No 2 to Maybush

That's the plan for next season in the Championship

This. Had no pace and was scared to cross the halfway line most of the time due to the gaping hole he left down our left flank. Really liked Harding, he was great for us.

#ReedOut #PellegrinoOut #KreugerOut

I agree on paper the squad should be good enough to stay up, but team selection and tactics are what could do for us in the death. Does Pellegrino even know his best 11 after half a season? Serious question.

Due to the fact that other teams in our league have strengthened, while we haven't. Ergo, weaker squad than last season in relative terms. HTH.

I thought "The Southampton Way" was 4-3-3 played at every level throughout the club, the premise being that players from the lower age groups could slot seamlessly into the next level team. At least that's what I thought Uncle Les laid out. In which case, yes, it has been ditched.

So who would be the other striker up with Long, presuming Romeu is at the base?

That's strange - where I sit in the ground there is immense dissatisfaction with the state of the team (Itchen). I disagree that it is a small group.

I'm quite amazed by the flippancy of the happy clappers on this site who seem oblivious of the fact that we are being sucked into the relegation zone with each league game we play. Tactically we are frankly inept this season and if the manager keeps on repeating the same mistakes he has made ALL SEASON we are going to be fighting for survival come May. We have poor strength in depth and a first team who are playing to the tactics of the manager which are being exposed as inadequate for this league. The hubris and arrogance of the executive in thinking we will survive in the premier league playing the way we have been is breathtaking! What has happened to this football club? It is evident that the executive are making a percentage play here. Well I'm sorry, this is not a computer game. This is starting to look so much like the last time we got relegated, and on this board especially - so many people making excuses for poor performances, where we are tactically exposed by the opposition. The bulk of our first team finished 6th in the league last season! Have all the other teams improved so dramatically while we have trodden water? Or are the managers tactics being exposed? All the guff about this being a season of "transition" and we should just suck it up is delusional! If this run of results continue, we will soon be down in the bottom quarter of the league. And don't give me the story that there are 3 worse teams than us. On current form there are only 2. Can't see us getting a result against the Hammers at home. And that is really galling.

This is the problem with your thesis. The Prem is an unforgiving league, and the amount of time available for a player to eventually become as good (or almost as good) as the player being sold, is finite. Can we afford a whole season for a replacement player to become "almost as good"? Hodjberg is a classic case in point. At the beginning of the season I was very pleased with his recruitment - there was definite quality to be seen, and I thought he would quickly get up to speed in the League. But he seems to have gone backwards as the season has progressed. Is that because of rotation, or coaching? How long can you give a player like him to get up to speed when your team results have you heading to the bottom regions of the league? One season? Two? Clasie is another case in point. Do you continue to give these players time to develop, with an eye on the profit from a future transfer, to the detriment of the development of the team? Or do we accept that the team will not develop, and we are merely in a holding pattern (spiral) while we seek to generate annual profits from our transfer policy? It is a fine, fine line between this strategy being a success and a dismal failure IMO.

THIS! With bells on.

If we don't start scoring goals, you can say goodbye to a mid-table finish. Especially when other teams have sussed that you only have to get a shot on target against us to have a 50% chance of scoring a goal. We might me able to squeak a few 0-0 points, but we will need to do that in every match until the end of the season to have a chance of staying up. So to all the happy clappers I say Get Real! We have serious problems that don't appear to be being addressed.

Don't quite get this. Are you suggesting Puel is being told which players to select based on our playing schedule? On a separate note, I notice Puel keeps saying that the players can't play twice a week. How did we manage to get promoted from League 1 if that's the case? The games came thick and fast when we were down there.

I agree with this. Puel's risk-averse, possession football is absolutely dire to watch compared to the football we have been blessed to watch over the last 5-6 years. Very pedestrian. As to MoM, I thought Clasie had his best game in a Saints shirt today. Now he has to maintain that standard every time he plays. Quite why Puel plays him, JWP and ROmeu together beats me - sooo negative.

Well, Zerohedge IS Fightclub