stevegrant

I'd say that it's not a "this season" thing, tbh. We've been strong on the road for a while now, going back to the Pochettino and Koeman years. Looking back at our away record since promotion: 2012/13: 3 wins, 16 points, 13th best record 2013/14: 7 wins, 26 points, 8th best 2014/15: 7 wins, 23 points, 9th best 2015/16: 7 wins, 27 points, 7th best 2016/17: 6 wins, 22 points, 7th best 2017/18: 3 wins, 17 points, 10th best (amusingly still better than Arsenal that season) 2018/19: 4 wins, 16 points, 15th best 2019/20: 5 wins, 17 points, 5th best It's only really last season and our first season back up where we had a poor away record, and I think it's fair to say that the style Ralph has us playing is particularly well-suited to playing away from home where the opposition is more likely to come and attack us. At home, supposedly weaker teams will sit deeper and not be too concerned with having much possession, which means we don't get the opportunity to win the ball from them in good areas as often. Comparing our away record with our home record in each season is interesting: 2012/13: 6 wins, 25 points, 14th best record 2013/14: 8 wins, 30 points, 8th best 2014/15: 11 wins, 37 points, 5th best 2015/16: 11 wins, 36 points, 6th best 2016/17: 6 wins, 24 points, 17th best - quite the drop-off there 2017/18: 4 wins, 19 points, 19th best 2018/19: 5 wins, 23 points, 14th best 2019/20: 3 wins, 11 points, 17th best So the immediate and knee-jerk analysis is that, actually, our away form has been relatively constant over the last 7-8 years, and it's been pretty decent. Our issues have been caused by our home form that dived off a cliff in the second half of 2016/17 (two home wins from Christmas onwards, before that was W4 D3 L1) - get that right and we'll be competitive again in this league, IMO.

Lots of ifs and buts. If our game at Nottinghamshire hadn't been rained off for 3 and a bit days, we'd have still been in the title race in the last few games. Things may have turned out very differently. Also, if Alex Hales hadn't been an absolute dickhead, we'd have had James Vince available for most of the summer.

The horse incident took place before the game - it's still daylight in the video.

Worth noting for reference that the Newcastle fan who punched a police horse after a game against Sunderland was jailed for a year and given a 6-year football banning order.

Kyle Abbott has signed a new 3-year contract

If anybody was still looking for tickets, the FA have released just over 100 Category 1 tickets (Kingsland blocks 29, 30 and 32, and Itchen block 9, priced £55) on their ticket portal: https://ticketing.thefa.com

Your payment appears to be marked as "pending" until the 22nd, for some reason.

You appear to be a Full Member, so it seems that it does... *shrugs shoulders*

How did you make the payment?

I would think there's absolutely no chance. It's been shut for years now, so I'd imagine the income from Saints matchdays can't outweigh the cost of running the place for the rest of the week.

I'll take issue with this statement, having had one of the pies from whichever new supplier we've got. Think they might be the same ones that supply Brighton, it was very good Actual poured pints rather than 330ml bottles seems an improvement to me? I don't usually drink in the ground for various reasons, but it seems a bit churlish to have a pop at the club for things when they have actually improved.

I think I might have been a bit "Bah humbug!" this week

The main issue with VAR under the FIFA and UEFA remit is that there is a pitchside monitor and the on-field referee is often encouraged to go and review incidents him/herself, and that's after the initial conversation over the comms system, so it naturally takes quite a long time to go through the whole process. My understanding of the Premier League's implementation is that there is no pitchside monitor. If a decision is reviewable, the on-field referee stops play at a suitable moment and in conversation with the video referee, they make the decision between them, although in reality it's likely to be the video referee overruling the on-field referee as the latter won't have the pictures available, but it seems highly unlikely that any decision should take more than 30-40 seconds, depending on how quickly that 3D offside "line" can be calculated and drawn on-screen. Even in cricket, where the DRS system works very well and is a pretty mature process now, the reason they go through the process in the order that they do for LBW decisions is because the Hawkeye system that does the projected path of the ball takes around a minute or more to calculate.

You may need to log out and log back in again. The update we've applied is quite a few versions up from the one that was running previously, so there's been a fair few changes which may have affected session cookies and that sort of thing.

OK, update installed. Everything seems to be OK - if anyone spots any technical issues, please let me know.

So that update didn't actually happen on Wednesday in the end, for various reasons. I'll get it done either tonight or at some point over the weekend. Don't think there's any big news due, so should be fairly safe

Afternoon all. A long-overdue software update is being installed tomorrow at some point (probably mid-morning), so there may be a brief period of downtime. I'll keep it as brief as possible.

Winning Crane bowled 12 overs unchanged this afternoon, so that should have clawed the over rate back a bit. Hopefully enough that we don't get penalised for it.

Not sure what happens if we bowl them out with overs to spare in that case - surely we could make a case that, with plenty of time left in the day, we would have made an effort to recover the over rate in the evening session if we'd needed to.

Yeah, I think it's pretty unambiguous now, which is all we ask for, really. Maybe next year they'll clear up the offside law... Ultimately, we know that most players don't deliberately handle it, but if they've gained a significant advantage from doing so, they should be penalised.

Edwards got one just before lunch. Nash and Mullaney now together, break that partnership at some point in the afternoon session and I think we'll win. Two hours or more to clean up the tail should be sufficient, although that is with the "this is Hampshire, of course" disclaimer in mind

Worth noting that in the IFAB documentation regarding the law changes from this summer (link: http://static-3eb8.kxcdn.com/documents/791/171520_110319_IFAB_LoG_changes_and_clarifications.pdf), there is not a single mention regarding the handball law changes that specifies the changes only apply to "the attacking third", as the article in the OP states. The full text is as follows: It is an offence if a player: * deliberately touches the ball with their hand/arm, including moving the hand/armtowards the ball * gains possession/control of the ball after it has touched their hand/arm and then: ** scores in the opponents’ goal ** creates a goal-scoring opportunity ** scores in the opponents’ goal directly from their hand/arm, even if accidental,including by the goalkeeper It is usually an offence if a player: * touches the ball with their hand/arm when: ** the hand/arm has made their body unnaturally bigger ** the hand/arm is above/beyond their shoulder level (unless the player deliberatelyplays the ball which then touches their hand/arm) The above offences apply even if the ball touches a player’s hand/arm directly fromthe head or body (including the foot) of another player who is close. Except for the above offences, it is not usually an offence if the ball touches a player’shand/arm: * directly from the player’s own head or body (including the foot) * directly from the head or body (including the foot) of another player who is close * if the hand/arm is close to the body and does not make the body unnaturallybigger * when a player falls and the hand/arm is between the body and the ground tosupport the body, but not extended laterally or vertically away from the body

In actual fact, it's even more mental. Only one team goes down, but three are promoted, so they're swapping the numbers around. 10 teams in Division 1 next year, 8 in Division 2. All teams will play 14 matches, so there will be 4 teams in Division One who each team will only play once. What a load of ****.

Am I right in thinking there's only one relegation place this year, because they're reshuffling the divisions to put 9 in each? (and obviously creating an imbalance by keeping the number of games at 14 per team )

As if