Vin, Richie, Mrs Richie, Dave, RAWMOK and Ted - lovely to meet up again in the pub. Great gang and lovely to see such a good mix and some chat and banter. Great stories Ted!! Loved them. Shame you couldn't make it Fran; maybe in the future.
No complaints about the Referee today, first time we have won under him, but the previous games weren't lost through his mistakes.
Yep next season Definitely I want to meet up with you all. (Cue furious back peddling and "we're busy" from not 606ers) [emoji3]
Also, who wins the thread record? FLT with 6 clean sheets or my 6 to get us into Europe [emoji6]. Tough call[emoji3]
Tiggermaster has had to wait patiently through both of your runs..... I'm sure he didn't mind as we kept winning!
Don't worry about Ron, I have him taped in a bin liner in the back of my car and will let him out once he agrees to a life time contract..
We saw the best and worst of him I thought. A dominant figure the middle of the park; distribution largely woeful.
Well just finished watching the whole match again, and I must say, in the cold light, that I didn't think we were totally at the races today. I lost count of the number of passes that went astray in the end. Everyone was at it. Without doubt the worst offender was Victor, but eventually, when JWP came on, he went and sat in front of the back four and rarely came over the half way line. But even JWP sold a couple short. Mane made a couple of wrong passing decisions, as he sometimes does. Long did the same, Pelle did a couple. Tbf, I'm struggling to think of someone from the outfield who made no avoidable bad passes. Probably Austin, 'cause he touched the ball about 3-4 times in the few minutes he was on. Steven Davis gave the best performance for me. Probably put one pass astray, but apart from that was everywhere, and scored a nice goal. A word on ex-Saint Jason Puncheon. Once again he showed that when he is on the ball he's such a nice player to watch. Got a wand of a left foot and can hit the ball powerfully and accurately. Nice goal. His right foot has always been considered poor, but tbf, that's because it looks so incapable compared to his left. In truth he's fine off the right. It's always a pleasure to watch him. Stylish and purposeful. He might be one of their own, but he'll always be a Saint as well.
I'm annoyed that the media are mostly ignoring our fine season. Or have we become so good that 5./6. place finish is basically what is expected of us?
Tbf, Sky and MOTD often mention what a good season we've had....otherwise they couldn't suggest that our manager and players are on their way out. We haven't been the top story this season...there has been Leicester and Spurs and also good clubs struggling. And yes, I think part of it is to do with the fact that we are accepted as a good side now, so there is no surprise.
Irony Alert! Walking back to the car, there were campaigners from the upcoming referendum encouraging us to "leave Europe"
Brilliant win today against a really spirited Palace side - I thought they were supposed to be focusing only on the Cup Final! Great day, just fantastic to round off an incredible 2016 in the league. Anyone remember that Koeman Poll thread?
I didn't mention several. I just mentioned those instances that stood out for me when I expected better. Cuco was ok, tbf. I don't expect huge things from him but he doesn't really let the side down. Think one pass was sold short and a couple of crosses came to nothing, but you expect that of crosses. He defended quite well too, but that's not where my criticism was aimed. Also my criticism wasn't really to pick out and blame anyone in particular, although Victor, in the first half, was very poor in his passing. No, it was the fact that at one point around 50 mins [I think] I heard myself saying, come on guys, you have played together before. And I'm not going to credit Palace with making our play look unsettled and patchy either. It takes nothing away from it being a very enjoyable day, of course. There you go. I usually watch a match another time or two over the next 7 days and sometimes I'll change my mind on some points, but I don't think I will this time.
