waterlooville saint

On the face of it, I'd say it's as good as we could have expected. Relegation always meant there would be a high turnover of players. We needed to trim the squad size, freshen it up, which we've done. Results will be the deciding factor on how good it really was. I find it hard to believe the level of negativity about some of our new signings I read on here and other forums. Yes the Sunderland result & performance was a total disaster, but look at the number of changes that took place in the lineups during the first 5 league games, the majority of which were outside of the managers control. Hopefully the international break has given us time to bed some things in, even though we've had quite a few players on international duty.

I'm looking forward to this one. I know I'm about to give us the kiss of death but really think this will be our first home win. I'm going 3-1 as I still can't see us keeping a clean sheet.

It's my 2nd season as a season ticket holder in block 15 and it was great to hear the noise being generated by the lads at the back and I enjoyed being able to join in. Really looking forward to the rest of the season if it's going to be like that (football and atmosphere :)) but I may need to take strepsils with me each week as I can see myself losing my voice!! I'm also going to have to learn the words to a lot of the chants as I don't know them.

I find the negative comments about JWP really odd. He's been an amazing servant to the club and once Ralph came in and gave him some guidance, he's been one of our best players, if not the best. Yes I'd have loved him to stay for the season to lead us back to the Premier League, or even until January if things weren't working out, but I can understand the reasons he's given for moving. West Ham seem to have been the main club firming up interest and they are in Europe this season. I'm a little surprised Liverpool haven't gone for him, partly because of all the holes that are appearing in their midfield lineup, but mainly because Garth Crooks said he should join them every time he put JWP into his team of the week!!

For the most part I really enjoyed the match last night. I was a bit concerned at half-time that we would regret not scoring more in the first half and I was worried that those thoughts had proved true when they equalised, but the team stuck to the plan and we got our rewards in the end. I was really impressed with how we played keep-ball in the 9 minutes of injury time, except for that misplaced / overhit backpass near the end. RM said before the game that there were still lots of things to work on and I think most of those are in the final third of the pitch, as well as working on defending corners which was really the only thing making me a bit nervous. Apologies if this echoes other comments elsewhere but I've not read back through all the posts as I saw there were some negative ones being quoted on the last page and really can't be bothered with that. We should be enjoying being Top of the League for 12 hours or so and the first time we've won our opening match in many years.

Looking forward to this evenings game, more as I'm hoping it's the start of a new era of positive results than anything specific about the result tonight (I know that sounds counter-intuitive). I'd love a win to get the good times rolling again straight away but will be very happy with a draw, which I'm really expecting, as we never win our first game and I expect it to be a raucous atmosphere which I'm not sure how our team will cope with. If we don't do anything stupid in the first 20-minutes we'll be OK.

Personally I think this is a great piece of business by the club. As others have said I was a bit surprised when he went on loan to Bournemouth last year but that was because they had great plans for a new defence (which we all know went pearshaped to put it politely). He seemed to have a pretty good season at Bournemouth once they found their shape and he got established in the team. We'd all be getting really excited if the club announced we'd signed a new CB with premier league experience, which is effectively what this is.

I'm really pleased for him, he had a great season last season at Girona. There was a really interesting article on The Athletic about the background of the possible transfer to Barcelona and please for Romeu that it has gone through. I was one of those people that said his legs had gone towards the end of his last season with us and I stand by that, as I saw a player who regularly struggled to help cover the CB's when our press was beaten, which is a key part of the defencive CM role in Ralph's playbook. I really think it was a big part of why we went on that bad run.

I'm in the "quite liked him" camp. Yes he has made the odd error, but he has also scored a few and at least he looked like he was trying and actually cared when we lost, which is more than can be said about a number of other players last season.

Can't see this mentioned elsewhere but ... I'm in Block 15 and the season tickets there have gone up by 20% as it's been reclassified. Last year was my first year (for a long time) as a season ticket holder and I paid £400, this year its £499 for early renewal and no communication from the club that this was going to happen.

I don't know an awful lot about Nathan Jones, apart from a few of the posts on various forums from Luton fans, but he sounds like the sort of appointment I was expecting our owners to make when they came to replacing Ralph. He seems to be a moneyball style manager which matches the SR ethos, which I think is a great approach for a club like us. Initially I was confused as to why they sacked Ralph at the start of the week rather than waiting until after the Liverpool game but the more I think about it, the cleverer the decision is. He's now got the whole of the world cup to review the squad, mould the team to his way of thinking and style of play and confirm where he thinks the squad needs strengthening. I really hope he is able to help the club take the next step forward. There is a risk of us taking a step back first, but we at least have given him the best chance possible for the remainder of the season. Welcome to the club Nathan Jones, I'm looking forward to the rest of the season.

Read the original post of this on Reddit via Facebook earlier today and thought it was very insightful.

In case you've not noticed, we've been playing the long ball out from the keeper, in the general direction of Che Adams, for a number of the recent games I've seen at St Mary's and the televised game I saw against Bournemouth. Only recent one where we played it out from the back was against Arsenal. I'm sad to see Ralph go as he's done a great job (for the most part) in trying circumstances, but let's give the new man a chance.

I'm not expecting anything except a defeat, and hope we keep the score down. However, there is the fact that they didn't beat us last season either home or away, so there is a straw to cling to ... for a few minutes at least. Other straws include that we got thumped by Chelsea at home last season and beat them this season ...

Wish him well in Turkey. As others have said he's been really exciting at times and at other times incredibly frustrating. Still if he was consistently exciting he'd of been at a top 6 club rather than us. His sign-off message is really classy.