AWAY AT MAN UNITED

Can Saints spring a surprise? I have a feeling we could win this quite convincingly.......maybe 0-3???

mike

I think you may have had to much whiskey over the holidays!!

I think we will start badly, go 2 down early on then battle back to deserve at least a point but end up again the wrong side of a 2 1 defeat.

Hope to be proved wrong, would like us to go 5 3 2 and really let Clyne and Bertrand loose on the Utd defence with Long and Pelle up front

Well a battling performance by saints and 3 great points . Pundits were quite complimentary about how organised saints were and tactically astute Koeman was. Rooney is a total prat, his comments after, they dominated should have won easy, they didn't have a shot on target!! Clearly in Wayne's World you don't need to be on target to score goals!!!

Fonte again superb, well take goal by Tadic and great work by Pelle, if you watch the long ball from Forster, Pelle's shirt is being yanked all over the place but he still won the header, made the space to get free, decent shot but hit the woodwork again, he could have had another 5 or 6 goals if he was right side of the wood work!


Shame about the injury to Toby, hope he is not out for to long as such a good player.

Agree with your comments Matty, especially the wish for a speedy recovery for Toby.

Three loan players in the starting eleven, I can't remember that happening before!! And on what I have seen of them, I would love to see all three signed on a permanent basis.

Other good things about Saints' performance........ I was impressed by Elia, he looks a great signing.........it was good to see Gardos put in a solid performance without losing control and getting into trouble.

Not so good...... I thought some of Forster's distribution was poor, particularly early on.

Why on earth do players remove their shirt when celebrating a goal although they know they will be booked for it?  I had visions of Tadic picking up a second yellow and leaving us with 10 players to see out the game but fortunately that didn't happen.   Maybe refs should make it a rule that shirt removal is a red offence, maybe that would stop the silly business!

I thought Rooney's comments after the game were sour grapes, surely he can't have been serious?   And I thought Van Gaal was wrong in his comment that Saints came for a draw.

My armchair ratings......

FORSTER    7
CLYNE   8
TOBY   8
FONTE   9
BERTRAND   8
SCHNEIDERLIN   8
WANYAMA  8
DAVIS    7
WARD-PROWSE   7
ELIA   8
PELLE   7

GARDOS   8
TADIC   7
REED   7

would agree with your ratings from an armchair as well. Elia will give us another option when Mane is back and think away from home the set up with strong back 4, solid midfield 4 players, one from Tadic/Elia/Mane plus Pelle up front will make us hard to beat and with Clyne and Bertrand pushing forward we should create chances. At home would drop 1 midfield for one of the three (T/E/M) as teams will come to defend.