SaintBobby

Surely that will be corrected?

It's definitely a Che goal, surely?

Job done. Nearly did our usual thing of gazing into the mouth of any gift horse we can find, but deserved to win. I guess there’s still the thinnest of chances of automatic promotion given results elsewhere. But damn it’s very thin, for sure.

Disappointing. Wtf we were doing with Jan B injured and us controlling the match...at 68 mins....they had made 4 subs, we had made zero.... Fair play to Ipswich. We are in the weird position of nhaving nothing to play for in the next eight games! Then a lot to play for in the 2 or 3 that follow...

Well, that was grim. Should have been out of sight by 65 mins. Also, Smallbone. Can anyone explain Smallbone to me? I don't hate him, but he is nowehere near out starting XI, surely? Props to Captain Jack - he was bloddy excellent.

From a partisan point of view, sadly this won't help us. We aren't going to end up 3 points behind Leicester and suddenly hear they have a 4 point deduction and we are promoted/champions....tbh, even if we did, what a thoroughly crap way to get back up. More generally, the financial fair play stuff is simply insane. It will get far worse when the football regulator gets brought in. The easy solution is to simply demand clubs (or new buyers of clubs) keep money in an escrow account at a sufficient level to keep that club afloat. That should be a requirement for getting the "golden ticket". Then pretty much let clubs do whatever they want.

There’s no way I’m settling for 4th. That’s the lowest position we could credibly finish. We will have to do very well in the run in and especially in those key 3 away games to get auto promotion. But I think you can almost price in Sheff W losing to Ipswich. Would be a big surprise and a welcome bonus if they don’t.

The insanity for me is not that he's in the team, it's playing THB at right-back. If you want to shoe horn in Stephens (and I'm not saying you do), play him at right back while KWP is out.

Agree, but their 2nd goal was majestic. And the first was pretty good too. I'm not arguing about the entertatinment value I'm getting at St Mary's...but I wanted to be bored in the 2nd half, not ecited tbh!

No. He usually doesn’t score after falling over first. He usually just falls over. So having the two together is damned rare!

Well, that was boring…! Have no real idea how we didn’t win that at a canter. Such is life. What a brilliant match.

Yeah, their C team is better than our A- team. It's the way it goes....had we scored in the first 20 minutes, maybe different. Good effort, but we didnt make it. The bookies had Liverpool as 80% to prevail ....and our 20% didn't come up....

They are top of the PL FFS....we were always likely to lose....

Disappointing, but a decent effort. My analysis that Smallbone is just not at it (5/10 on everything....sometimes a 6 at best) was proven!

Tonight's horror show has led me to change my mind. A win tonight and an imagined win at Leiecester and the shot was, just about, on the board. Just. Now it's a fight for second between 3 teams.

Truly woeful 1st half. Terrible team selection and also poor performances by many. RM got that badly wrong. Really bad wrong. Good 2nd half, but not good enough. Smallbone should not be in the starting XI in my view. He is bang on average across the board (not terrible, just 5/10 at everything). Not having our two goalscorers from Friday or our best cameo player (Aribo) in the starting line up was absurd given that Downes still wasn't fit. A very bad night for Martin and possibly a terribly costly one.

I have a spare ticket in the Saints bar for the match if anyone is interested. PM me if you are.

Unlikely. Not impossible. It’s not wild fantasy to imagine they might lose to Leeds, lose to us and lose 1 or 2 more.

I think the bookies are about right, we have maybe a 15% chance of catching them (and a 10% chance of winning the league)

If you think bookies’ odds are a reasonable guide to probabilities, we are currently 9/1 to win the league (ie a 10% chance). So maybe I was even a little bit pessimistic in my posts above. I guess we’d be maybe 3/1 to win at their place? If you wave some magic wand and “make that happen”, that would suggest we’d then be about 3 or 4/1 to win the league.

If we win our game in hand and beat them at the KingPower, we’d be 5 points behind them with 12 other matches to play. Big ifs…but seems to me to be just doable in those circumstances, but we’d need to be pretty faultless and require them to slip up a little. If we don’t win at their place, it does start to seem barely conceivable possibility - a mathematical chance, but hardly a real one.

It’s just about possible, but vanishingly unlikely unless we beat them at their place. If we manage that, it is maybe a 5/1 or 6/1 shot to catch them? Obviously, that’s to catch Leicester. To win the league, we also need to be ahead of Leeds & Ipswich. So even if Leicester lose all their remaining matches, that doesn’t gift Saints 1st place.

Head said Leicester win. Heart says Leeds win. I sort of feel we have enough quality to finish 2nd anyway, so am damned reluctant to give up on 1st. Long shot though.

VAR can intervene until the corner is taken, right? The ref can stop play if he wants a VAR check.

Don't agree. KWP was a solid 7. Smallbone and Charles were horrific.