The Kraken

Thank God there's someone on here with a bit of sense, and reality. Good post, I agree entirely.

Yep, because one more person getting dragged into this tiresome, embarrassing and frankly pointless argument would have been just what this thread needed....

Exactly right. I expected mid-table this season, with a late chase for the play-offs considered a real bonus. We may have spent a lot on players in the summer, but look who we lost from the squad: McGoldrick, Dyer, Surman, Wright-Phillips, Euell, John & Rasiak. From a team that really wasn't that good in the first place. Those sales brought in around £3M, and I'd doubt very much if we've spent as much on their replacements.

Exactly right. It's not so much about formations as it is about ensuring players do their jobs. We'll never win games if 6 of 7 of our players have an off day, and the formation they line up in is irrelevant to that. The Brighton game was awful, we were under par all over the pitch, but 451, 442, 424 or whatever wouldn't have changed that.

Can you point me in the direction of the rumours that he was ever off it.....?

Just goes to show how people have different views of the same game! I thought James was very good while at RB but I wasn't that impressed with him at CM. He had a few good moments in there but an a few occasions lost a bit of composure and we never seemed to hold on to the ball as well as we could with Morgan in there. It's always good to get a result when the team haven't played overwhelmingly brilliant though. And in a way I'm kind of glad we let the goal in, you could see that Pards was distinctly not impressed with it and will ensure the players are kept on their toes. Would be nice to keep a clean sheet Sunday though.

Took a matter of minutes to find this.... 27 August morgan is not suited to this league...you can tell he has class in there somewhere and playing div 3 football in england when the french clearly want him to progress quicker means we are not the club for him...

You were also telling all and sundry that Schneiderlin and Lallana were truly awful and should be dropped, so let's have a little bit less of the self-congratulatory back slapping shall we Nostradamus?

Bugger cheaper beer. I'd be happy to pay the current prices if the lager actually tasted like, you know, lager. I've truly never drunk such consistently terrible, weak, flat beer anywhere else. It's a disgrace really, cleaning the pipes properly and ensuring a half decent beer is really not all that difficult.

You seem to expect us to win every game, when it's clear to see our rivals don't. I've said it before. We will lose games, and draw some. And not just against the big teams, its inevitable we'll drop points against the lesser lights. It happens. But it doesn't spell doom because we drew with Orient away from home.

And yet you fail to recognise that most fans' opinions lie somewhere between the two polar opposites you have represented. I don't know of too many that think we will "walk this league" based just on the last 6 games. Furthermore, I don't know of many others that think we're on the brink of a massive collapse just because Orient put 2 goals past us. I would suggest most fans would recognise that we have markedly improved since the start of the season, that we are one of the stronger teams in the league right now, but are still a work in progress. We're still perhaps a little bit away from where we and the manager want us to be, but for me there are many, many more signs for optimism than pessimism right now. Different strokes though.....

Talking of patterns: Won 4-1 Won 3-1 Won 3-1 Won 3-1 Drew 2-2 That's our last 5 league games. As much as we'd like it to, that sort of form is very unlikely to be continued for the whole of the season. We will lose games. The team will have off-days. And we will lose or draw games that we should have won. Rather than analysing one game, I'm happier to look at the bigger picture and know that we have completely steamrollered teams in the last few games. I've rarely seen a Saints team so consistently dominating and creating so many chances, and the difference in the team now compared to the start of the season is unbelievable. So for now my faith is with our management team and not some doom sayers who think we might be a bit predictable.

I thought it was a decent atmosphere, especially given there was very, very little in return from the Orient end. Not too sure why so many idiots felt they had to storm the pitch on the equaliser though. I could maybe understand it if we'd got a winner, just. But to go so mental at a draw to Orient; small time.

StuRomseySaint and DullDays. Perfect examples of how football and brains often don't mix.

We used to have bottle bars in the concourse with bottles of Carlsberg on sale from a separate temporary stand. As much as I don't like Carlsberg, in a biottle infinitely better than the horrible flat pap they serve out of the pipes. Bring these back, surely? The queues for a pint are a joke anyway. At other stadia and events there's all sorts of efforts made to sell beer not just from the designated kiosks, through bottle bars, lads with beer cooler backpacks etc, why can't we do that? It would pay for itself surely.

If the coffee is worse than the beer, then it must be very poor indeed. I've rarely had a worse pint than inside the ground.

Very well said Wes, I agree with all of that except for the MK Dons goal. I think it was definitely a foul by Jaidi, not a shoulder barge, he blocked him off deliberately. It was totally needless as the ball was going through to Davis anyway. You could tell by Jaidi's reaction after the goal that he knew he had ****ed up. But fair play, other than that he and Trottman were immense at the back; I really don't think I'v ever seen such a strong defensive combination for us. But you're definitely right about them being complete pansies. Their number 9, who was a complete unit, just crumpled at the slightest touch. Nice to see a Saints team who can bully a side as well as outplay them. Being a Saints fan right now is really enjoyable.

Surprised about the crowd, I thought it looked to be 23K at least. Still, risible away support, probably the most inept display of away fans I've ever seen at St. Mary's. F*ck off Franchise FC.

Exactly what I was thinking. Makes sense, nice and local, and a step down for him to find his feet.

I have no intention of engaging with someone who's ramblings on this site are predominantly motivated by attacking Saints legends in an obvious and rather sorrowful attempt to wind-up others. I actually find it painfully sad that someone has to resort to this just to get some attention.

Yet another thinkly veiled wind-up intended to stir up trouble by being controversial about a well-liked former Saint. "Hmmmm, Friday today, I think I'll do a wind-up on that Saints Forum about Lawrie, haven't used him as bait for a few days". Sad, sad, sad. So transparent.

TalkSport is a decent radio programme at times, but completely let down by the fact that the bulk its revenues come from people calling in to the show on the premium rate phone line. As a consequnce you get wind up merchants like Jon Gaunt (previously), Adrian Durham and the like peddling ridiculous ideas that they don't actually believe in just to get a raft of callers dialling in disagree with them on air. Durham is the worst, his wind ups are so obvious. Every month or so he'll have a topic along the lines of "Celtic & Rangers / Bristol City & Rovers / Sheffield Wednesday & United should merge as its the only way they'll ever be successful, and you get the great unwashed who buy into the rubbish and spend a fortune telling him something he already knows, yet prompting more mock outrage. Don't get me started on Irani; the man is an oxygen thief, and bereft of any persona or sporting knowledge outside of cricket. Brazil props up the morning programme and deserves better than the inept tosser alongside him, he would be better off presenting on his own. Mike Parry is a great companion for Brazil, because while he's always on the wind up he does it in a funny way and you can always tell he doesn't believe what he's saying most of the time, and almost always ends up laughing at himself for it. Hawksbee & Jacobs, however, are what the programme should be all about. They are genuinely knowledgable about football, completely reasonable, and always very, very funny. Their's should be the programme model TalkSport should aim at.

Score a goal David Connolly, and we will love you more than you will know.....

Exactly this. Outsiders seem to think that Souness got completely duped and threw him into the team without seeing play, based on the "George Weah" recommendations alone. The reality should be much more embarrassing for Souness, as he watched him train with us for a few days before deciding he was good enough to play Premier League football.

My time machine is broken right now so they'll be no good for me, but thanks for the heads up.