Nordic Saint

Paul Mitchell > Ross Wilson. Recruitment at all levels has deteriorated badly in the last couple of years. Mitchell, not Reed, was the real brains behind our success.

I think the goalkeeping problems at the club are more to do with the coach than the players. They can't all be poor goalkeepers. It will be interesting to see how well Gazzaniga plays now that he has had some time away from Dave Watson.

And they thrashed our U23s 3-0 so we must have been holding back a lot more.

Looks like we're on course to beat that highest attendance by several thousand, with a 20,000+ crowd.

He seems to be getting some basic errors coached into his game, which he never had before. He used to push balls wide or even catch them. Now, he always parries them forward. He has also lost his spontaneity and now takes time to think about everything he does, from kicks to throws and even saves. This slows down our game and also costs us goals. Again, I suspect this comes from coaching. People forget, but Forster used to be a much better goalkeeper than he is now. The same applies to all the goalkeepers at the club. Gazzaniga seems to have improved since he got away from Dave Watson. I think Forster would too.

In cash terms, he is worse than broke as he's got over £200 mill in debts to pay back to banks plus interest. It's going to tak him quite a while to get out of that mess, especially as the Chinese government are on his case. Other than selling Lander and SFC assets, there don't seem to be too many options available to him now. I wish him well and hope he can make a success of it somehow.

That was a very entertaining game of football. Everyone in the 31,424 got value for money today, even the West Ham fans. On this evidence Mario Lemina looks a great signing. He can tackle and make incisive forward passes. Our midfield reverted to slow movement and sideways passes when he went off and Ward-Prowse came on. But, the introduction of Charlie Austin saw us home. Yoshida, Romeu, Lemina, Gabbiadini and Austin all played well. Redmond and Long didn't and nor did Ward-Prowse but as people have pointed out, JWP is still young so there is hope. He needs more pace and bravery, however, as he rarely competes 100% for 50/50 balls - the complete opposite of Romeu, who battles for everything and never pulls out of a challenge. Lee Mason showed real guts to award an iffy penalty in the 93rd minute when most refs would have bottled it.

Here's to winning a trophy for a change! I hope the Gaos can help us achieve that and wish them well.

To be honest, I feel a bit sorry for Mr Gao. Kat seems to have taken him to the cleaners. He's 65 now. I hope both he and his daughter are astute enough to clear their debts and see both Lander and SFC make progress. Chinese entrepreneurs tend to be very hard working and money and family are everything to them. In the Gaos we trust.

I assume all of the money he borrowed has gone into Kat's bank account. I guess most of the Club's income from PL prize money and player sales has ended up there too to cover any loans which had to be cleared before the deal could get through, leaving both Mr Gao and the Club a bit short of spare cash.

They're from China, not Goa. Mr Gao is a retired policeman so he probably wouldn't approve of bad language.

When Lander started the process last year, the Echo had an article about their owner: http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/14839465.Who_is_the_man_behind___200m_Saints_takeover_bid_/

We've been bought by Lander. They've struggled to raise the capital.

To be fair, he's not the worst culprit. Nearly every time Boufal beats a man and gets through on goal, he goes back to try to beat the same man again. In fact, last season, when any of our players, with the exceptions of Austin and Gabbiadini, got into the oppostion penalty area with a clear sight of goal, they passed the ball out of the penalty area until someone lobbbed in a high cross to the opposition goalkeeper or centre backs. At least yesterday, some of them were trying to shoot.

Following the sale of our 2 top goal scorers and best strikers, Mane and Pelle, and their replacement with Redmond, Puel did exceptionally well to get us to 8th place and a cup final. The loss of our 2 best central defenders, Fonte and van Dijk, and their replacement with Bednarek, will mean Pellegrino will have to perform miracles to do as well as Puel. The squad has been progressively stripped of its best players over the last 2 years and the replacements Ross Wilson and Les Reed have come up with haven't been up to the same standard. Good luck, Pellegrino. I hope you can perform miracles with the very limited resources at your disposal. If you fail, you'll be the scapegoat, but the fault won't lie with you.

That's because he's been taking the free-kicks ever since, and there have been plenty on the edge of the penalty area that dead ball specialists would have scored from. Unfortunately, it appears we haven't got one. I'm surprised Boufal hasn't been given a chance.

Bellend to you too. You certainly must be one of you believe anything posted on here will have any affect on a football result. And, no, we won't be bottom after those 4 games.

Let's have a bit of optimism to start the season.

With the fixtures we've got, we could well be top of the league by September 10th. Of course, we wouldn't stay there, but it would be nice to it at the top of the Premier League for the first time. Have we ever had 4 opening PL fixtures whiich looked easier than these? Swansea H West Ham H Hudddersfield A Watford H

As Puel found out. Our fans must be the worst in football for feeling victims of every player and manager who is sold. I guess it's because of Old Les's PR leaks, which tell us how horrible they all are. They are no more horrible or greedy than players and managers at any other club or people in any other high-paid job, from businessmen to film and pop stars. It's just that other clubs don't sling mud at them before they sell them. Our fans need to man up. We look like we are going to have another good season. Our first home and away games are already sold out too. Time to stop whingeing.

Everybody, including Old Les, knew van Dijk was going to be sold this summer, the same as when Lallana, Koeman and Fonte went. Do we really need several weeks of leaks about what terrible people they are before they are sold? I guess it is supposed to make us fans happier to acept the sales. Personally, I wish we would handle transfers more professionally and discretely. Consistently tarring players and managers who leave as greedy, unpopular with the other players, lazy, threatening to go on strike etc is going to come back to haunt us. I expect there are some arguments between Les Reed and the managers and players as he does seem to rub them up the wrong way but these things should be kept private.

The same thing probably happens behind closed doors at a lot of clubs but with us every player and manager sale involves a kitchen sink drama played out in the press as Old Les's PR team and the player's agent sling mud at each other for several weeks before the sale finally takes place. Things could be handled better.

Really? In that case, you could argue that those figures showed the Dell was the perfect size. With your logic, we'd still be stuck at the Dell, with a 15,000 capacity.

It's been an erratic pre-season but a 2-0 victory obver Sevilla is one of the best pre-season results in Saints' modern history (although a 0-4 defeat to Augsburg was one of the worst). The whole team was led superbly by our new captain, Steven Davis, who really was outstanding, as were Jack Stephens and Romeu. Unforunately, Shane Long looked as ineffective as he did last season and Redmond was even worse. Overall though, an encouraging performance. Pellegrino seems to have realized very quickly that we have to stay back for much if the game to cover our weak defence, and attack on the break. Puel only realized the first part of that. He has also realized that we need another defensive midfielder to partner Romeu, who runs himself into the ground every game but undrstandably flags in the final 20 minutes. I only hope that Ross Wilson is capable of finding a good one.

Only a few seats left. Looks likely to be sold out. Saints' average home league gates in the top flight at St Mary's: 2016/17 30,936 2015/16 30,751 2014/15 30,741 2013/14 30,212 2012/13 30,874 2004/05 30,610 2003/04 31,699 2002/03 30,680 2001/02 30,633 At the Dell: 2000/01 15,115 1999/00 15.132 1998/99 15,140 1997/98 15,159 1996/97 15,099 1995/96 14,820 1994/95 14,685 1993/94 14,751 1992/93 15,382 Some in the think small brigade would have said there was no need for a bigger stadium because we couldn't fill the Dell every game in 1993 and 1994. They're saying the same now because there aren't tens of thousands locked out every game. An upper tier on the Kingsland, taking the capacity up to 38,000, would be filled, just the same as St Mary's was.