mrfahaji

Thanks for the reply everyone, seems I missed that bit somewhere, but pretty much everyone else spotted it... I'm in Block 533. As DuncanRG said, to think that I've been anxious since they announced the deadlines about getting tickets and then there were a few thousand left!

Just bought mine, phew! Although haven't had a confirmation email yet, hopefully that's nothing to worry about, I took a screenshot just in case. I bought two tickets, does anyone know if they will be both come to me, or will they be posted to the separate customer addresses? My dad isn't sure if he's ever updated his address since moving house a couple of years ago...! Normally the tickets would come to me (e.g. Europa), but not sure if it's different for the Cup Final.

I managed to get in ok. However there is a 30 minute time out, so going to leave it till a bit closer to the time!

I put him in based on the one game I've seen, and added the caveat that he'd be in if he lived up to the potential he showed in that match. I imagine most have done the same.

Ha! Funnily enough at the West Ham game there was a group of fans from the states, and I'm pretty sure they were talking about "what they do at Portland Timbers"! It says it all that the game at St Mary's was comparable, or perhaps even not as good atmosphere for them... As much as the American 'organised fun' is pretty cringeworthy (I went to an NFL game in Tampa where the scoreboard showed arrows pointing to sections of the ground with instructions), that Portland clip at least shows the fans singing something that works (ok it's predictable) and everyone is singing it! Can't help but feel we'll look down our noses at them and sn1gger behind their backs and then eventually realise we're an even poorer excuse for football fans...

Based on our current formation and assuming the potential I've seen in Gabbiadini and Hojbjerg comes to fruition, I'd probably go with this: -------------McCarthy--------------- -Soares--Yoshida---VanDijk--Bertrand- --------------Romeu----------------- -------Hojbjerg-------Davis---------- --Boufal------Gabbiadini--------Tadic-- However, I'd be interested to see how something like this would work: -------------McCarthy--------------- -Soares--Caceres---VanDijk--Bertrand- -----------Romeu---Hjobjerg-------------- ---Boufal*-------Gabbiadini*--------Tadic- ------------------Austin-------------- * Would swap these two if Gabbiadini is decent cutting in from the flanks.

Does anyone know why a few blocks in the top tier are cheaper than the rest? Most say £56 when you hover over them but three or four blocks are saying £40. When I look at the individual seats it doesn't say a price.

I find it bizarre how many fans seem so reluctant to sing or get behind the team, but some people might find it difficult or painful to stand for the entire game, particularly those of the older generation. I'd probably struggle and I'm in my early 30s!

That's fair enough, but Boufal does it too. And Lallana used to do it. Oh and so did Mane. I agree that diving and (probably more so for me) feigning injury is a sickening part of the game. I certainly wish Tadic would show a bit more determination at times, but I have also admired his desire to look for a pass (sometimes at the expense of shooting admittedly), and appreciate his place in the side as one of the few players that makes you think something could happen when he gets the ball.

Charlie Austin has certainly gone up in my estimation now I know he mows down cyclists in his spare time. I'd say mine was probably Tadic, as although he is frustrating me at the moment, I love the way he plays when he isn't struggling for form, and is probably the player I feel most disappointed rather angry at when he gets something wrong! Also think Romeu is great, love that he never shirks a challenge but is also composed on the ball, and he seems like a good guy that has a little bit of interest in the club too. I think most people are reluctant to hero worship van Dijk because of his inevitable departure! (My first line was just a joke btw, for any budding cyclists preparing to scorn me forever more!)

I'm using a laptop. Firefox browser?

Except Latin American Spanish they don't pronounce C or Z as 'TH' as they do in Spain. Given the accent is on the a, I'd say it's most likely KA-ser-ess (as opposed to ka-SAIR-ess).

That is a good effort, thanks! Incidentally whenever I go to the ticket page, whether for Saints games or even when I took an early peak at the site today, I get the 'select tickets' options at the side with the Block etc, but the stadium view doesn't show. Does this just take a long time to load, or is this an error? Ideally I'd like to see which blocks have availability rather than just choosing a random block from the dropdown and hoping for the best!

Agree about the striking options. I was thinking how our possession based game really needs a centre forward that can hold up the ball and bring others into play. Although Long often finds a way to be a thorn in the side of the opposition, he doesn't suit that at all and Rodriguez has been poor more often than not. Losing Austin was a big blow, as although he wasn't mobile, I still saw him doing that pivotal role effectively on a number of occasions (I know he had a few stinkers too). It looks like Gabbiadini might be adept at filling that void.

Puel cannot be blamed for not having enough good players, but he can be questioned for not adapting the shape of the team a little to get better results. Some have asked why we can't try playing PEH alongside Romeu as a second defensive midfielder and I think this is a reasonable question. A tricky one for me is the style of play. I'm starting to think that he doesn't actually want us to play quite such turgid sideways football as we have been producing, but that with a team with so many average players, they're just not capable of implementing the quick passing game he wants. The reason I say this is because you do see flashes of it, players playing in neat triangles, but it nearly always involves our best players. Of course, it could just be that they are just doing their own thing and ignoring the instructions, but some of the passing moves against Liverpool, for example, suggest to me that this is something we work on in training rather than players randomly pulling it out of nowhere. Although I like seeing our full backs get forward I wish it didn't feel like the ONLY tactic we have. However, I wonder if again this is because we don't have enough quality in the centre of midfield to build attacks from there. There's always more space in the wide areas, and it allows us to bring some of our better players into play. It's hard to imagine Ward-Prowse or Clasie successfully putting together intricate one-twos or driving runs in the congested area of midfield that we would need to create more chances that way.

Agreed. In fact after the Swansea game there were people saying the second half was a 'great performance' when it wasn't really anything better than 'decent'. I felt the West Ham game had a very similar feel. We were far from excellent, but also not awful. It's not the first time we've conceded straight after scoring recently. Matt Phillips' goal for West Brom was painfully similar, and even Sigurdsson's winner came soon after we equalised. As soon as we start getting a bit of momentum and a chance to build, we give away what seems like the easiest goal in the world and go back to square one! Is it purely a mental/concentration thing, or do we fail to adjust to the change in circumstances properly? Btw, I remembered a game which had me spitting feathers at our style of play, just to show I'm not defending the indefensible - Middlesbrough springs to mind! We won but it was bl00dy awful!

I'd agree that our reliance on full backs to provide width is a bit alarming, although both Cedric and Bertrand put over some decent crosses. Felt we were also dinking too many balls into the box when we could have drilled some across the six yard box? Felt like we were missing a trick against a West Ham defence containing Fonte, Reid and Collins by playing it in the air all the time.

I'm not disputing any of what you say, I am unhappy with our results and indeed many of our performances this season and am certainly a little concerned about our position in the table. There have unquestionably been games this season where I have been frustrated with Puel's tactics, although I feel he has been let down tremendously by the board and doesn't have a great deal to work with. However, this thread is for reaction to the West Ham game, not the season in general (I accept that some of that will creep in), and I feel strongly about what I saw from the stands on Saturday (perhaps I am more vehement than usual because I was there rather than watching on a stream) and it doesn't fit with what a lot are saying on here, there's far too much 'outcome bias'.

Totally agree with that first sentence. When he first came back into the team last year the biggest difference he seemed to make was organising the defence and giving them all a bit more confidence, which is why for a while I was reluctant to be too critical of him just for being a poor shot stopper. However I'm not sure if that's still the case. Further more, other 'non-shotstopper' attributes that with his size he should be good at are commanding the area and rushing out for one-on-ones, but he doesn't do either of those well either!

Unfortunately this just sums up how ludicrous some opinions can be. "Only the score at the end of the game counts" - maybe in terms of points and league position, but not in terms of analysing what went wrong. People see we lost and seem to work backwards to find a story that fits. If you think the entire game was played in our half then you must not have watched the game. If anything the opposite is true, West Ham were happy to sit back and let us have the ball rather than 'pinning' us back. West Ham barely had any attacks all game and I felt we still had a way back into the game until about 70/75 minutes when we were starting to tire and looked like we were running out of ideas. A friend of mine (non-Saints fan) said to me yesterday after seeing MOTD, "their first goal... seemed... pretty easy?" and that's just it. West Ham didn't have many chances, but equally they didn't NEED many chances, we gifted them goals and a two goal lead which most Premier League teams are capable of defending. And in terms of Randolph not making a decent save, I'll grant you that he didn't do anything breathtaking, but Ward-Prowse had a shot from a similar position to Obiang and Randolph tipped it round the post, Ward-Prowse also hit a free kick that he did well to get over and save - funnily enough when it happened we said that had Forster been in goal it would have gone in and then West Ham scored their free kick from a similar position a few minutes later - and he also tipped over a JWP header. Add to that Gabbiadini hit a snapshot over which he should have scored from and suddenly your argument falls a little flat. But I know, I know, we lost so everything from the first minute to the last must necessarily have been awful.

Of course I don't think that. What I'm saying is we have gone from looking defensively solid (bar a couple of games) for most of the season to looking shaky in the last few games. The defensive midfield hasn't changed in that time, but the centre backs have. Therefore it's more reasonable to identify that as the reason rather than DM. Of course, if your argument is that our DM has been terrible all season but VVD is so good that he covers for it and only now is the midfield exposed and costing us goals, I'd have less of an issue with your logic. Wouldn't necessarily agree, but it would be a fair question/argument.

In fairness we tended to do pretty poorly against them even before the 8-0!

I do recall a great ball in behind from Davis with the outside of his foot that Gabbiadini was just offside for. I know I'm clutching at straws...

Agree about Cedric being isolated, but isn't the idea with two defensive midfielders that one is always able to push wide and help the full backs? I think the bigger risk with that formation would be the gap that opens up between the DMs and the front five. As much as we'd be difficult to break down, we'd also give the ball back to the opposition a lot. Davis is the ideal style of player to play as the third midfielder because he covers a lot of ground and carries the ball from defence to attack well. Unfortunately he feels like such a waste of an attack-minded position because he cannot be relied on to get a decent effort on goal when the chance comes his way. I would be tempted to try that formation/lineup (maybe with Boufal central and Tadic left), because IF it works then it's probably our best eleven players on the pitch together, but it wouldn't surprise me if it didn't come off for those reasons. We had a similar dilemma with Mane - he was much more effective centrally, but he couldn't play as the lone CF in our set up and he didn't offer enough in his all round game to be relied on as the AM.

Why would Martina need to be sent on loan? He's not a young player that needs to (or can) develop with game time. Either keep or sell him, but the reason he hasn't been sold is because the cover for Cedric (Pied) has a long term injury. If the reason our defence is so shaky because we haven't replaced Wanyama or Schneiderlin, how come we have been pretty solid for 1.5 seasons without both of them, and solid for half a season without either of them? It's pretty clear that the reason we have started looking shaky at the back is because we've lost VVD, arguably the best defender in the league, and failed to replace Fonte. It also doesn't help that our goalkeeper doesn't save shots. I'm not saying that our midfield doesn't need improving, I totally agree with that view, but it's not the reason we've suddenly started to look dodgy defensively in the space of a month.