eddie

incredible. lived in bugolobi district in kampala from aug-dec last year! closest I came to kisoro was isingiro/kamwenge/nakivale, but never that far. small world eh

wow. didn't realise uganda would have so much traction onsaintsweb. wasn't that this year? were you there in december?

YA, RLY

I think that's the most saintsweb sentence and set of acronyms I've ever seen

ha excellent story - great to hear! I was there for work last summer and left in december...managed to watch the ghana afcon qualifier where they won 1-0...was a cracking atmosphere. shame they didn't keep the form to the end of the qualifiers as you say its a great, great place

York City I follow, then there's a bunch of teams I wouldn't mind doing well (not at our expense, obviously) like Palace etc. other than that, mostly through watching matches when on travels, I enjoy keeping up with wolfsburg, milan and bizzarely, uganda

the OP did say "realistic" granted it's all the realm of fantasy and speculation anyway, but my point was it's not realistic to assume the club will get rid of anyone after 5 or so months, and especially seeing as a few of those we've paid >5m for. Giving a chance to players, come hell or high water and no matter whether it's a good or bad call, is too much of a fundamental principle at the club.

...what? this just isn't ever going to happen. who on earth would you suggest? Martina? Juanmi? The first I want to at least see what he can do (he's already a lot better than he ever looked at twente - which granted isn't difficult and he's still very average) given a few months (same goes for Caulker), and the second will develop over time, looking decent for U21s but probably not 100% up to playing in the league every week. You're approaching this like it's a game of FIFA where you can just sell and buy like its the easiest thing in the world

I know that it's actually shooting ourselves in the foot as english football fans (one less european place and all that), but I am taking a great deal of enjoyment out of seeing chelsea and arsenal being just abysmal in europe. arsenal were comedy last night - Ospina plucking the ball out of the air and then falling back into his own net was gold

someone like wijnaldum but not wijnaldum

although a little more mobile what with a fit and on form Zouma. if terry doesn't play our 'pace' card (Long/Rodriguez/Mane) won't be quite as effective

hm. I just don't know what you expect from him. He's absolutely meeting my expectations as a fairly older, but decent striker who's realistically never going to set the world alight. You can berate him all day long for not standing there, not getting this goal, not taking this chance. But the fact is, he's getting 2-3 goals every month and the occassional assist. That is exactly no more or less than I expect from him. If anything, he's actually turned out a lot better than I thought as he was at one time an utter joke just before he joined the Dutch league . He just is not a 40 million quid striker who will always make the right decisions. Whatever his 'attitude' or 'looking like he's not bothered' (which I know you haven't said, but lots of others have), he does get the end product enough to justify Koeman sticking with him. He's committed to the team and has a good balance between being selfish/bullish enough on the pitch, and also quite frankly a better-than-average holder of the ball who brings others into play. Sure, I may be giving too much credit by the word reliable - that you're right on. Perhaps just decent or good would be a better word.

Pelle I think. His build up play has been great, and he's got a good mix of providing the last ball, but also wanting to be there in the box to receive it. His performance against Utd and Swansea were excellent, don't buy this constant trend of picking out matches or moments where he doesn't look interested. I think he comes across very committed to the club and fans, and tops it off with goals and the occasional assist, in addition to being a handful for any defense to focus on. He gives Mane space to play because he nearly always has 2 defenders around him. I know that's an analysis of his general play, but I think this September he's been fairly reliable so would go for him. Mane could have had it also, mind.

Its been the central midfield where chelsea have been weakest this season, and their fullbacks. I think if we play mane and tadic out wide, we stand a very good chance of troubling them on the wings. That, combined with a really strong midfield (say, romeu wanyama clasie/JWP) in a kind of 4-3-3, I think we could actually give them a really really good run for their money. Trouble is that we play a very similar formation to them usually with a 4-2-3-1 formation. If there's just a lot of players playing central midfield (e.g. Matic, Wanyama, Romeu, Fabregas etc. ), could be a very low-scoring game. Wouldnt also be surprised if we see obi mikel and ramires/willian starting this game. Obi Mikel started the last chelsea game I saw a couple of weeks ago

this is just a bizzare reaction. Everyone was utterly fuming over the fact we played yoshida instead of cedric, but are now really critical on cedrics "poor performance" defensively last night.....

showed incredible character against a league two side.

if we're including witsel in that (easily a cool 30-40+ million) we may as well just create a fantasy team.

hey sorry, made a mistake. he just had a direct interview with the echo: http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/13772231.Koeman_clear_on_Southampton_tactics/?ref=mr&lp=10

no idea what the fuss is about. He is clearly going to be our first choice RB, but even great players need time to bed in. Juanmi is clearly really talented, played at a good level, educated in a good academy, but Koeman has said he needs time. He may well become a starter 4-5 months down the line, but he just needs a bit of time. Soares is a good full-back, and the management clearly want him to be the first choice going forward. They aren't idiots, it's not like they've suddenly realised we've bought a reserve RB but not a clyne replacement. Just Koeman took the decision, for whatever reason right or wrong, that for this game Soares wouldn't be the best person to deal with a (albeit inconsistently so..) very strong winger. Plus, Memphis turns inside a lot to shoot and rarely just stays out on the wing to cross. In that case, once he's running torward the centre of the park, having someone who is used to playing in the centre is probably a much better shout. But I'm just speculating around the selection. In any case as ronald noted in his conference, he "hates" it when players pass back to the centre half or to the keeper. So it isn't all his 'cautious system' of playing as some are saying, because he's said that isn't what he wants them to do. I think its positive he notices that, I find it unbelievably frustrating

Yes. exactly right. If we really wanted to trouble them , having an overlapping soares/JWP combo to play against rojo would have been very difficult to deal with. shame!

either this is a brilliantly sarcastic post, or it is just unbelievably pessimistic/clueless. Soares is clearly our preferred RB, who for one game was replaced by Yoshida. Lots of reasons could be for this. Maybe Koeman felt Memphis would always want to turn and come inside (which he does/did, lots), and from that point on having Yoshida who is used to playing in the centre would actually be of more use. But clearly he had a reason for this one off decision, he acknowledged in his PC that it was unusual Juanmi can't get a game for goodness knows why, agreed. Clasie....what? So you're p ssed that he's injured? Did you even watch the Vitesse game - we completely fell apart when davis replaced clasie. We lost any kind of structure in the CM of the park. All down to Clasie, that was. Van Dijk definitely didn't look league 1 standard. The issue is we don't have that much pace at the back, as Yoshida just isn't capable enough and targett isn't the kind of player to match someone like martial for speed. So he got run around a little bit, but he was still very dominating in the air and generally a nuiscance for utd corners/set pieces. He got turned in the box by Martial for the first goal, which to be fair is one of the best cruyff turns I have ever seen. To do that, at that speed, in the opponents box, was incredible. I wouldn't blame any defender for being foiled in that case. Steklenburg...has been fairly solid (much moreso than fulham - I think he can only improve) but was sold out from a poor decision by his defense (back pass from yoshida). other than that, he's coped fairly well I would say and put in some decent saves. Romeu....what are you talking about? Just because a player is subbed doesn't mean he is 'worse' than the other player. it was a tactical decision. As it happens, I think koeman really rates him. The tactical decision today to bring on davis was strange, though. This is just an utterly hot air thread. We've spent much more wisely than many other teams.

hm interesting - what you say in last paragraph made me think back to the summer. Was really annoyed we were being linked with a winger instead of signing a CM/CB, but now I think having a decent RW is almost a necessity. I think not having an out and out winger there to beat the LB (often PL lb's aren't as strong as right...) and provide crosses to pelle is a real shame, would benefit our team enormously. I think jayrod can play on the left as a sort of winger/drifting in RF, but we really do need someone proven and tested to play onthe right

koeman didn't play soares because he felt memphis would have utterly turned him on the left hand side. I think that's an understandable decision. Targett was fine for handling Mata, because Mata always drifts inside where he's other people's problem as he isn't an out an out winger even though he played there. I thought Yoshida was actually alright apart from the backpass. The trouble is he is only part of a wider system which is a cautious one that tries to retain posession. The amount of times we passed directly back to keeper or CB rather than forwards to the wings (because tadic NEVER stayed in the position koeman wanted him, wing, almost at all, and JWP is also not a winger!!) was unbelievable. I thought it was an odd system, because in reality we fielded two very neat players on the wings (JWP/Tadic) who are good for tight, close play and can be creative , but just don't have the pace for the wing. Maybe that was intentional, though. Would have been interesting to see what would have happened with say JayRod and somebody like Long (who replaced JWP anyway....) on the wings, pushing Darmian and Rojo. I think Rojo at LB was there for the taking if we had played someone other than ward-prowse, though he did do excellently in crossing for the first goal. Romeu did the job but wasn't very noticable. I think it's strange because previous years Wanyama has been the 'rock' in CM, and often Morgan had the creativity to wander about and play the ball. Now it seems Koeman wants romeu to hold the fort and Wanyama is all over the place - covering for weak positions (like targett....) and coming back into the defensive line if fonte has been pulled out of position. Just an interesting change. Pelle was fantastic, and Tadic too. Thought Mane was just O.K. but marked very well by Carrick and Schneiderlin. Both of them had played against him (and obviously Morgan knew him quite well) - I wander whether that featured into the selection of Utd's CMs. Van Gaal probably wanted to go with Morgan precisely because he knew Mane's little tricks and turns better than schweinsteiger or anyone else they've played in that position this season. Decision to take Romeu off for Davis wasn't great, although I said romeu was unnoticable I think he still did a job. I think he made the change because he realised Rooney was completely absent from the game and wasn't posing any threat, and he wanted a bit more fluidity in that area of the park. But it just got rid of our key holding midfielder. I agree that martina is....an odd buy for a team wanting to challenge top 6. But you can see immediately, when Van Gaal realised Targett was off, he played valencia at RB precisely because he is so prone to bombing forward. Even Van Gaal realises martina is there for the taking. So playing Valencia was just a purely attacking decision to expose martina's defensive weakness. I think it's pretty telling. I do think steklenburg was a bit off yesterday. not 100% on form. For me he was indecisive in the back pass (he shrunk back into his goal giving martial a very clear path to the back of the net on the right side) but maybe being a bit harsh. Fonte, not good. Thought it was a shame. He came across to the edge of the box once for a tackle which was well timed, but other than that I felt both Fonte and Van Dijk were tense today, lots of frustration and silly decisions based on not keeping a cool head. I noticed several times Van Dijk looked really p ssed off, which is understandable given our shambles over the pitch for Mata's goal (someone needed to put in a flipping tackle.......!) but I want to see a CB being a little more leading, commanding and keeping a cool head to direct the team and organise the defense. Perhaps that's more tha captains job, though. In any case, not a bad result given our shambles at the back and recent results. Thought we gave Utd a good going over, and they won due to being jammy and us throwing it away. I think we'll be fine this season, just need to string a few wins together to get into our mojo/rhythm. we march on!

.....? or the >200,000 from the syrian crisis in last 4 1/2 years

They will exploit targett for sure. I think if depay/mata (not sure who plays on the right these days) have a stormer then we're doomed