DJ Barry Hammond

I assume the research for Larin on penalties suggested stand and react.

Ooooo, English commentary now too!

Ah yes - there’s no names on the back… but plenty of sponsors and hardly a number 1-11 to be seen. 😂

That had to be outside Mav, they’d stacked against you on the inside.

That was some lovely interchange play.

Yet another example of why players should be wearing some proper shin pads!

Page can count himself a tad unlucky with that booking given he didn’t even make an attempt at a tackle!

Southampton wearing their away kit at home when there’s absolutely no need to - what nonsense!

This is not good - gone from constant buffering last week to nothing at all today.

Very constructive

He’s clearly third choice - and Jakub could do with a game to try and restore some confidence given he’s realistically our number 1.

Until we have another striker?

But this is not a new thing is it? This has happened with previous attempted managerial appointments I expect. Mean we kind of know about Potter doing it several times, but I imagine there’s been others as well.

I don’t think that’s realistic. For one, I think the suggestion of administration / liquidation is over stated. King Power might not be willing to put the sort of sums into the club that they have previously to cover the clubs overspend, but I don’t see any prospect of them completely pulling funding in the short term - medium term. It’d make little sense for them to do that for such a high profile asset; especially one that could be sold. But anyway - say if administration was to happen - even then, your suggestion is unlikely because any consortium would probably need to show available funds of around at least £100 million to convince an administrator the bid was backed by sufficient available capital to sustain the club for a significant period of time.

PSR was introduced in the 2013/14 season. And we were overpaying on wages compared to what the club could normally afford based on its turnover even back then. We were doing it in the Championship too. Remember the Sven era? But even under Pearson - our wage/turnover ratio was incredibly high. However - the majority of this over-spending has been underwritten by King Power via debt to equity swaps. Squad Cost Ratio (SCR) will replace PSR in the Premier League next season. I think we’d have struggled to comply with that too!

This isn’t correct based on what you were responding to. Even with our title winning side our wages to Turnover levels were in the 90% range - and we hadn’t really begun the ‘selling an asset’ phase either - that came afterwards with Kante, Mahrez, Drinkwater and Maguire as the main ones. That title winning side also got bumper new contracts - with this being under Top Senior - to start the trend of even higher wages to turnover. This means in reality, the PSR problems were already baked in prior to Vichai’s death - and then exacerbated by Covid.

He didn’t enjoy playing in a back 3 that’s for certain. You could tell he wasn’t fully sure of his surroundings, where to press / close - especially when having to defend out wide.

An example of why I dislike 3 at the back.

That’s unbelievable… and yet it’s not.

We’re definitely defending deeper this half. But I think the other obvious difference is because we’re trying to be more controlled with our attacks, they’re a little slower and we have less bodies going forward. That allows Southampton to get a better starting defensive shape and we don’t have as many bodies around the ball when we lose it high and those things together mean that the Saints transitional play suddenly becomes a lot more effective.

It’s so much better for the rest of the team to have a striker that runs hard; sets the tone. I also think Thomas has been decent; not sure what happened early doors due to buffering, but since that he’s been up and down that flank.

I think everyone in our dressing room right now will be saying one thing - we want and need that clean sheet now. That doesn’t mean to shut up shop - but they’ll know how important that is to the performance.

There’s been signs of this in the other games as well. The key difference; the early **** up wasn’t punished and we grew from there.

You can see the difference in the zip of the passes and the hardness of the running - that’s all down to a good shot of confidence.

Yes… but the work rate and organisation is good and sometimes that sort stuff earns you… oh **** me that’s good!