Nordic Saint

He was good, especially as he was up against 2 of the paciest strikers in the league in Vardy and Musa. His passes from the back went a bit astray a couple of times but his defensive work was solid.

The linesman was in front of me. From our position it looked like Yoshida had headed in and that he was offside, which is what he flagged for. In fact Morgan was goal side of Yoshida, who wasn't offside. Whatever they may say later to cover themselves, it was a complete cock-up by the officials caused by the fact the linesman didn't realize it was an own goal. Fortunately, it didn't affect the result so it will be forgotten about.

What an excellent performance from the whole team. It's got to give us a lot of confidence going into the EFL Cup semi-final, especially after Liverpool lost at home to Swansea. Puel deserves a lot of credit for this after all the stick he's taken. Chapeau!

The players feel the same way: Virgil van Dijk ‏@VirgilvDijk 2h2 hours ago Thank you champ for everything you have done for me and also for the club, was a pleasure to play with you! #saintslegend #champ #gutted https://twitter.com/VirgilvDijk?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

BEST The magnificent central defensive partnerships he formed with Lovren, Alderweireld and van Dijk, making him probably the most consistent and least error-prone centre back in the Premier League over the last 3 years and the rock on which our team's success was built. WORST The way his reputation has been tarnished by ITK 'leaks' from the club about him being 'Billy Big ********" . Is that an old South London expression?

Well, as he has only managed to complete 90 minutes in a Serie A game twice in the last 2 years, they would be. The poor lad suffers from ankle problems and muscle fatigue.

The Forgotten Soldier by Guy Sajer. An utterly brilliant, first-hand account of 3 years fighting and surviving on the eastern front, as it was overwhelmed and driven ever farther westward towards Germany, written by a French boy from Alsace who joined the German army in 1942 at the age of 15. Many of those fighting alongside him were younger. This is the best book I've read for years.

The snippets Les Reed's PR boys feed to the press are like the jokes you pull out of Christmas crackers: fairly random and not to be taken seriously.

A last minute winner! The magic of the cup! And the win was all the sweeter because it was the first home game I missed this season so I didn't have to endure the awful football. From the Radio Norfolk commentary and post match phone-in, it sounded as though Norwich fans thought this performance by their reserve team was even worse than their first team's 2-1 defeat to Rotherham last weekend.

I think you've answered your own question. It's about their resale value. The board's priority is for the business to make a profit. Even taking that into consideration, I think the club is often in too much of a rush to cash in on them. We could afford to keep players like Mane here for 3 years of their 5-year contracts rather than just 2 and probably get an even bigger transfer fee for them.

That team should be good enough to win the Premier League. Chambers is certainly looking a great prospect nowadays and along with Ben Gibson is the reason why Boro have just about the best defence in the league. It's hard to believe that Chambers is still only 21. I expect him to at least become as good as Lovren if not better.

I think all the talk of the mysterious black box was a bit of PR spin, which first appeared in one of Les Reed's videos, with the implication being that he was in charge of it. If there ever were any secrets about it, there certainly aren't now because Spurs will have them too. The real key to our success in finding talented players was our head of recruitment, chief scout and 'black box' info analyst, Paul Mitchell. Talking of Antoine Griezmann, I'm surprised nobody at the club spotted him when he played at St Mary's for Real Sociedad in a pre-season friendly in 2013. I certainly did. Even though he only came on as a sub, he caught the eye, as he ran along the left wing in front of the Itchen Stand in the 2nd half not only because of his bleached white hair but also for the fact that he was very obviously the most gifted player on the pitch. I actually posted on another Saints message board after the match that we should sign him.

What finally put me off him, apart from the fact he contributes little on the pitch, was when he sang Play Up Pompey at Southampton Central Station to wind up Saints fans before the Arsenal game. He and his entire family are keen Pompey fans and it sometimes makes me wonder how much he really wants to score goals for us when he puts yet another of those free-kicks from scoring positions a yard wide of the goal. I've never got the impression that he is exactly prepared to bust a gut for a Saints victory. Get rid of him and we might find he makes a bit more of an effort for another club.

The U23s goalie Parkes was awful tonight. Something needs to be done about the goalkeeping coaching at the club: https://twitter.com/SouthamptonFC?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor

i really think the magic black box was effectively just our Head of Recruitment, Paul Mitchell, and that when he went to Tottenham it went with him. Yes, I know it is a room full of videos and not a box but it was the analyst who interpreted all of the data who was the real box of tricks. I believe he was responsible for identifying all of our great signings, both players and managers, from Pochettino through Wanyama and Mane to van Dijk. When he want to Tottenham, he not only took Wanyama and Alderweireld with him but also a couple of players he'd have brought here: Dele Alli for 5 million from his former club of MK Dons and Kieran Trippier.The only reason we got van Dijk when Mitchell left was that Spurs opted for Alderweireld instead. Since Mitchell's departure our dealings in the transfer market have been poor and have led to a general downgrading in the quality of the squad. Without Mitchell our emperor has no clothes.

Andy Reilly ‏@andysays78 Eric Black the new assistant manager of Southampton? Stick your money on them tanking and him stepping in come February. 11:03 AM - 30 Jun 2016 Reece ‏@Reece_AV Eric Black has been present at numerous clubs during relegation - surely he can't carry it on at Southampton? #AVFC #SFC 10:22 AM - 30 Jun 2016 from Birmingham, England

Good post. I think of the abusive posters, like Always, as Les Miserables (with a very English pronunciation) as any criticism of Les Reed seem to bring out the worst of their vitriol. Mostly, the two groups you describe have very few differences of opinion over the players and performances on the pitch. We’d all agree, for example, that van Dijk is a great player and that Ward-Prowse is not a very good one. There are also many posters who post both positive and negative observations but people from the extremes of the 2 camps look to pigeon hole everybody on here as friend or foe, which generally means being in either the pro- or con- Les Reed camp, when really we are all Saints fans and would all be over the moon if we won the League Cup. By the way, I am a season ticket holder and have been a loyal Saints fan all of my life and I come from a family of Saints fans. I have also had several friends who were Saints players. If you care to trawl back through all of my posts on here, you’ll find both positive and negative as well as objective observations but little in the way of personal abuse by me. Let's all hope a League Cup win unites everybody on this forum at Wembley.

It would appear that Black won so I guess we'll see Cedric following Fonte out of the door in the summer.

Unless he was under instruction from the owner to sell them quickly, there was no real need to sell them when he did, especially as the only replacement for both of them he planned to bring in was Redmond, a Norwich midfielder. Mane was only 2 years into a 5 year contract, and he was playing his heart out for us and would have continued to do so for another season. I think the Pelle sale was very much like the Lambert one and the Fonte one Reed is trying to push through: the last chance to get a big transfer fee for a player in his early 30s. But, he would have happily stayed here for another year and still got a big money move to China at the end of it.

I really can't see any improvement in our goalkeepers. You obviously see things differently and you are entitled to. I don't feel the need to insult you or call you weird because of that.

As in all sports, the physical performances have improved. The game is much faster now and players' ball control at high speed and their accuracy of passing have both improved considerably. It would be interesting to see a comparison of passing stats from now compared to the 60s, when a much higher percentage of passes went astray. It was rare to see a player on the touchline back then control a high cross field pass like most top flight players can do with ease now. Also, you used to see players standing with hands on hips taking breathers regularly during games back then, as many of them smoked and drank heavily. Nostalgia makes us look back on most things as being better in 'the old days' even if in reality they weren't. I miss the mazy, dribbling runs that players like Channon, Best and Bowles used to do, because the game is just too fast and defenders are too well drilled to allow it now. Messi is one of the few who still attempts that type of dribbling now and if he went back to the 60s or 70s he'd seem like a superman with his ability. The 70s was probably my favourite football decade maybe because of the age I was then and the nostalgia factor but the standard of play is definitely superior nowadays. The atmosphere at the Dell peaked in the late 70s, after we won the FA Cup. The home and away support in the 76/77, 77/78 and 78/79 seasons was incredible, with all sides of the ground singing and huge numbers going to many away games. It just goes to show what winning a trophy can do. Apart from the fact that it was a great decade for Saints, the 80s were awful. Crowds plummeted to all-time lows and the standard of football was poor. The 90s were made even worse by the fact that it was a decade of struggle for Saints and we only had one top class player in our team. But, I'm sure for any fan that was in his teens in either of those decades, they'd seem like the best decades of football ever. That's the way nostalgia works its magic. Man for man, last season's Saints team was better than any of our teams from the 60,70s, 80s, 90s and 00s. The team that finished runners-up to Liverpool was more successful but back then there was only one good team in the country: Liverpool. The top flight is much more competitive nowadays, when there are half a dozen teams at least that can win it and 4 different teams have won it in the last 4 years. In previous decades it was usually dominated by just one team: Liverpool and then Man United. The rest just made up the numbers.

It's proving harder than they thought to push him out of the door. Perhaps the report of his 'transfer request' was a bit premature.

What exactly have you seen happening behind the scenes?

i don't think there is any better pair of young centre backs than Calum Chambers and Ben Gibson. They are the main reason Midblesbrough's defensive record is one of the best in the Premier League: better than ours and Liverpool's. What are the chances of getting Chambers back? I guess he'd be out of our price range.

There were rumours that Kat was asking for 200 million and that the Lander group were struggling to raise that amount of cash. Could the unsold 15% be because they could only afford 85% of her asking price? Do you know what Kat intends to do with the money? Is it going into her personal bank account or will any of it be invested in the club? If she is taking it all, it seems a bit greedy as she is rumoured to have more than enough money already and her father left her the club. Of course, this is all idle speculation at this stage. but, I just wish the buyers had a lot more money than the Lander group appear to have.