Match Day Thread +++++Saints v Man City 1st May 2016 4:30pm+++++

Oh Dave... Re: My Dad - Ex Saint - Green Grocer... = Terry Paine. Hope this makes sense to you and my Dad behaved himself. Don't normally let him out on his own

 

Although I did wonder if LeTiss might have felt a bit oput out at Rickie's reception. He could be forgiven for thinking "I'm the legendary no7 at this club"!

 

I'm sure we've told him enough times that he doesn't need it said every time. His other monicker is LeGod after all, so surely he knows we aren't so fickle that we would downgrade him to a mere prophet when another No7 comes along

On the other hand , if he doesn't win the penalty shootout ... ???

 

You have to think Rickie would be favourite for that now - I mean MLT is nearly as old as FLT now, and Rickie is still a match-fit player...so....

(In their prime, I'd have had money on Matt).

 

I'm still unsure but have an open mind.
Sunday I saw his best pass, best shot and first real dribble (which failed badly) and I think he is progressing, but I can't help thinking he disappears mid 2nd half and Romeu improved us. Many players take time to really shine in the Prem and I still think he will, but I'm judging him by the high standards of what I think he is capable of and our other midfielders.

A goal, an assist or a critical tackle are all things that maybe will convince more people.

 

I'm sure the odds are tipping that way but Matty never needed fitness.
Who was it he absolutely destroyed in a similar contest on telly?
It wasn't even close it was like a God verses a numpty ... which it was of course.

 

It was Merson. Numpty works though!

 

Mark Crossley for Matt and Tommy Forecast for Rickie under a handicap system!

 

Apologies if already posted: ManC Uncovered.

 

Merson = numpty

 

With reference to the penalty competition between Him and Matty, let's see how big a numpty.

Pretty damn big, if you ask me.​

 

MLT won't let this go quietly....I bet he is practicing day and night. Let's hope it's a great match up.

 

I was just thinking that. For all the talk of him lacking ambition, the man has a competitive streak (and some might say the ego) a mile wide.

 

Several years ago there was a penalty competition between Matty and Peter Crouch [of all people] and Crouch won it.!

please log in to view this image

 

We hardly seem to get penalties now, so we have lost any advantage we had from having Matty and Rickie. I put that down to it being virtually impossible to get a pen for hand ball now.

 

Ah! He said "defender" which is why I never thought of Terry!!!

 

Next thread for the victory at Spurs, up in the morning

 

and for goodness sake man, order that clean sheet

 

me too! After it took him about 10 minutes to lay out the conversation and then be surprised that I didn't know the occupation of the father of a "defender" who wasn't a defender from 1970, when I was one.... he was disappointed I didn't know who he was on about

 

Honestly, IMO, Cedric is the victim of an injustice. A minor injustice, not a huge one. But I do think he's being under-rated.

First, Whoscored ratings are an attempt to add up various things to provide a one number summary of player ability, which introduces quite a bit of subjectivity to it. How much do you weight a goal vs a key pass vs an interception? Opinions can differ. So I don't pay as much attention to their player ratings as I do the individual components.

That said, the general opinion on Cedric seems to me to have soured quite a bit over the last few weeks and I'm not sure why as he hasn't really even been playing.

I think Cedric does most things really well. Fairly fast and likes to get forward. Good tackler. Not afraid of contact. Can dribble a bit. His crosses are inconsistent but in aggregate, pretty good. He's also somewhat decent in the air for a non-central player. The tools are all there.

His flaw is a tendency towards poor positional awareness at times which results in some soft goals. But we're not talking about Caulker levels of bad positional discipline, either. He mostly gets it right, he just falls asleep at times. It's possible that with experience and coaching this can be fixed. I think even with his flaws he's probably about average. And his potential is very high.

IMO, we need to hang on to him. But unfortunately we also need results now and we don't want to put all eggs in one as yet unfinished basket. So I do think we need to bring in another RB, but I also don't think the situation is as dire as maybe some others do.