mrfahaji

I feel the biggest threat to the league is the big/rich clubs' ability to pay huge wages to an entire squad. I'm sure players all want to play, but I doubt it's a huge problem for them not to be when they're being paid 80k+ a week at a 'glamorous' club. It means that even if a top side doesn't NEED a player, they'll still buy them either as backup or to stop someone else from signing them. If the top 5 can afford to have 20 world class players each, that leaves a big gap to the next group of teams. Of course the flip side is, as mentioned above, you can still only field 11, and when the top teams are now having to shell out £30m+ to prise these top class players away, it gives the teams below an opportunity to really strengthen their first XI, while the teams at the top can only bolster their squad. I'm not sure if the trend will continue, but the effect in recent seasons has actually been to even the playing field because of this effect, even though I very much doubt this was the intention...

Same! Only went to Highbury once too and we got a point then too. Saw a draw at Anfield in '00 and the 'Taibi' 3-3 at OT. Haven't done too badly on my sporadic visits to the big clubs, long may it continue!

Unless the beneficiaries are Tottenham, I would like to see him catastrophically fail. Medium sized club with cheat-mode enabled, not exactly a surprise that they've done fairly well in recent years and wouldn't be particularly impressive if Guardiola won things with them. Plus if it makes it harder for Saints to take points off them then it is a bad thing.

Wasn't Lex Immers linked with us quite a bit last summer? Seen he's just gone on loan to... Cardiff.

http://www.myfootballfacts.com/All-TimePremierLeagueTable1992-93to2010-11.html This one is for the Premier League years. Wouldn't argue a great deal with the top 20 there, though the likes of Middlesbrough and Fulham would probably drop out for those going further back.

I think you've spoken for a lot of people there

Whoever were the teams in my Merlin Premier League 95 sticker album will always be the 'real' top flight. I actually did more of a complex calculation as to what made a 'big club', which factored in trophies, average position since 92, attendance, size of stadium etc. Don't have it to hand, but I think Saints were around 20th. When I look at the lower divisions, teams that I think probably ought to be in the top division are Leeds, Forest, Wednesday & Derby. You could make a case for quite a few others, such as Wolves, Coventry, Ipswich etc.

Maybe the testimonial should just be Kelvin vs that Leeds XI.

He's there. If you type 'Svensson' then it will populate Michael and Anders.

Got 82. Pleased with that, but still hard to believe the ones I missed... including one of the current squad! Quite embarassing that I didn't get Pelle & Rodriguez until I had at least 70 on the board and I kept thinking "who the h£ll is this Italian that has scored so many...?"

What you mean is, "we've stopped playing Yoshida" (harsh, I know...)

Agreed. He got my motm vote at Old Trafford - as poor as United were, every time they did look threatening it was invariably VVD that snuffed out the danger. Given that when he first joined his reputation (and even hints of it from his first couple of months) was 'does great things but error prone', its good that he is almost an unsung hero now!

As soon as every team starts to conform to a certain style or tactic there will be an opportunity for someone to exploit it by going against the status quo, or even reverting to an old style. If statistics, perhaps rightly, suggest that teams would do better to have pacey defenders instead of tall ones to combat the trend in strikers, suddenly Andy Carroll will be scoring every week and those statistics will look silly. I'm a fan of crossing but prefer to see wide players getting round the back and deliver outswinging balls. Even though crossing from deep is sometimes effective and the right ball, it can end up feeling like an extension of hoof ball, as teams run out of ideas so just lob one into the box. As The9 says above, variety is the key.

I'm not saying that shirt pulling is ok, but on one replay I saw of Smalling-Van Dijk, I didn't think it was anywhere near as bad as the one at Chelsea. Whilst I would be ok with a penalty being given every time so it would eventually stop, if we're being realistic (i.e. it won't stop completely) I'd say there is shirt-pulling where a defender is stopping the player escaping from them, and shirt-pulling where you're stopping the player getting to the ball. The second one, as at Chelsea, really has to be punished.

Agree with this, last season it felt we earned the victory through an incredible defensive performance. Even though our goal was later this season, and we probably didn't look as threatening going forward, defensively we seemed pretty comfortable, which you never really expect at Old Trafford.

I thought Tadic was pretty good in the first half...

For someone so adept (although I know some debate it) at free kicks, it still puzzles me how poor his passing is at times. I know it's easy to pick out one instant, but it's certainly not the first time I've noticed - his pass to Mane today was absolutely atrocious, not even close to being the required ball! I also didn't like his attempt to get to the high cross with about 10 minutes (I think) to go, half jumped towards it reminiscent of Fabrice Fernandes... He did seem to be playing with a bit more confidence though which is encouraging, hopefully that's come through his goals last week.

Great all round performance, although United were poor (even compared to last season, where I felt we won thanks to a defensive masterclass, today it was just assured...) It looks like we may have found a formation that works! Hooray! At the turn of the year we really looked out of ideas, so it's great that they are now clicking and playing so well. It's hard to pick out individuals but I think Targett has improved so much playing in that LWB position, perhaps playing in a back four and still getting forward exposed him a bit but now he has a bit more freedom. Van Dijk got my MOTM - more than any other player I found myself congratulating him on a crucial tackle or interception.

Been impressed with Tadic's ball retention, he seems to hang on to it and find a pass even when he's given it under pressure. Mane gets into good positions and then picks the wrong ball or overdoes it. Long is doings. A decent job, if not quite creating much so far.

I'd say it's more positional. Mane in that role tends to play more of a support striker whereas Davis more of central midfielder that gets forward. It might work in a 3-5-2 but where Mane has played the attacking midfielder in a 4-3-3 there has been a gaping hole between midfield and attack, meaning we struggle to build attacks and when the opposition pick up the ball in defence they can carry it about 20 yards before they even see a Saints player.

"the fact they both started fairly late in terms of their footballing careers, as well as there humble second jobs". It's one thing on a forum, but as a writer... "He’s honestly the best player we’ve seen at QPR since Les Ferdinand." - My QPR season ticket holder friend said almost the same thing (except he said Trevor Sinclair), so he's clearly well thought of. Hopefully he can become our best player since Cuco Martina.

Pretty sure Schneiderlin got criticism for his twitter tantrum, but he got his head down and continued putting the effort in. By the time he left most people wished him well and appreciated his spell here.

He has looked disinterested in a fair few games this year, but it could just be that he is struggling to assert his authority on the game, and his already questionable passing game deteriorates and looks horribly sloppy. Someone has posted that he finds it tough against certain types of opposition, and I think this year he has looked awful whenever the team around him have been poor (or perhaps the causality is the opposite? Wanyama being poor hinders others). People won't forget that he threw his toys out the pram and helped derail our European run, and I think part of the problem is that in a lot of games he hasn't made the 'crunching' challenges you allude to, because he's been half a yard off the pace.

I think this, coupled with being the player most likely to conjure something out of nothing makes him important and difficult to replace. Even when I've spent most of the game exasperated by his misplaced passes or missed chances, when he goes off I still think "well how are we going to score now?" However, one thing I do wonder is whether we struggle to cater for him in a 4-2-3-1 formation. He's not nearly as effective out wide, and playing in 'attacking midfield' leaves us exposed and outnumbered in the middle. We'll be hard pushed to find a replacement individually as good, but we might be able to find a talented player who better fits the structure and style of our team. Just a hypothesis that I'm not even convinced of myself...