia and so on in future as well as in Europe. They won't stop at Europe so we can expect South American teams to join in the future adding Brazil and Mexico to the mix. The real sadness is that none of this is boycotted by fans who otherwise take the moral high ground, happy to watch Lewis Hamilton win every race without much competition. Does anybody talk about Formula 3 any more?

On the head! Classic Tory distraction technique. Bet Bojo has never been near a football ground in his life. Prince William is President of the FA is he not so this could be a little tricky for him 'though.

Well yes but far more will not. The only money Sky has ever conned out of me has been during this Covid year and solely because I could watch pretty much every Saints match without consent interruptions. Personally I am not in the least bit interested in watching any other team play so it will all pass me by. Of course if it happens it is bound to have an impact on Saints but that is something we will all have to think about in the future.

What a complete waste of time that was. Spineless bunch of nincompoops. Time for a clear out. Reminded me of the white flag surrender at Cardiff in 2003. What is the point of battling your way to Wembley and then giving up without a fight.

In all honesty, no matter how much one might wish and hope for a different outcome, Saints have little chance of over-coming Leicester this evening. We are in a very poor run of form and apart from the Burnley result that is beginning to look more freakish by the day there is little to suggest that we might cause a major upset. Our defence in particular has lost all cohesion with several players way out of form. Passion alone will not achieve the result we want. Unless Diallo & JWP somehow miraculously get their acts together individually and collectively our midfield will be over-run by a Leicester side that revels in long crosses to fast running strikers; we know from bitter experience how well our centre backs cope with that kind of threat. Despite players "being up for the Cup", I can't see it happening. 3-0 to Leicester.

Presented without comment and no wonder, what is there to say? After the much publicised shake-up of the Academy, the impact of the new direction and management team is producing the sort results that provide proper training for our lads at they prepare for first team duties. Keeping our traditions alive is very important.

So was my younger son. Small world.

I think what he was saying is you only need to make a point once. Brevity is to be admired.

What a thoroughly depressing post, why do you bother to support such a hopelessly lost cause of a club?

Les Reed of course, who else?

At least tonight we don't have to agonise over our MotM.

Seems very unlikely, he will want to keep momentum and sharpen automatism for the Leicester match. Massive folly to change things around now and he won't!

He was also MotM. Ralph must be monitoring his progress closely and surely will want to take a good look at him during the summer. I agree he has become a key player at Celtic and no doubt they will want to hang onto him. Could be interesting. Main question is would he want to come back here after all the abuse he has suffered at the hands of many fans?

Wonderful memories of Sadio as a free scoring Saint and the heady days of Top 4 life under Ronald Koeman. Looking back, what a team we had then. If only... and remarkably there is our one and only James strutting his stuff amongst the elite. Nice one OS, really enjoyed watching that again, stirring memories of how elated we felt in those halcyon days.

Presumably these shirts in kids sizes will be sold without the shirt sponsor's logo. Model racing cars were never allowed to be sold with alcohol or tobacco logos.

He is certainly not the finished article by any means; if he has any common sense he will stay with Ralph for a couple more years before chancing his arm on a big move. My personal view is that he won't be going anywhere this summer.

If that was true it wouldn't say much for Hasenhüttl's appeal to players as a progressive and development coach. For that reason alone it is all bullish*t.

Disgraceful

He does exactly what it says on the tin, no more, no less. Of course we could do better with memories of Lambert still strongly in mind. Lambert may not have been the brightest striker on the planet but my goodness he had a lightning fast football brain. Che for all his qualities strikes me as a bull in a china shop.

Don't waste your breath, he hates the very thought of Theo and puts him down in every thread

Like a good many on here then.

Agree and Bertrand the other most likely. Whereas Ings can earn the club a decent transfer fee, Bertie probably can't, we need the sort of money that would pay for an adequate replacement if we sell. On the other hand Dan Sheldon doesn't come across to me as an insider so all of that guff from The Athletic needs to be taken with huge pinch of salt.

Automatism is so much part of our game that Ralph will not change a winning team unless forced to do so. The manager's view of the FA Cup SF will be quite different to a player's. Ralph will want to re-build the momentum and automatism that we had at the start of the season so that he has a good chance of winning and reaching the FACup Final; individual players to a certain extent will be expendable in pursuit of his aim whereas each individual player will desperately want to start at Wembley and will do his level best to avoid injury against WBA. For them it's a catch 22, if they play flat out against WBA they could risk injury but if they play half-heartedly to avoid injury they could well be dropped for the SF. AS Ralph said yesterday, he has now for the first time in ages a quite strong bench to call upon. The message from him could not be clearer. For these reasons I expect yesterday's team to start again against WBA and Leicester and do well against both. All being well we should coast to a 3-0 victory at the Hawthorns.

A bit harsh, he played a lot of minutes for Poland and was clearly a bit leggy today. Maybe Ralph should have considered resting him but probably didn't trust Salisu enough to risk leaving Jan out.