Suomi Saint

Saints odds are ridiculous - if Wigan win tonight we are ONE point off the drop zone with an away game in the North East against a team who will treating the match as a "Champions League Final." I predict that we will be 17th on Sunday night, one point above Wigan. Norwich will have 41, Newcastle 41, Sunderland 41, Villa 41. We will have to beat Stoke on the final day.

Villa already have 40, no??? So, using the scenario above, Wigan could get 41 and Villa would remain on 40. We would be relegated on 39. Villa need to beat Wigan.

The comments on here are amazing - Sharp gave us the vital boost we needed to get us promoted. If we go down then he will be required for sure.

I think the problem this time around - which makes everyone more nervous than the Great Escape days - is that we can all see something really good around the corner. A good team that will undoubtedly be strengthened by really good signings in the summer has given us all BELIEF. During the bad old days we were happy just to survive, but now there is expectation of a really bright future. Relegation will destroy it all. It's like waiting for a new bike at Christmas, and then some thief nicks it the night before. I'm very nervous, a state which I haven't been in before.

Could be......but we have still got to get at least a point. If we lose at Sunderland, I certainly would not trust us to get it against the 'hoofers.'

One thing is for certain - 39 points is not enough. The key match for me is Norwich v West Brom. If Norwich win that then we have to win one of the two remaining games. I fully expect Wigan, Newcastle, Sunderland to get at least 41. If we get 42 then we will be above at least one of them. We all know Wigan will survive - they are like a blood sucking vampire who refuses to die.....even when the stake is above the heart, the hammer is poised, and daylight is nearly upon us.

On the basis that Newcastle will beat QPR, Sunderland will beat Stoke (and probably us), Norwich will beat West Brom, Wigan will beat Swansea and Villa, Villa will draw with Chelsea - I believe that we need one win in two games. I can see Fulham getting beaten twice, but they have 40 points and I wouldn't want it to go to goal difference. MP and the players have got us into this mess by concentrating more on Champions League rather than avoiding The Championship - it's now time for them to show their mettle. A good performance at Spurs - but that means naff all when you get beat. I couldn't sleep well last night because of worry - I hope the players tear into Sunderland and actually put the ball in the net.

I was 14 and my biggest memories apart from the game itself were of the people draping flags over the road bridges and waving at the fans on our way up to Wembley. Also, OWTSGM being sung at full volume in Fleet services after we won the Cup. The FA Cup in those days was THE trophy. Everyone throughout the country used to watch it and cheer the underdog on. The old Wembley seemed so huge, and the noise of 100,000 people made the terraces vibrate. For a young kid it was like going to the promised land....but better. It was the best day of my life, no question. Don't tell the wives!

He will certainly be off if we go down.

I had a go at the predictor and have us surviving (just) on 39 points, with Villa on 38. Wigan to finish above us. I'm not confident at all that 39 is enough - in fact I don't think it will be. Saints need to scrape a couple of points from somewhere - problem is, the players and MP seem to have taken their foot of the gas. I have this nagging feeling that ours will be the most dramatic relegation in PL history. I hope I'm wrong.

MP totally lost the tactical battle. WBA just picked us off on the break and really should have won 6-0. Yes, we were that bad. Both sending offs were justified, and I am actually glad that Fox can't play again this season. His tackle was criminal, just criminal. He could have broken the other guy's leg quite easily. No width and no tempo again - just like at Swansea. Either the players are tired or MP has lost his "aura." Isn't his record now worse than the latter part of NA's tenure (ignoring the first 10 games). I think we will need to get something against Stoke to stay up, which will be a terrible end to the season. I wouldn't be surprised if Cortese doesn't wield the axe again!

I don't think we are safe on 39. We will need a point against Stoke because we will lose at both Spurs and Sunderland.

I don't believe that the authorities could pull something like this off in such a crowded venue and get away with it. People do get severed limbs and don't bleed to death. The blood does look a weird colour I have to admit, but maybe that's the photography. What does concern me is the amateurish way the authorities went about catching suspect No. 2. He was holed up in a very confined space and wasn't going anywhere. Why fill him full of holes when you could actually learn something from him? A simple stun grenade, gas, or tranquiliser dart could have disabled him. A 19 year old kid, probably brainwashed by his elder brother, alone, scared, and wounded, and it took thousands of heavily armed guys to catch him. And the WMD thing - what nonsense. How many Americans shoot each other per day - is it 80-100? Are they terrorists? I watched that old mayor of New York - the one from 9/11 - on an American news channel. He was absolutely desperate to link the suspects to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Chechnya, and of course Al Q even before they were caught!! They were disaffected lone idiots - nutters who spend too long on chat forums. Like this one.

Yes, and he had a nightmare according to the OS. Strange signing indeed - looks like he was neither NA's nor MP's choice. Another Cortese "Youtube" acquisition it seems.

I totally agree....he looks a bit of a hobo. Given the money he must be on, he could at least make some effort. I'm not saying he should wear the full whistle, but at least look a bit smarter. Nicola is trying to globally brand Saints, yet he allows the key man to look like a South American Worzel.

Yes, he looked like a right old scruff when the cameraman did a close-up of his half mast jeans and dodgy slip-on shoes. Sort him out Nicola!

Good point from a dreadful match. Saints played with zero width and tempo and were lucky that Swansea were equally as poor. Strange tactics from MP, and his dress sense was also way off the mark. Sturrock was castigated for being a scruff but this guy is even worse! It looks like we may crawl over the finish line. A long way off being a top 10 team, never mind CL. Ignoring the first 10 games, NA's and MP's records are very similar now.

The OP should be taken away quietly and committed - what a ridiculous question.

You can see he is a class footballer - give him time.

I thought Saints and Ramirez played well.....I don't know what everyone is moaning about.

I thought Saints played well and nullified West Ham's hoof ball quite easily. On another day RL could have had 2. I thought the ball was over the line to be honest, but it was a very difficult decision to make. We did enough to win and I was very encouraged by the difference JayRod made when he came on - his direct running is a delight to watch. Davis MOM for me.

Regarding the manufacture of motor vehicles, doesn't the current booming state of Land Rover Jaguar teach us anything? Same leftie workers, but with good investment, management, and a sound business model. Honda/Nissan came here and succeeded. Not because the unions were destroyed, but because they treated their workers as human beings. I'm afraid Thatcher targeted the workforce when she should have been encouraging more sound ways of moving car manufacturing forward. In general, she was an asset stripper, that's all. Same for the utilities. The French and the Germans have now got us by the balls when it comes to energy. Maggie handed it to them as a delicacy on a plate.

A minute's silence is not really appropriate for many reasons: a) this is sport and she was a politician, b) at least 40- 50% of the crowd were neither born or of an age to appreciate the ins/outs of her tenure as PM. c) Of the remaining 50-60%, at least 50% did not agree with her policies (in some areas of the country this percentage would be less or more of course, d) a minute's silence would not be respected and therefore this would reflect badly on football fans, e) she didn't exactly show any affection towards football fans - I'm sure she regarded us all as working class lefties. In addition, she was very vocal in her support of the ban on British clubs from Europe - which directly affected Saints did it not? Whelan is going to look like a right idiot if one goes ahead at the Wigan match.

Her policies were fairly cynical and for that she should not be applauded. She knew that shafting the unions and closing our old industries would decimate the North. Her voters were, in the main, in the South, and the South largely escaped the results of her policy of killing the patient in search of the cure. In my eyes, what Thatcher did wrong - apart from completely annihilating manufacturing in a few short years - was having no long-term replacement strategy. She was obsessed with deregulation of financial services and the selling off of state owned assets - all short-term fixes. As an example of her folly, we have gone from the UK state owned CEGB to the French state owned EDF. Madness. Britain did need modernising in 1979, and the unions had gone too far, but you don't raise half a country to the ground before you start to build it back up again. She used the Police to pursue her political ideals - who shamefully set up roadblocks in Kent to stop miners travelling to the picket lines in the Midlands - divided the country North and South, and forced hardship onto many millions of people for at least a decade. The 'greed is good' ethos also took hold during her office. No state funeral and no eulogising please. She didn't save Britain and is/was not a great Briton. A tough old bird who did very well to rise to the top, who became slightly deluded and caused her own downfall with overt displays of autocracy.

She wasn't a great leader - just stubborn as a mule. Sure, she modernised the country in many ways, but that was a bi-product of her pathological hatred of the unions. She destroyed many of our manufacturing industries, divided our country North - South, and stated, quite openly, that the City would keep us. Her one good policy was selling council houses. A cute move - people with mortgages don't go on strike. I, for one, won't mourn her passing, as she, no doubt, wouldn't have mourned mine. She ruined millions of lives in the early-mid 80's. Thankfully, she didn't ruin mine as I was lucky enough to live in the South. Still, she was a frail old lady at the end of the day, and I hope that the end came peacefully for her. Airbrushing history is a very dangerous thing.