Nordic Saint

José Fonte would have been an ideal temporary appointment and he probably would have been happy to do it, but Sunderland have got him now. I've never really seen Lallana as managerial material, but he looks the most likely candidate to cover for Tonda if he's banned. We certainly don't want a permanent replacement, whatever the length of the ban, as we won't get a better manager than Tonda.

It's not fair, but scapegoating is well and truly targeting Saints. Clubs like Man City and Chelsea are just too big and strong to be made scapegoats. That's how scapegoating works. A vulnerable target becomes a focus for hostility. Everyone's misdemeanors are then neatly wrapped up and paid for by the severe punishment of the scapegoat. It makes everyone feel better about themselves except, of course, the scapegoat.

In fact, Bielsa was given the FIFA Fair Play Award at the end of his 'spygate' season.

You mean the allegation by the Middlesbrough spy (not Will Still)*, who gathered information from Southampton before returning to Middlesbrough, as reported to Gibson's employee on the EFL board? Tonda Eckert didn't even have Will Still's phone number or that of any other junior analyst. The organisation of the scouting was an internal matter among the analysts. *I've clarified this, CSA96, as I mean the junior analyst who came down from Middlesbrough to work here for a brief spell before returning to them. He's the one who Gibson used. I don't recall his name.

It's amazing how much that happens in this world can be explained by René Girard’s scapegoat theory and, unfortunately, in the football league, we have become the scapegoat.

That was Tonda's 30th win today and he has the best win rate (61.22%) of any Saints manager in our history who's managed us for 30 or more games. List of Southampton F.C. managers - Wikipedia)

Guess who was the referee for our last league defeat at St Mary's, 8 months ago? Gritty Hull City secure impressive win at Southampton and move back into top six - Hull Live

Our home record against Bristol City is very good too. We haven't lost to them at St Mary's in the last 15 years (2 wins and a draw) and our all-time home record v Bristol City is: W18 D3 L4 Southampton football club: record v Bristol City

Our league record at St Mary's under Eckert is now: W15 D5 L1 The only home league defeat was to Hull 8 months ago.

That could have been the conclusion of our recruitment team. I wonder if they said the same about Mubama?

It would help the singing continue longer if fans knew more than one of the nine verses. Surely, the "When the stars fall from the sky" and "When the moon turns red with blood" verses wouldn't be too difficult to learn. If we sang more of the song than Spurs fans did, it would help reaffirm it as our song. I wonder how long it would be before they copied us.

Sam Amo-Ameyaw scored Strasbourg's 4th and 5th goals today: Ligue 1 - Troyes 2 - 6 Strasbourg | OneFootball

What an attack Saints U21s had last year, with a front 3 of Amo-Ameyaw, Ballard and Robinson: U21 Highlights: Saints 5-0 Fulham | Southampton FC Official Site

Stolarczyk, their first choice goalkeeper, got badly injured in their last game.

Well, having Alex McCarthy in goal certainly won't have helped. But, Russell Martin is the one who took him there.

Today he looked like a poor man's Damion Downs. Let's hope he ups his work rate and improves quickly.

N/T repeat post

He used to take great delight in defeating the teams he didn't like, including Arsenal and Saints. He also had favourite teams he helped win, like Man United and Spurs. He openly celebrated a Spurs goal. You could tell from which goal he faced most of the game which team he wanted to win and it was never Saints. If the team he wanted to lose was attacking, he'd stay still, waiting for his preferred team's next attack, which he would join in. One of his little games was pretending he was part of one of the teams. That 9-0 defeat to Man United was engineered by him and he delighted in it. Saints knew what he was doing. " Southampton appealed the red card issued to Bednarek, which was subsequently rescinded by The Football Association. Southampton also requested that Mike Dean and Lee Mason (4th official) not officiate their future fixtures." Arsenal knew about it too: There is no way he could be considered unbiased or fair. It's shocking that he was allowed to get away with it for as long as he did.

He scored again tonight.

What a terrible signing he was too. I thought of him when Leicester signed Alex McCarthy. There were a few things that stick in my mind from that game. The first was that Wolves took the lead after just 35 seconds with a Tony Knapp own goal. Another was that we felt slightly disappointed, that after scoring 9 goals in the first hour, singing, "We want 10" and thinking surely we can manage 1 more in half an hour, the 10th never came. That was a very good Wolves team we beat, captained by England star Ron Flowers at centre-half. They'd won their 2 previous games 4-1 and 4-0 and they also won the 3 games after we beat them, 3-0, 3-0 and 3-0. Then they beat Portsmouth 8-2. We, of course, got promoted at the end of the season, but Wolves finished 6th, just 4 points behind us. A similar ending to this season would not go amiss.

Our biggest ever win after going behind was 9-3 v Wolves in 1965. I was there.

No he did not. We had a brilliant season after Eckert took over. It was one of the most entertaining for years. But, Hull did the double over us and proved they were the best team in the play-offs so even if we'd got to Wembley, they'd probably have won. Good luck to them. They deserve to be in the Premier League. If we'd had any other manager, we'd have got nowhere near the play-offs. The transformation under Eckert was incredible. I'm looking forward to another brilliant season under Tonda Eckert and promotion at the end of it.

Hull seem to play best against top teams. They were the only team in the play-offs last season who'd not lost a single game all season to any of the other play-off teams. They did the double over us and It's some consolation to know that even if the EFL hadn't replaced us with Middlesbrough in the final, we'd probably have lost to Hull at Wembley. Better for us to go up as Champions this season anyway.

What an embarrassing, clueless comment.

"You whingeing bastards*, you know what you are." *Other words are available, especially if you like to alliterate.