MatthewStiles

Totally agree. I did notice that Aribo walked off with a bit of a limp and in the post-match celebrations was still limping slightly so maybe took a bit of a knock. I wouldn't have taken him off based on how I saw he was playing though and Stuey did not have a good game.

That’s the point though. We supposedly played to his strengths by firing in loads of crosses but it was ineffective because we don’t seem to have great crossing ability in the team. Therefore, the argument that we should build the team around PO is flawed.

I think you are misremembering. In the home game we had 31 crosses https://www.whoscored.com/Matches/1640742/MatchReport/England-Premier-League-2022-2023-Southampton-Brentford

Totally agree. We saw loads of hopeful crosses into the box v Brentford but hardly any resulted in goal attempts. Onuachu is so limited technically it hurts. 36% pass success rate yesterday. To build a team around him would be nuts

I think there are train strikes planned for that day so depending where you are staying you might need to travel by coach eg National Express

Perraud started against Villa (4-0 loss) and Watford (2-1 loss) so his not playing is hardly an adequate explanation for our loss of form

Apologies - and apologies for the tardiness of the apology

Not sold out. I got 2 tickets this morning. You need a buying history though. Seemed to be quite a lot of tickets available

This could be right. I thought he was very decent away at Wolves, and pretty decent at home against Chelsea and Wolves when he was in the front 2. I really hope he can kick on now. He was voted Player of the Season for 2018-19, there is a quality player in there.

Player of the season 2018-19 both in fans and players vote. Very good season in 2019-20 as well.

Redmond played well in the first half. This is from Michael Brown - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/football/55858904/page/8 - "Redmond has been getting in some great positions, cutting inside and spraying the ball around." Second half we didn't have enough width. Redmond and Bertrand are getting slagged off but there wasn't enough movement around them to create space. Amazed that Lulu came on for Stephens instead of a wide player like Dnjepe

A sports reporter from The Times called Martyn Ziegler has reported on twittter "All those empty seats at Wembley? - bizarrely most of them were in the cheapest £30 category in Southampton end." I wasn't allowed to buy a ticket until towards the end and when I was on the ticket site all the blocks in the upper tier were marked as starting from £45 so I assumed the £30 tickets were sold out. In the block I bought there were tickets at £45 and £60. I didn't see any at £30 even though I did try to find them.

I don't watch a lot of lower league football so difficult to comment but I liked these positive comments from Brendan Rogers on Eddie Howe (after the FA cup game): 'When you have a team that want to play football they are the most courageous players on the field,' said Rodgers. 'It is easy to coach a team to sit back, not want the ball and defend and then just wait for a hump up the pitch. 'The courage that the Bournemouth players showed today was fantastic - they have got better, I have watched them as the season has gone on. 'It is coaches like Eddie Howe who will take the game forward in this country because they believe in a way of working and they have a philosophy. 'Bournemouth are a very good side and I give credit to them first of all. Eddie is similar to myself in terms of the philosophy of football.

I like the manager but this was a terrible team selection from Pochettino - his refusal to do the normal interviews for this game speaks volumes. A great opportunity for Saints to get some silverware and he shrugs his shoulders.

Very good article. As for his playing career, we were massively lucky to have him. That disallowed goal against Man U is one of the best I have ever seen in the flesh, only beaten by Le Tissier (of course) and by Kinkladze (just once)