saintant

The weather is going to be a factor. Just watching Chelsea and Spurs and they've decided to play at walking pace because of the heat - it's pretty pedestrian and low key. Hope we don't resort to that or it could be a boring nil-nil stalemate. I think we have to put on a high tempo performance from the off regardless of the temperature. The time to ease up is when we are a couple of goals in front.

Fantastic win tonight and that's four away wins in a row. If we win our four remaining home games Reading would need to win six out of seven games. It's looking very good now.

Just seen the goals on Soccer Saturday and the penalties looked nailed-on to me. First was a blatant trip and second the right back jumped and put his fist to the ball.

Yeah, our form has gone right out of the window. Even allowing for the fact that we might not have played as much slick football as we'd all like, our last six games have yielded 14 points (comfortably above the magic 2 points per match ratio) and put plus 10 on our goal difference. I think we've gone into total melt-down - time to change the manager. Help!!!!

If we are going to persistently boot the ball the length of the pitch to Lambert's head let's at least get two of our player feeding off him. Jeez, it's not rocket science. Either play the ball around with movement off the ball or go for the big boot and get men around Lambert. In that half we did neither although it was a cracking goal!

I think Wenger realises he's bought a dud and must be totally frustrated with Walcott's contribution for Arsenal. Bags of pace but no football intelligence and clearly does not understand the game. Watched him the other night - he offered nothing going forward and his tracking back consisted of jogging at half pace watching opposition players bomb past him towards Arsenal's goal. He just doesn't have enough tricks in his bag and only really looks decent bursting onto a through ball with lots of grass in front of him. Too often he'll take the easy option of receiving a pass and giving the ball straight back rather than taking responsibility and trying to make something happen by going past his fullback. His movement off the ball is really unimaginative. I believe Oxlaide Chamberlain will soon be way above him in the pecking order at Arsenal as he looks a far better all round player.

Welcome back Chappers!

Didn't think Fox's first booking even deserved a free-kick let alone a yellow card. He clearly won the ball very cleanly and his momentum after the tackle caught the guy. We're getting to the stage where defenders aren't even allowed to put in a decent hard challenge.

Going back to Rickie's freekick, if he had no intention of shooting why didn't he get himself at the far post and let somebody else chip it? Why let one of your most potent aerial threats chip the ball to the back post? Crazy!

Good point. Two questions 1) where did Lallana disappear to in the second half - did he go home? 2) Rickie's free kick, what the f#ck? Just put your laces through it man!

If Adkins wants to take the three points he'll have the balls to replace Connolly with Sharp at half time. We have dominated the match, passed the ball well but are lacking a cutting edge and someone with real presence high up the pitch. just don't think Adkins will have the balls to take the decision.

Can't fathom out why we would go to all the bother of getting Falque on loan if Puncheon was still in with a chance of being welcomed back into the fold. Hope this doesn't mean Lallan is either long term injured or on his way.

Lack of tempo caused by having a midfield including Hammond, Schneiderlin and Cork was a massive problem last night. If you want to play a pass-and-move game (which we aspire to do) you have to zip the ball around at a high tempo so that the opposition have no time to get in your face. With these three in midfield we don't and can't do that hence we play a pass-and-move game at slow tempo which is akin to committing football suicide. Leicester swarmed all over us like a rash forcing us to hit bobbly five/ten yard passes that regularly arrived around the recipients shins or knees or to lump the ball in any direction. Add the fact that Harding cannot play right back (a point obviously not lost on Pearson) and it is no surprise we were comrehensively dominated all over the pitch. Not our finest hour in terms of tactics and team selection. If we are serious about our ambitions to win promotion I think we need to quickly identify at least two possibly three realistic targets to bring to the club this window. If we are not willing to dig deep and pay the bigger money for the likes of Hooper or Rhodes let's at least make sensible bids for players within our accepted budget as the squad needs strenthening if we are not to fall by the wayside. It could be a long time before we find ourselves in such a strong position at this stage of the season and inaction in the transfer window could prove extremely costly when taking into account the rich rewards of reaching the Premiership.

Complete shambles. No passion, drive or commitment. Couldn't control the ball, pass it accurately over five yards, there was no movement, no pressing on their midfield who, given the freedom of the park, strolled around and did what they liked. We were second to every ball and bottled the fifty-fiftys. Not one player comes out of that with any credit. What's happened to our fitness? We were totally one paced - snail pace and appeared unable to up the tempo at any stage. Yes, we had key players missing but that does not excuse such a shoddy and lacklustre performance. Pathetic for a side that should now be capitalising on a brilliant first half of the season.

He was great in High Noon!

Well D'Urso quite clearly should not still be refereeing so had the FA got rid of him at the time he dished out two yellow cards to a player without sending him off he would have been nowhere near the Amex Stadium yesterday. Sorry, but the minimum requirement for a professional referee who is well paid should be to know how many cards he has brandished and who at. There can be no excuse for such incompetence and he should have been put out to grass. This guy continually makes a complete fool of himself and a mockery of the laws of the game. He seems to go out of his way to court controversy and it would be kindest all round if his whistle was permanently taken away from him for his own good and that of all true football fans.

I see the Sky Sports football guys are putting on a show at the BIC on 19th March 2012. Jeff Stelling plus MLT, Merse, Phil Thompson, Charlie Nicholas and special guest Chris Kamara. Should be a great night if it's anything like the show they did recently at the Mayflower.

Oh dear, Cork, Hammond and Schneiderlin - will we never learn!

Nige has to learn that Hammond, Cork and Morgan do not make for an offensive midfield. This hands the initiative to the opposition. Surprised after what happened at Brizzle and in 1st half v Hull he persisted with a line-up that clearly does not work for us. Very disappointing to lose to a team at the bottom but as others have said - nobody expected us to be top.

No surprise - big mistake to start with Hammond, Cork and Morgan I'm afraid.

Have to agree 100% with Derry - I believe it was a fundamental mistake to begin the game with Hammond, Cork and Morgan all in midfield. They are far too similar and just do not have the ability to raise the tempo of a game and generate the momentum needed to play crisp, pasing football. We discussed our concerns about this prior to the match and those fears were realised. Still rate Adkins and the coaches as a superb team in terms of tactics but, for me, they got the starting line-up wrong last night and it was fairly obvious that they'd have to make a change at half-time by introducing De Ridder. Thankfully they were astute and bold enough to make the change and it brought immediate dividends. Still a good win against a decent Hull side so onwards and upwards but hope our midfield on Saturday does not contain all three of Hammond, Cork and Morgan.

Hoofing from the back is for the dinosaurs. England do it an awful lot hence they'll never win anything or compete with the likes of Spain. Our style of football is the way forward and whilst it may cost a few goals Nigel Adkins and the coaches will rightly stick to their principals. I think the majority would rather see pass and move than the continual hoof down the middle - have seen enough of that and it's boring.

Was discussing this a few weeks back. No complaints about our style of football but I do feel the players should be encouraged to have a few more shots from distance. With our passing game it seems nobody is willing to try their luck but surely it's worth mixing it up a bit and not to always take the option of trying to get the ball into the box on every attack. We have some decent ball strikers so let's see more shots from outside the box.

Thought England were very poor to be honest. I think Saints play techinically better football. If you studied the game closely none of our players were making angles to receive passes, or playing between the lines and there was hardly any clever movement off the ball which is why we looked so ponderous. To be fair we could not string two passes together and only won because it was a meaningless friendly and Spain played several gears below there normal standard. Even then they played all the flowing football that was on display. Don't know how we can rely on the likes of Milner and Barry who are just workhorses. We looked better when the likes of Wellbeck, Rodwell and Adam Johnson came on but we're kidding ouselves if we think that prehistoric style of football will ever win a major tournament.

Have to mention Connolly's movement for the third goal. After a superb series of passes the ball reached Lambert who did brilliantly but without Connolly's movement I doubt there'd have been an opening. If you watch a replay of the goal he shows what an intelligent player he is by getting himself in position to receive the pass rather than standing still which is what many strikers do. Once he'd taken up that clever position he left himself with a relatively simple finish. Shame he isn't ten years younger but still a very useful guy to have around and others can certainly learn from him.