Rasiak-9-

Aids. No Morgan = no chance vs Arsenal.

Steven Davis is a decent player but I'm afraid he's starting to become a bit of a victim of both our's and his own success insofar as he's a good Premiership-level player, but has nowhere near the kind of ability required to play in a top-six let, alone top-four side. If we want to be at either of those levels, we've got to do better I'm afraid. Good player, don't get me wrong, but that is where the ceiling on his ability lies. Exposed today I'm afraid against quite simply, better players.

Well we're odds-on with the bookies to finish in the top 6, so if you really do think its actually likely we'll miss out on that then get your money on. Trouble is that I think Merson will probably end up being right, football is becoming more and more stratified and I think within the next decade fans of the smaller clubs will begin to really grow restless on a fairly large scale, although whether or not that'll result in some kind of a more restrictive financial fair play system I have no idea. I have a very large bet on with a friend of mine, placed at the start of last season, that at least 8 of the next 10 Premier League titles will be won by either Chelsea or Manchester City. Its fair to say that our bet is now 6 of the next 8 after this seasons over.

We managed to get 20 or so of us singing it at Arsenal. The other one we need to get going (especially against the bigger clubs) is "little Southampton taking the ****! little Southampton taking the ****!"

Its can't be all fun and games being that handsome, look what the poor man had to endure innocently walking through New York

The fact that De Gea, Guzan, Lloris, Begovic and Howard are as low as they are renders this a perfect example of how nonsensical and meaningless these kind of Americanised statistics really are.

No blame on the centre-backs, goalkeeper has to claim the authority to give them the shout when they're both facing their own goal. If you've been to most of the matches this season, you'll know that this has been threatening to happen for a while; he gets nowhere near crosses or corners (I again bring up the flap in the second half which has happened before this season but naturally hasn't got onto MOTD highlights) and has faced an incredibly low number of shots so far this season. Even the goal at West Ham (we were right behind the goal) was perfectly saveable. None of us thought it was even in until it went under him, there wasn't a collective groan until it went past him (it was clear that no-one was too worried by the deflection). He's neither crap nor a League 1 keeper, but he's certainly been a disappointment and does look very, very average.

Think you're just being too nice here to avoid looking like you're scapegoating. As a CB you're obviously only looking one way and can't possibly see what's behind you, you need the shout/signal from the keeper to get rid if you're in the kind of danger TB was in with GA up his arse. He ended up getting absolutely neither. And of course, this is before we even get to Forsters hesitation/general poor judgement in coming off his line. Not to mention him, a 6'7'' keeper flapping a punch at a cross that dropped out of the sky with snow on it. Worrying. Boruc had his eccentricity but that aside, was excellent on crosses and shotstopping (although he did admittedly have a slight dip in form towards the middle/end of last season). Forster quite simply just doesn't look very good. He just simply doesn't look at all like he's a particularly talented goalkeeper.

You'll notice that my schedule includes us never once winning against any of the big 7. It is do-able even without getting a single win off them (which, naturally I hope it won't come down to) But the point still stands, we aren't RELYING on beating the likes of United or Arsenal or even getting so much as a point off Chelsea in either game.

Mmm...trouble there is that the fifth placed team were usually the likes of say...an Everton or a fairly average Spurs who didn't have huge ambitions to reach the top four the way that some of the clubs currently below us do; you've got to assume that United and Spurs/Liverpool (eventually) will mount a tougher test to us this season than those sides did for the likes of Arsenal in seasons past. I don't think 65 will be anywhere near enough for us, as all it'll take is just any oneof Everton/Spurs/Liverpool/United will exceed that total (I'm assuming the top three are the top three) Secondly I'm not quite sure you can categorise or generalise simply home games/away games; the quality of opposition in this league is hugely variable. I'd be disappointed with anything less than a win away to Burnley, whilst I'd be delighted to get anything at all from Chelsea even at home.

Now obviously this is all speculative and anything can happen, but hey whats a forum for? So; I'd say we'd probably need another 50 points from the remaining 27 games to give us a tally of 75 points (which, I'd say is the kind of target we really have to aim at if we want to make it) Mapping out a 'schedule' does I'm afraid bring home how tough that is likely to be; but are any of these results unachievable? Villa (a) -------------------3 City (h)--------------------1 Arsenal (a)---------------1 United (h)----------------1 Burnley (a)---------------3 Everton (h)---------------1 Palace (a)----------------3 Chelsea (h)---------------0 Arsenal (h)---------------1 United (a)-----------------0 Newcastle (a)------------3 Swansea (h)--------------3 QPR (a)--------------------3 West Ham (h)------------3 Liverpool (h)--------------1 Palace (h)-----------------3 Chelsea (a)---------------0 Burnley (h)----------------3 Everton (a)---------------1 Hull (h)---------------------3 Stoke (a)------------------3 Spurs (h)------------------1 Sunderland (a)-----------3 Leicester (a)--------------3 Villa (h)--------------------3 City (a)--------------------0 So obviously that's me having a bash at predicting literally every result; but obviously plenty of them can be 'clumped together' (i.e - 3 points from our next 3 fixtures after Villa can be a win and two losses as well as drawing all three/four points from Spurs (h) + Sunderland (a) can be achieved with a win and a draw in either order etc.etc.) Its just my rough idea of the kind of results/form that would be required for us to actually make it into the top four and I think it maps out a reasonable 'schedule' with which to aim at. The key matches that will define our season IMO won't be the run of tough matches coming up, but the run of winnable, but tricky fixtures immediately after them in February where we really will have to get straight back to winning and winning consistently (Newcastle/QPR/Swans/West Ham). If we do bounce straight back and go on another run through those games, then I think we're in with a shout, but if there's a hangover from the run of extremely tough fixtures over this winter period, that'll probably be what does the damage. Its going to be tough. Very, very tough, but it *could* be done!

You want examples? You mean you want me to present ACTUAL EVIDENCE!? How DARE YOU! ...but lets agree to differ on from that point. Would you perhaps address the second issue I've raised? (and particularly the last question) "And finally, you're both forgetting that there's a degree of chicken-and-egg to this. The cups are valued less *because* a great many of the bigger teams don't care that much about them. Manchester City will not fail to beat Newcastle at home in the League, mark my words, yet their defeat tonight isn't *that* surprising. For my generation; the cups have never been that big a deal, the Champions League has. We didn't decide on this, it wasn't our *choice*. It is simply the way its been throughout most of our lives. As such, yes, many of us would value 4th place in the Premiership over a domestic trophy that you only win, in part, because the bigger clubs aren't all that arsed about anyway. To what standard do you hold us in terms of saying that we're somehow *wrong* to feel that way?"

Again, no-one *doesn't* want the cup win, but yeah a lot of people would rather see Saints finish in the Champions League, which the rest of the footballing world seems to value higher than our own domestic competitions. This is the other thing, if, (completely hypothetically), Saints did finish 4th, kept hold of their better players, added new ones, expanded the stadium/fanbase etc. the club would develop into one that would naturally be in a position to win trophies in the future. And finally we're not talking about a cup win being on offer here, (hell we haven't played in a 1/4 final of either cup competition for ages now), so whats been on offer is a place in the next round with the very likely-to-encounter problem of the fact that we'll probably just run into a big club that'll easily knock us out anyway. Now when that doesn't apply, and a cup competition really opens up for us the way it did in last season's FA cup, you'll see a lot of people who'll readily admit they'd rather finish 4th than win the FA cup up in arms and rightly so, as it of course made no sense in that circumstance not to abandon the league and try and go all out for the cup.

Examples? I can imagine there being a degree of sour grapes inasmuch as people were likely to shrug and say "ahwel I guess at least we can concentrate on the league" or "meh...s'only the cup...probably would have ran into an impossible tie sooner or later anyway", but I don't remember anyone saying that they'd swap a cup for 7th in the league. You are straw-manning. Again..."disparaging" is a very subjective way of putting it. Was being less than apoplectic with rage for three solid months after losing away at Sunderland with a weakened team 'disparaging'? Was not being all that fussed about going to see us play Burnley in the third round of the FA cup last year on a miserable January weekend 'disparaging'? And finally, you're both forgetting that there's a degree of chicken-and-egg to this. The cups are valued less *because* a great many of the bigger teams don't care that much about them. Manchester City will not fail to beat Newcastle at home in the League, mark my words, yet their defeat tonight isn't *that* surprising. For my generation; the cups have never been that big a deal, the Champions League has. We didn't decide on this, it wasn't our *choice*. It is simply the way its been throughout most of our lives. As such, yes, many of us would value 4th place in the Premiership over a domestic trophy that you only win, in part, because the bigger clubs aren't all that arsed about anyway. To what standard do you hold us in terms of saying that we're somehow *wrong* to feel that way?

You must be great fun at a party.

No-one has ever said its 'beneath us'. No-one would ever want Saints to NOT win a football match, but yes I'd much rather finish 4th in the Premiership and have a crack at the Champions League than win either of our domestic cups. That's not to say we can't try and do both. You continually straw-man anyone who's priorities don't align with yours.

Hm? Not really. Obviously you try and win every game that you can. I'm just saying that finishing higher than we did last season will entail us finishing ABOVE a team or two that we didn't last season. (This is of course disregarding the possibility that we manage to finish, say, above Everton but below West Ham for instance, which I think is a fair assumption) So like I say, who can we finish above? Its all well and good saying that we think we can finish 4th or whatever but to say that we'll be able to finish above ALL of Liverpool/Everton/Spurs AND one of United/Arsenal suddenly makes that task look an awful lot more difficult. I'm simply saying that if we finish higher than we did last season, it'll be at someone's expense; who's?

Who of last seasons top seven do you think we can/will finish above and as such, where do you think that we can/will finish this season? I'm a glass half-empty fella I'm afraid so I don't believe that realistically we will higher than 8th, but I suppose its not impossible that we *could* finish above Everton. I'm afraid I simply can't see us finishing above anyone in the big six once all is said and done/once we've had a tougher fixture list/our fair share of injuries etc.etc. I start this thread because with all this talk about league position and soundbites like 'teams that finish outside the top six don't win matches 8-0' and so on (not just on here, but from optimistic neutrals as well), very rarely has anyone been specific enough to say exactly at who's expense our top-6/5/4 finish will be. So perhaps the optimists amongst us could let us know!

To be fair, he is so slight that he's bound to go flying after the odd centre-half body checks him, whilst using the idea that he might well have a dive in him as an excuse to the ref. But yeah, terrific player who really seems to have the lot. Quick, skillful, can run and pass with both feet and actually, as has been mentioned, works really very hard to do as much as he can defensively (although, with the obvious limitations of being thin as a pin). Great player! Mane Maneeeee Mane Maneeeee Mane Maneeeee Mane Maneeee Sadio-oh-oh-oh!

Yeah this is the reason it is an own goal. If the defender had only got one touch on the ball then yes, it would be Pelle's goal on account of 1) The ball going in were it left alone 2) The ball travelling towards goal at every point in its flight since leaving Pelle's boot. However, if you look at the goal closely Bridcutt actually clears it off the line, only to kick it onto his standing foot, so essentially its as much of an own goal as if he had controlled the ball, dribbled away from goal, and then spun around and blasted into his own net. Pretty clear-cut I'm afraid.

Tough one. On the one hand its significant as it is a moment of history if nothing else, but on the other you can't possibly win 8-0 in the Premiership without the opponents being utterly, utterly terrible regardless of how good you were. The match was a lot like the Brazil - Germany game in the World Cup. Again, the winning team put their opponents to the sword very well indeed, but it was mainly down to the combination of fear, panic, shock and players desperately wanting to hide that really is a completely immobilising combination in any sport (you see it in batting collapses, as well as in Tennis in particular (obviously a 1-on-1 sport means these things are more common)).

I'm sorry, so complaining about a disproportionate reaction to racism defining the complainant as racist *is* something you agree with? Does that not depend on how disproportionate the reaction is? If we had the death penalty for racial transgressions would you say that anyone who complained about it was merely a closet racist? How disproportionate would our hypothetical punishment have to be before you thought 'hmm...maybe they have a point'. QUOTE=Ludwig;2063400]Ha! What a complete load of nonsense. Who are you? How dare you pretend to know what multiculturalism in the past was like? Multiculturalism used to equate to an aim where everyone was treated equally? That is THE most ridiculous thing that has been written on here in quite a long time. Go and read up about how immigrants, particularly black and Asian people, were treated in the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s. Then once you've done that, try speaking to some people who were around then. And once you've done that come back on here and state again what multiculturalism used to mean. You have not got a clue and it is you that is insulting ethnic minorities by pretending that you have any idea about anything. You don't know what you're talking about but seem to be acting like some kind of expert. Ah yes. The old canard of "I'm older than you and therefore you're not old enough to have an opinion!". I've grown up in London. My mother worked as a social worker with troubled youths in the Brixton riots and I have friends from a very wide variety of backgrounds. I've talked to my elders with a keen interest and researched social policy with regard to race in the UK as well as other countries and in particular, the US. All you've done there is scoff at my points and stamp your foot at my temerity to form conclusions you don't agree with. Behave yourself.

No, not at all. I just have an analytic mind which gives me the opportunity to think critically about people's real motivations, that's all. I'm not involved in politics but I do find it easy to spot inconsistencies that permeate political belief systems. I know that you've already made your mind up about me. In your opinion, anyone who opposes the left-wing doctrines that you espouse must by definition be either a right-wing bigot or just so hopelessly unintelligent. In either case, they aren't worth listening to. A moderate who objects simply to the methodology by which an equal, fair and just society can be brought about, can easily be lumped in with both of the above categories in much the same way. Positive discrimination is a hopelessly ineffective system. Youtube Thomas Sowell on the subject.

I agree in principle but its awfully difficult isn't it? I mean, he's adding nothing more than fresh legs off the bench and a 'pest-factor' that could be achieved by Mayuka or probably McQueen to a similar extent. The fact that we've dusted off more money on him than was spent on Rodriguez, Mane, Ramirez, Lovren and (I think) even Wanyama, all of whom have been held to the standard expressed by how much they've cost us, does grate fairly hard, especially when he's not ever going to compete for a starting spot with any of the front three, and won't even be first reserve behind whoever it is we drop for Rodriguez once he's back. Ultimately you can't analyse Long without considering the money that was spent; mainly because that money could have been spent more effectively elsewhere. Besides which, where do you draw the line? If we had spent £30Mn on Shane Long would it be possible for anyone to analyse him regardless of the fee? Of course not. Its just plain old idealism to think any player can escape the inevitable judgement that comes with the money.

This sentences is a very good summary of where well-meaning liberals go spectacularly wrong when it comes to race. The reason we live in a largely pleasant and multicultural society is because we don't desperately seek to identify, pigeon-hole and categorise people from other cultures and backgrounds. The reason we're very quickly losing that pleasant and multicultural society is because we've begun to do exactly that. Multiculturalism used to equate to pluralism; the aim to live in a society where everyone was treated equally in the eyes of the law and could more-or-less be confident that if they conformed to the niceties of the (very pleasant and welcome, relative to others) country in which they lived, they'd benefit from that. Multiculturalism now no longer means treating everyone from the same background equally; but treating them completely differently according to their race and background, as well as the addition of a self-appointed bourgeoisie in some cases outright telling people of various cultures how they ought to feel and how they ought to want to be treated. Liberal racism, i.e. the idea that people of other races need to be helped because (lets keep this hush hush eh Tarquin?) they're just not as intelligent as the big, bad, genetically lucky white man is far more worrying than the overt, easily identified and dispelled ignorance of the Daily Mail brigade. Now granted, I can only base this on my own experiences to the extent that they are subjective, but in my experience the most PC of the people I've met at university and suchlike are those who come from very well-to-do, rural areas and are very self-conscious about the fact that their background is so white and middle-class. A good example of this would be the propagation of the recurring joke "I'm not racist, I have loads of black friends!". Despite the fact that it should be patently obvious to almost anyone that if you are accused, wrongly, of racism, and you do indeed have plenty of black friends ready to defend you to the hilt, that it is obviously a very reasonable defense! Anyway, whilst they're good and well-meaning people insofar as they want everyone to be as happy, successful and equal as possible, their racism very often manifests itself in the fact that they sincerely don't believe that other races, and in particular black people, are as intelligent as whites. We want equality between blacks and whites? Well we need welfare programmes to redress the balance and to get the unflattering black crime rate down. - Why wouldn't added emphasis on family and education work? - Well...y'know... You get similar things with the foreign aid budget. I remember talking to my boss (a very pleasant, liberal lady who, like a good little serf, thinks precisely what the Beeb and Guardian tell her to) and discussing the Western response to social issues in Africa and why it would be far better for us to leave the continent alone, rather than putting small businesses out of the market by essentially giving them food/money and creating a culture of dependency. The reality of it was that whilst her liberalism appeared to be a bashful self-hating-whitey complex, it was actually a rather sinister, nasty belief that blacks were incapable of advancing technologically in the same way whites had, and that being the 'lucky' race we are its our duty to help them. Funnily enough I was the only white lad at my house at Uni (and no of course I wouldn't dream of doing anything so downright nasty as to call them any sort of racial slur) but I do remember telling my friends that "guys...do you not realise that when these people are so incredibly PC...they're not treating you like you're equals" they were straight away like..."yeah....we get it....we know."