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Delivers a good cross, but does he offer enough on top of that to make the starting XI?

Read that with a big grin on my face. There's every sign that the club's building something very special. Note the liberal use of 'we' and 'us' in everything Jos says. He could just as easily have stated "Southampton have got a similar way of playing as Copenhagen last year". Seems to have bedded in quickly.

Yep, quite apart from pulling off some truly world-class saves already this season, he's genuinely a top guy. Saw Davis signing autographs on the way into the stadium on Sunday and he hung around the longest of the players there at the time, making sure that he'd seen everyone. When a kid shouted "Kelvinnnn!" just as he was walking in, he turned back and had another quick chat with the lad (promising that he'd try to spot him in the crowd and wave - as if!) Seems to be one of the big dressing room jokers too.

I hope this start does just become the season Breaking records is nice but there comes a point where you can't get too wrapped up in them.

Well firstly please provide proof that that's why attendances aren't great. Aren't crowd numbers suffering all over the country of late (other than the 'glory' teams of course)?

I'll admit that this is hyperbolic but there's the slightest hint of total football about the midfield unit too. Guly and Lallana happily switch wings, Hammond looks far more comfortable when employed on the right than I'd have previously given him credit. Both Cork and Hammond look as assured going forward as they do dropping back... Then you have the class of Schneiderlin on the bench and the drive of Chaplow, who I thought absolutely beasted the tiring Brum defence yesterday. De Ridder's no pushover either - thought he terrorized Carr on a few occasions, to the point where he had to physically restrain Steve as he had no chance of catching him! All in all I have to agree, they're having a massive influence on the continuining fortress status of St. Mary's, also giving a solid base from which to attack teams on their own turf.

Yep, fully agree with the above RE: goal kicks. Always better to keep hold of possession if at all possible. Think a special shout has to go to the Itchen North as they were in fine voice yesterday. Perhaps I simply don't notice them from my normal seat in Northam but from the Kingsland South they seemed to be piping up in a manner I've not heard for a good couple of years.

You cannot stop a club from hiring somebody with the rap sheet of King and neither should that be an option. However you'd hope that they'd be scrupulous enough not to want to in the first place - is that not the crux of what we're getting at here? Serving your time in prison grants you the right to return to society and little more. Even if that absolves you in the eyes of the law, is it really that much of a surprise that for some people (the victim(s) for one) a criminal's existence will forever be tarnished? Obviously dealing with the emotional fallout long outlasts a sentence. Is it right for other people to chastise? I don't think it's ever going to be black and white enough to make the call.

Sure, but look at the number of crimes he's committed and over how long a period. How many chances do you get before people are allowed to have a little sing-song about it?

All of the people that said our players would flourish in the Championship were spot on it seems. Personally I had faith that we could hold our own but never dared imagine that we'd be winning so many games or battling this well towards earning those three points. Yes, you can say we've not faced our biggest tests of the season yet and we'll do well to stay grounded, yet still I feel like I'm walking around on a cloud when I think about Saints at the moment. There's been so many moments in just seven games that put a big, dumb grin on my face as I recall them. All I can say is "when is the dream going to end?!" Maybe it'll be soon, maybe this is par for the season; either way for now let's revel in our team's incredible spirit, desire and mentality.

It seems he managed to get an 18-month sentence reduced to 5 or so, perhaps that was their angle? Either way it was bloody funny, I hope other clubs' fans dish it out to him just as well.

Ashamed to say that I actually didn't realise the full extent of Marlon King's crimes and convictions until today's game, what a disgusting human being. Very glad he didn't have the chance to retort by scoring.

Personally think it's good that the club are so cagey with injury news. It doesn't bring the player back any more quickly by broadcasting it to all and sundry, plus it'll keep opposition guessing.

Can't speak for anyone else but I go to all of the away games I can - which admittedly isn't anywhere near as many as I'd like, but sadly at my tender age I'm not yet in a position where I can turn down the money which gets me through the non-football days. Hell, even buying a season ticket made things pretty tight financially. I'll be at every game home and away game as soon as I'm able. Bit annoying that it means having to fudge my way to enough aways for the visit to the skates but that's the way it is at the moment. I'm sure you're right and there's plenty of fans as you describe... Can't really blame people for being up for this fixture though.

Got a pretty major clash for Brizzle annoyingly but will definitely try to keep the Reading fixture free, good shout. Hoping I'll be able to get to Cardiff too. [EDIT] Bloody hell, looks like I can get a return train ticket for £13.50 to Cardiff, that's a gimme then.

There's been a few people post on here recently that they've spoken to Barney at a game and from the horse's mouth (as it were) he's still injured. Pain whilst running was the most recent update I believe? Shouldn't be too far off playing now though I'd hope.

Hahaha, can you really see that happening?! Oh well, I'm guessing there'll be some restriction based on away games attended and I've barely been able to make any in the last year or so. On the off-chance that they go straight on sale to season ticket holders first I'll be at Fratton with my biggest voice At least since it's on TV it'll be a fall-back to those unlucky in getting tickets and the maximum number of people will be able to see the skates get a humbling.

I've been pondering this too, but the main conclusion I've come to so far is that though he dominated most attackers in League One the quality of target man was clearly much weaker on the whole (the biggest positional gulf between the two divisions?) Plenty of ex-Prem and big lump style strikers in the NPC. I don't believe it's necessarily that he's playing worse or struggling, rather that there is more of a natural balance now. I think a lot of us (as a direct result of the past year or so of consistently winning football matches) have forgotten what it's like to be under real pressure during games. Of course there will be players that get the better of Jose this season, but he's still a quality centre back and plenty good enough for this level.

I agree in the main, but it's partly because it's very, very difficult to prove whether its negligence on Sony's part or wear and tear caused by normal use. Personally speaking I've had thousands of hours of playing/watching/browsing/downloading over the three and a half years I've owned my PS3, often leaving it on for stretches of up to 12 hours. Any electrical device left on for periods such as that is going to give in eventually. Obviously that level of use won't be the standard case for everybody that's had one fail but essentially it's to do with the PS3 going from a high temperature after running to an instant cooldown - you're better to leave it on the XMB for a while after playing a game. The more times there's a sharp change in temperature around the internal components the more quickly the solder loses its elasticity and eventually starts to crack or 'bubble' causing a short. Part of the problem is that EU directives mean Sony can only use lead-free solder. As a result of that ALL PS3s are lead-free (I guess it's simply easier to produce fewer types of console per region, size of hard drive notwithstanding). So in that case there's not an awful lot that can be done. If you can prove that the thermal compound between the CPU/Graphics Processor and heatsink aren't up to scratch and caused the hardware to overheat then you would have a case, but good luck to anybody that tries as I'm not sure exactly how that could be diagnosed

If it's the problem that hits 90% of them it's bloody easy to fix yourself. Given that a new slim can be had for £170-180 I wasn't going to ring Sony's customer services and pay £100+ for a refurb model that could easily fail again. Basically I stripped the console down to the motherboard, heated that up to reflow the solder (can be done in the oven) and reapplied the thermal paste with a silver-based compound rather than the cheap rubbish Sony used (can be bought for £8 in Maplin). Put it all back together and hey presto! Seems to be working just fine at the moment and has stopped shutting itself down after a few minutes. It's the most reliable fix for dead/dying PS3s and essentially the same method employed by a repair shop. It will eventually give up the ghost again, but it will if you get somebody else to repair it too. Might last months, might be years. Let me know if you want to give it a go along with your model of PS3 (old or slim and the hard drive size it came with) and I'll post the tutorials. Really didn't take long and I'm normally useless with this sort of thing. All you really need is a screwdriver set (cross-head), a Torx screwdriver (can't remember the size but can look it up) and preferrably some thermal paste (I bought Arctic Silver but pretty much anything is better than what's already in there). If you've got some compressed air it'll help to clear out the buildup of dust but I did it all by hand so that's far from necessary. The way I looked at it I'd rather have a go at fixing the thing for under a tenner than pay a ton now and potentially still have to buy a new console in a few months anyway.

Even better http://www.bbc.co.uk/i/b014sqy5/?t=17m58s

He was solid enough. It's pretty difficult to tell after 90 minutes in a match we didn't control well at all. Especially as he hasn't been playing at Celtic and slotted into an entirely new defence other than Fonte. If he does a job until January then it's a good bit of business. If the unthinkable happens and we nab promotion we'll need a better quality of player, but it's too early to tell how well he'll cope with the Championship. No doubt somebody will point to a couple of pieces of poor distribution but really, who in our defence doesn't knock it stray on occasion? Jos also seems capable of winning headers without climbing all over the opposition's attacker and risking the foul which I like. In summary: not a poor debut by any means, let's give him a chance.

Spot on, that's exactly what happened today. It left Fox and Cork completely exposed and neither seemed to be able to deal with that, especially when Forest's full-backs bolstered the attack. At the same time I'm still fairly happy as long as we're able to capitalise on our own chances and take the 'score one more than you' approach. You have to give opposition teams credit as well, it's not always just because we've been defending poorly.

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Plus they'd add to the server load during busy periods...