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Bazunu made some great saves today. Birmingham had 22 shots at our goal. We win most of our games when Bazunu plays in goal for us in the Championship, and when McCarthy plays, we usually don't, and that's a fact. Obviously, the change of manager is a major reason why we are winning, but the change of goalkeeper from McCarthy to Bazunu has certainly helped.
It would be a great result if we did that. Birmingham are no mugs. They won League One with 111 points, 19 more than 2nd placed Wrexham. They've got JamesBeadle, a very good goalkeeper on loan from Brighton, Christoph Klarer, arguably the best centre back produced by Saints academy, Paik Seung-ho who scored a worldie against Brazil in the last World Cup finals, a Premier League winner in Demarai Gray (admittedly from mainly sub appearances), and a £20 mill striker in Jay Stansfield.
They hardly looked like world beaters. They stepped off the plane from New Zealand, where they were thrashed 3-0 in a 1- day series. The result would have been the same if it had been a test series. It was pretty obvious they weren't going to do any better in Australia.
The England cricket team is like a football team that draws its home games and loses away.
To keep going there and getting thrashed 5-0 is ridiculous. Isn't there any way, we could just stop going there (and India)? Maybe there should be a 2-tier test system with promotion and relegation.
When the Ryder Cup became too one-sided, they changed it to Europe v America, which is more competitive. I guess there is no team in the cricket world we could join forces with. The other European nations aren't very good at cricket.
It could at least be reduced to a 3 match series. Do the Aussies really need to see the Poms humiliated in 5 different cities? I guess the answer to that from them would be, yes.
"Derby County had been rooted in the Second Division for a decade before Clough's arrival, and had been outside the top flight for a further five years, their only major trophy being the FA Cup in 1946.
In Clough's first season, the club finished one place lower than in the previous season, but he had started to lay the foundations for his future success by signing several new players, among them Roy McFarland, John O'Hare, John McGovern, Alan Hinton and Les Green. Of the inherited squad, 11 players departed and only four were retained: Kevin Hector, Alan Durban, Ron Webster and Colin Boulton. Clough also sacked the club secretary, the groundsman and the chief scout, along with two tea ladies he caught laughing after a Derby defeat. With the additional signings of Dave Mackay and Willie Carlin in 1968–69, Clough and Taylor's management led Derby to become champions of the Second Division, establishing the club record of 22 matches without defeat on the way and the team was promoted to the First Division for the 1969–70 season."
I don't think he'd have made it past that first season here. Of course, a big difference nowadays, is the lack of control managers have over transfers.
As for sacking the tea ladies for laughing, the only person we've ever had here who was that ruthless was Cortese.
Who had the bright idea of standing Kevin Hart next to Heidi Klum, and getting Rio "Mr Charisma" Ferdinand to host it? Most of the people invited on the stage didn't seem to have a clue what they were doing there. Half of them had never even watched a football match before.
The most exciting moment was Rio Ferdinand losing his temper when he was invited to join in an interview with a footballer who only spoke Spanish, and snapping back, "Let's stick to the script guys", but It didn't look as though there was one.
As for the draw, Groups I and L look to be the strongest - not bloody Croatia again, while the USA's group is about as weak as they could make it. With the supposed seeding of the draw, you wouldn't have thought it possible to have one group with 2 of FIFA's top 10 ranked teams in it and another with none.
For obscure past concerts in December, the best I can come up with is Ten Years After, Blodwyn Pig and Stone the Crows at Southampton Guildhall in 1969.
Last night I was at one of the oldest concert venues - probably the oldest - in the south. Paganini played there in 1832 - It may surprise you to hear that I wasn't there for that one.
Talking of older musicians ( I saw him play with The Faces and the Stones):
"On This Day in 2009, Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood was cautioned for attacking his Russian girlfriend Ekaterina Ivanova,who was 21 at the time. Wood was 62.
Members of the public called police after a heated argument between the two spilled into the public High Street in Claygate, Surrey. Witnesses reported hearing a woman screaming and seeing Wood pinning his girlfriend to the ground and she was making choking sounds. Wood was held overnight and released on bail the next day....Ivanova said that Wood was an "evil goblin king".
It's amazing what musicians from that era could get away with, just as long as they were considered cool.
It's been done for pre-season friendlies at St Mary's, but not for league games. We're moving towards a paperless society. Tickets and programmes will soon be things of the past.
Most countries in the world never had programmes anyway, which I always found disappointing, as they made good souvenirs, but, as one of my children pointed out, who needs written records when you can record all your memories on your phone? The same applies to matchday info and team lineups. Improving the wi-fi at St Mary's has hastened the demise of the football programme. At half-time, which was about the only time most articles in football progammes were ever read by anyone, people look at their phones now.
You can see every season of their attendances here. Like Pompey, they had a ground capacity of more than 50,000, and like Pompey, it was usually half-empty. I remember their halcyon days in the late 60s/early 70s when they got their biggest home gates, but their away support wasn't very good back then. This season is probably the best away support they've ever had.
They're only 5 places below us in the all-time attendance table. They've had periods when their support has been terrible and others when it's been good. In the 70s, a mate who was a Coventry supporter came with me to a few Saints away games and said that Coventry's support was nowhere near that good. They're currently getting their biggest average home gates for more than 50 years and their away support reflects that. It all depends on results.
To cut through the impressionistic, subjective bullsh!t, which might work with gymnastics or ice skating, football is a team game and a good keeper is the one you get the best results with, and the results are twice as good with Bazunu as they are with McCarthy. Your subjective opinions are irrelevant. It's results that count.
If Saints results are important to you, then the answer is obvious. With McCarthy in goal we average almost half the number of points that we do with Bazunu.
Bazunu average points per Saints Championship game = 1.9 McCarthy average points per Saints Championship game = 1.0
Over a season that means with McCarthy in goal we finish with 46 points and get relegated while with Bazunu we finish with 87 points and probably get promoted.
McCarthy is not better than any professional goalkeeper in the entire country, including Bazunu. With McCarthy in goal we have won just ONE regular season game at St Mary's in FOUR YEARS! That's how bad he is.
We win most of our Championship games with Bazunu in goal and we only managed to avoid defeat against Pompey this season because of his man of the match performance. He's not as good as Ramsdale or any of the top goalkeepers, but he's nowhere near as bad as McCarthy, who'd have cost us a defeat to Pompey if he'd been in goal.
We need to buy a better goalkeeper and centre forward in the transfer window. That's something we can all agree on. What Eckert has achieved without them is impressive.
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