The Kraken

The referee was utterly dreadful I agree, but to even partially blame him for us not winning tonight doesn't really address it. We just had too many players who weren't up to it on the night, and our tactics throughout the game were just too predictable. All their centre-backs had in their locker was their aerial ability and we played right into their hands with far, far too many high balls hopefully lofted into the box. I'd agree with some of your player ratings, but I'll give mine anyway.... Davis: 7. Did what he had to do well. Semi: 5. Never really troubled defensively, but never really offered much going forward. Fonte: 9. Awesome, far too good for this league, the stand out player on the pitch. Seaborne: 5. Defensively sound but seems to think of himself as a defensive libero who can spray the ball about at will, needs to shorten his passes and simplify it, he'd look much better. Harding: 7. Defensively excellent and played as a winger. Some good moves that just didn't quite come off. Puncheon: 2. Thought he was dreadful and can't really see any positives to his game tonight, I was crying out for Antonio to replace him. Hammond: 6. Difficult as he didn't have Schneiderlin alongside but he had a quiet game, and certianly didn't offer enough going forward. Wotton: 2. Poor, and considering we needed more than a holding midfielder he was a fish out of water. Lallana: 5. The game was crying out for some of his inspiration but he wasn't on it. Lambert: 7. We relied on him far too much, and against two meatheads and out predictable game plan we played right into their hands. Barnard: 7. Thought he did well and was very unlucky to come off. Subs: James: 1. Looked even worse than Wotton. Poor decision from Pardew to go like for like with Wotton when we needed to be more attacking, but James looked utterly terrible. Almost gave a goal away early on and never recovered. Waigo: 7. I still don't rate him but at least he showed the desire to actually have a run and not just loft the ball into the box. Still not sure how he missed his chance though. Connolly: 4. Never really appeared in the game and, considering he's a poacher, didn't make the most of some potential chances. Ref: 1. Dreadful, really, really bad. Often bad for both teams but first half did seem like he was trying to prove a point about not being a homer. In conclusion, I think we were really lacking a creative spark in central midfield. A friends suggested before the game that we try Lallana there and I disagreed at the time as I thought he wouldn't offer enough bite. But we didn't need that tonight, we needed someone to play through and I think AL would have offered much more than the predictable loft into the box, which was all we seemed to have other than Harding's occasional bursts down the left. All in all, a disappointing display. But I don't believe the possession percentage stats I've seen, for the last 30 minutes at least Oldham barely got out of our half and hardly had a kick, I've never seen a Saints team dominate so much and do so relatively little with it. One of those nights, unfortunately.

Upandaway, thanks for the link and I've found it now. Not being a collector of programmes, I can't see what it was that Pardew actually said, only the Echo's reporting of it. If AP did actually say "the cups are more important than the league", then that is clearly disappointing. However, the quotes in the article seem to go against that, as he's saying: Any most importantly I would suggest... Again, without the programme itself it's difficult to categorise one way or the other. Either AP has been misquoted by the Echo, or he is doing some back-tracking for comments he really shouldn't have made. But its very clear from the tone of the direct quotes from the article that he was clearly targetting success on ALL counts, and not making cup achievement a more important priority than the league.

Curbishley is a decent manager, but given the run of form that we've hit in the last 2-3 months it would be an act of lunacy to destabilise the team and change manager now. I sincerely hope the rumours aren't true, otherwise we'd be taking a sizeable and unneccessary risk. Curbs for DoF? Perhaps...

OK, I'm still not buying in to this. I've yet to see a quote from AP anywhere suggesting that the league is out and we're only concentrating on the cups. I asked upandaway as he's quoted this a few times, yet he could only point me in the direction of "programme notes and the Echo has repeated it a few times". Well I've tried google searching it, and still can't find a quote attributed to AP that we were placing cup success ahead of the league. I'll happily admit I'm wrong if someone can provide me with a quote, but so far I'm yet to see one. I've easily found previous quotes from AP suggesting that both league and cups are a priority, and that we'll try to win every game we play. Maybe someone can provide the mystery quote(s) I seem to have missed. Edit: As for the "only woken up recently to possibilities in the league", well certainly Cortese doesn't see it that way. That pretty much says, in black and white, that AP went to NC to ask for funds for new players to mount a serious playoff push. It certainly doesn't say to me that AP asked for players becasue he thought we could win the JPT and therefore should neglect our league chances.

You mentioned this on another thread, and I said then that I hadn't seen anywhere where Pardew has said this. Can you provide clarification of it? As I mentioned on the other thread, the only time I have seen Pardew mentioning priority of any competition is when he said this: That's not prioritising the cups at all; simply stating that we won't devalue them and will put a first choice team out for every game we play. Which is an excellent attitude to have, IMO, as I think trying to blame poor league form on cup success in our case just doesn't add up.

It's a completely redundant question as there can be no proof either way as to whether the cups increased or diminished our promotion. You're suggesting that the cups were responsible for us not winning some subsequent games. But conveniently forgetting that we only played two league games at home (won 1, lost 1) following a cup tie. So in effect you're either criticising the team for not winning all of their away games, or for losing one home game, which is a frankly bizarre accusation. In any case, if you do blame the cup input for losing some subsequent games then you must also give credit to the cups for inspiring: Going on a 3 game league winning streak after beating Torquay; Going on a 3 game league winning streak after beating Northampton; Going unbeaten in January while beating Luton in the FA Cup and MK Dons in the JPT; Winning 3 out of 4 league games after an excellent performance in the Portsmouth FA Cup game; The benefit or downfall of competing (and competing well) in the cups will never be known, and analysing only the next game is far too simplistic an approach. On the flip side, how much benefit the team will have gained from putting away the likes of Norwich, Leeds, Ipswich, MK Dons just cannot be quanitified by any accurate method either.

Just finished sticking in my first £10 worth of stickers; can't rule out the possibility that I may walk down the shop later on and buy some more. I'm 35 for goodness sake, perhaps I need to grow up a bit....

That may be true, but to just take the ground to 40 - 45K it would be much more cost effective to just expand one stand at St. Mary's. From memory I believe we can add 8K new seats to the Kingland, 4K to the Northam and 4K to the Chapel, at a cost of £3k per new seat. So whacking in an extra 12K would take us to 44K capacity at a cost of £36M. But I agree it's not something that should be rushed into; even at SMS we only got as high as 22 or 23K season ticket holders and for a stadium expansion like that I would expect to see that figure to have to rise quite significantly. Not beyond the realm of possibility though. * Edited for poor adding up skills....

All we have to do is get back to the Premiership and we'd be on a par with Birmingham. they're having a bit of a one season wonder but in terms of size and potential they're still pretty limited. If you're saying it's take 5 years to get that far, then fair enough. But I think if/when we get back to the Prem we will see the type of backing that we never previously had with Lowe at the helm. Think back; we used to sell over 30K to games against the likes of Fulham, Bllackburn etc. and that was with, lets face it, a quite average side who often punched above their weight. Against the likes of Man U, Liverpool, Chelsea etc tickets were like gold dust. For those games 40K would be an easily achievable target, something that Birmingham could only dream of. The catchment area we are in is absolutely huge for the floating and corporate fans; we're seeing at the moment our core fanbase averaging above 20K in the 3rd tier of football. The potential for growth with the type of financial backing we've been seeing is really extremely encouraging. I very much agree with SRS; it's a very exciting time to be a Saints fan right now.

Great news, a real sign of intent of proper long term planning. Very happy with this appointment.

Well I'm sorry but I've never see a quote from Pardew where he has placed cup priority over the league. He's said this before: That's not prioritising the cups at all; simply stating that we won't devalue them and will put a first choice team out for every game we play.

This isn't a dig at your non-attendance but I do think you need to have been to games to fully understand just how much the club has changed throughout, from the team on the pitch, the management, the ownership structure; all this has completely filtered through to the feelgood factor amongst fans and therefore the atmosphere at games. The difference between this season and and the past 2 or 3 is like night and day. Has it come at a financial cost? Of course? Has it been worth it and "value for money"? Yes, ten times over. Promotion is still on this season, and what a cracking month or two we have in store. But even if we don't go up many fans will be able to look back on the season as one of the most enjoyable for a long time. The most enjoyable thing about football is going to games and having a good time; good results often go hand in hand with that but there's more to football than just the league table. And AP (and his spending) have more than contributed to that.

That's all well and good on the rare occasion, but you only need to look at David Sullivan at Wet Sham to see how the chairman consistently giving the football team a verbal kicking can actually have a negative effect on the team, rather than positive effect he wants it to have. It becomes a media circus and arguably puts even more pressure on the team. Like you say, no manager is going to get it right all the time. But unfortunately we live in a society with instant news whereby after any bad result the manager is going to get some stick from some quarters, whether it be the media, fans, or the chairman. I just happen to think that a football club should be seen to be working together rather than creating the image that there is a rift between the team and the management (which has had to be vehemently denied by NC at SFC), and any criticism of the manager by the chairman should be done in-house. That's not to say that AP or any manager for that matter should be beyond criticism, simply that there's often no need for the chairman to do his dirty washing in public.

Quite how there can be so much spite surrounding one of the best periods of form I can ever remember from Saints is clearly lost on me. There was me thinking Saints winning games was enjoyable; not simply a method for winding up other fans about. How odd.

How on earth has he disregarded the CEO on the direction of the company? At the start of the season we heard all about the 5 year plan to the Prem, a 2 year plan to get out of this division, and the need to fill the trophy cabinet with "proper trophies". Despite much media inference I'm yet to hear a direct quote from Cortese that that has all changed and we're now in a 1 year plan to get out of this league. And we have one more trophy to add to the cabinet. Like you say the JPT is no play-off final, but still well within the scope of Cortese and Pardew's original targets.

Some of the manifesto statements are so vague as to be irrelevant; "we're going to get rid of 100,000 bureaucrats in the NHS and replace them with doctors, nurses and surgeons". Excellent. How? I had 50% tories, 25% labour and 25% greens.

I think there's a danger of under-estimating how much of a step up to the Championship it will be; a few years back the gap between the two divisions was not so great, but there are now a wealth of clubs in the Championship who are strong. Players that I think could definitely make the grade are Davis, Fonte, Harding, Lallana, Puncheon and Lambert. Schneiderlin would also fit into that category, though he might need a few games to adapt to the higher demands of playing against better midfielders. Jaidi's only suspect point would be his pace and fitness, he's not getting any younger and has sometimes looked off the pace this year. For me the jury would be out on Hammond, Barnard, Seaborne and Connolly, though they are all worth a try and at worst all good enough for squad players. Antonio is worth a punt in the absence of anything else for his raw potential alone, but would need to refine his game. There's clearly no place for Perry, Wotton, Thomas, Gillett, Holmes, Lancashire, Pulis or Molyneux, and I think Waigo would get found out, he's too hit and miss for my liking. The remaining youngsters are worth a punt to see if they can handle the step up. I'd suggest a new CM would be a priority, a Hammond of the Championship if you like. Maybe a dominant CB to pair up with Fonte, and certainly a new RB. But we shouldn't be too far away from being competitive, and you can also never under-estimate the power of a well-motivated, confident and cohesive team, which we rapidly seem to be becoming.

I guess it comes down to how you define "acceptable" in terms of performance. Our first ten games of the season were, results wise, very poor. While the performances definitely increased from game to game, the actual results remained poor and we registered only one win in 10 games, scoring a total of 9 points. However, since the beginning of October we have taken 64 points from 31 games; that's 2.065 points per game. Norwich are currently top with 86 points from 42 games; that's 2.048 points per game. So we've been literally in title winning form since turning our terrible early season form around. So you have to trade off the poor results of the first 10 games with the title winning form we've displayed since then. Its my opinion that the team needed some time to turn itself around and for the new players to settle, and to replace almost every player in the side and start producing the form we have within 10 games was quite remarkable. To sustain title winning form over a total of 31 subsequent games is equally impressive. Therefore I would contend that AP has done much more than an "acceptable" job to date; I think he has been excellent, and it would be very, very difficult to argue that anyone else could have done a better job of turning around our fortunes than he has. Room for improvement? Perhaps. But to be critical of our recent form by picking out individual poor results does the manager a disservice when you consider the overall season.

By my maths, since October (after we had taken 9 points from 10 games) we have taken 64 points from 31 games; that's 2.065 points per game. Norwich are currently top with 86 points from 42 games; that's 2.048 points per game. So we've been in title winning form since turning our terrible early season form around. Can't really ask any more than that.

Oh.

What a kick in the bawls that is.

2-3 Yeeeesssss!!!

Walsall have 1 back. Come on!

Jesus; 9 pages devoted to a complete non-issue. I had to make do with watching the game on Sky (as I'm in France skiing). If anything the very light booing was taken very well by the commentators, as it came in the middle of a conversation between them about how Cortese may be being hasty by his criticism of Pardew; how footballing fortunes don't just immediately turn when you throw money at the problem; and how the criticism of the boss and the side could very easily be taken as a negative, as in the case of Sullivan at West Ham. Rather than the small amount of booing being seen as lack of support of the chairman, given the context it came across as support for Pardew, in that the fans think he's currently a very good job.

I thought Claridge's commentary was a disgrace actually. Leaving aside for now his obvious lack of talent in this department, his refusal to acknowledge a Saints comprehensive victory was just the signs of a very petty man. In you can't be impartial, then don't be a football pundit. I lost count of the times when describing a Saints attack he described it as "unfortunate" that we mustered a shot / goal, and he just sounded so utterly depressed to be doing the job. There's a reason that Soccer Saturday keep MLT away from Pompey games, its because Sky want to avoid accusations of bias. Just a shame the BBC couldn't show the same impartiality.