st alex

The suspect in the Dortmund team bus bombing from last year has admitted to detonating explosives. He's a white non-muslim and was it's understood he was hoping to make financial gains from the attack. Would have thought this would have been on the front pages of the red tops had he been muslim. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42603840

He's an attacking left full back, converted from a left winger. Pied plays right back so whether he plays or not shouldn't affect whether McQueen plays. If McQueen is to play he'll have to oust our other attacking left full back, Bertrand, who's been England's starting left back recently. Or alternatively he could be played further up the pitch in his former left wing role i.e. the position occupied by Tadic/Redmond/Boufal.

Like many owners I think they'd leave it up to the chairman and director of football to sort out.

We'd still need Tadic to avoid giving the ball away continually in the dying minutes. That's the time to do some sideways passing and keep possession rather than just run into the opposition time and again.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/42212590 LAWRO'S PREDICTION Southampton came back to get a point against Bournemouth last week and I am going to go for another draw here. I don't think Saints will test Arsenal's defence in the same way United did, but they won't give too much away at the back either. Prediction: 2-0

Always difficult against Manchester teams when they score in the 6th minute of 4 mins added time.

Difficult to find any reason for him to stay, the results haven't been good and neither have the performances. However - he's the Plan B for Puel who wasn't deemed good enough, there's got to be a decent Plan C. We can't afford to appoint someone even worse again. Wouldn't want Koeman back, felt like he inherited a very decent squad and just managed to continue Pochetino's good work. Really want a manager who's going to motivate and organise the team. Who can get the best out the players, and who's decent tactician. That certainly doesn't seem to be what we currently have and not sure who that would be. Keegan was mentioned, could he do a job? He's been out of the game for while. I wouldn't mind Eddie Howe, hopefully sell the club to him in that he'd be getting greater resources and infrastructure than he does currently - plus he doesn't need to relocate.

If his confidence is poor then our fans giving him ironic cheers is hardly going to help. It might be worth giving McCarthy a go, but if he turns out to be no better or gets injured again - then what? Carry on giving ironic cheers to person trying their best to play the most difficult position in a professional football team in the toughest league in the world? There's certainly no need for the crowd to be making his situation any worse. I wouldn't like to do my job in front of 30,000 people a week, no matter what I was paid, it's incredibly difficult to play at your best all the time. Surely everyone's played 5-a-side or school level football where you just inexplicably don't play nearly as well as you know you can for some time.

Last year? JWP & Claise both quite short.

Apologies, the links were there to provide context and to move the debate on to talking about Head of Recruitment rather than the mythical black box. There had been no comment previously on this thread about either Mitchell or Wilson. I read a different article and then couldn't find a link to it, he went on gardening leave in March, would have expected him to have been replaced by now, in which case he may well be available: http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11675/10794585/paul-mitchell-finishes-work-for-tottenham-amid-rangers-interest

Paul Mitchell left Tottenham, not sure where he is now. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/dec/13/tottenham-hotspur-paul-mitchell-recruitment-notice-period We managed to keep Ross Wilson amid interest from Rangers, not sure we could have both - or could we? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2017/03/08/rangers-director-football-target-ross-wilson-stay-southampton/ The signings we've made the past couple of season's haven't come off quite as we'd have liked (Boufal, Redmond, PEH).

Did anyone ever actually make an offer for him? It's all very good saying we're refusing to sell him, but even if we wanted to we can't sell him unless someone makes an offer - and then it's obviously going to have to be a big offer for us to accept, no team wants to sell their best players - but receive an offer big enough and they probably will.

You're right, I stand corrected.

You sound like the character that plays the annoying knob in the Inbetweeners.

Liverpool fans think they've tracked him down on merseyside for a medical. https://www.expressandstar.com/sport/viral-sports-news/2017/08/29/liverpool-fans-transfer-detectives-believe-theyve-tracked-virgil-van-dijk-on-his-way-to-the-club/

Surely that's 2 separate contracts? One's with Arsenal and Southampton as part of agreeing the transfer fee, and the other's between AOC and Arsenal and is his employment contract with them.

If I enjoyed my job and got on with my colleagues and didn't want to uproot my family and I was in a job that I'd recently committed to then it wouldn't be a straightforward decision to make. I've always felt loyalty to employers that have been good to me, even when the pay's been poor. Money would come into it of course, but at the opposite end of the scale; a tripling of wages from 20k a year to £60k a year for example would be the difference of buying a house or renting a bedsit, of going on a weekend camping holiday to Dorset or round the world trips. Not sure what you can buy on 150k a week that you can't buy on 50k a week. 50k p/a is a top end salary in my eyes, and that ought to take 10-20 years to work up to in a forty year career. For Van Dyke a year on say 50k he'd earn more than 99% of people would in a lifetime. He could buy half a dozen miserable one bed flats lease them us mere mortals and profiteer of us for the rest of his life without having to do any work (post retirement). Not really sure that he should have a different attitude than any of our other players, surely Forster, Bertrand, Gabbi etc all want to triple their wages and play in Europe as well. Supposed they've not been tapped up, or maybe they're just being professional.

Didn't we just finish in the top 8 with Stephens as centre back for half the season, which would mean that he is by definition a top 8 centre back. Considering how he seems to be developing so well, I see no reason why like other 24 year olds (Micheal Keane & Ben Gibson) he couldn't also get an England call up with continued regular playing time and consistent performances.

Hope we start having someone make a late run to the back post when we've got a corner, so many corners against Arsenal and Man Utd went through over the crowd and we never had anyone attacking the back post from deep.

Not sure they've they've even had that many shots. Lots of talk about us needing better defenders next season, but don't think we've defended too badly. We had very few clear cut chances today though, lots of opportunities when we could have done better in the final third.

I can't understand that, blatant foul on Bertrand shouldn't mean they get a second chance at the corner, it should be a freekick to us. If the ball went out of play then it should be a goal kick to us. Headlocked and pulled to the ground is a pretty clearcut foul.

Thought we generally defended well, but our midfield was awful, gave the ball away too easily (often under little pressure and from good positions). Stephens generally did pretty well - but he's not a 'youngster' and shouldn't be judged as such. He's 23. Thought Redmond was poor today, failed to control too many balls and didn't provide the service or create the chances that we need to. We weren't getting enough players forward, just didn't create nearly enough, apart from a Yoshida header straight at the keeper we never looked like scoring. I didn't think Man City looked all that, for 70 odd mins they barely looked like scoring (except for Kompany's goal from a corner). Then a mini collapse from us and the score line flatted them. However we were poor and didn't deserve anything as we never looked like scoring, we didn't even look like we were trying to score.

That stats page was my least favourite page to do when I was artworking programmes, as you can't just copy and paste like you can for articles. Like to think I'd get the results right though, even if I got the occasional error with a sub or the line up. It's often the last page to get done as you can be waiting for results to come in on a Wednesday night before sending it to print around midnight. Did a saints programme once, never got paid...

I'd be embarrassed to admit to reading the Daily Star. I think it's safe to assume that report is about as accurate as any of the posters on here. Most likely that was written ages ago and then they insert a team name based on who's got the best injury list.

Thought the same having watched the replay. Zaha's thrown himself to the ground and didn't even attempt to challenge Davis. He's gone over too easily, usually the it's our players that get knocked of the ball too easily in similar challenges.