Nordic Saint

Wow

Belotti Fry Tiago Djaló Malinovskyi Getting rid of McCarthy would be as good as signing a new player.

Eastleigh beat Swindon 1-0. I much prefer the Eastleigh goalkeeper, Joe McDonnell, to Alex McCarthy. I'm not saying he's good enough for the Premier League but at least he's good enough for the National League.

Decent first half performance from Saints. Bazunu and Lavia have impressed.

It wasn't particularly promiment and whatever makes you happy, makes you happy. I have no problem with that. You need to stop getting so over excited on the rare occasions I post on here. It's not worth a heart attack. But, as you've asked: When I started going to Saints games in the 60s, players didn't wear badges on their shirts. We fans wore red and white scarves and metal lapel badges, depicting the club's traditional red and white rose badge. There were also a few homemade banners with the club's crest on them. At away games especially, wearing the red and white rose badge was how you showed you were a Saints fan. Then, one day, it was announced in a match programme that there would be a competition to design a new club badge. Nobody took too much notice of it and assumed it was something just for schoolchildren. But, when the winner was announced in another match programme, most fans laughed at how childish it looked. Over the years it has aged and consequently gained more gravitas and there are obviously many fans younger than I am who now see it as 'traditional'. It's really not that big an issue. If the majority of fans are now happy with it, fair enough. If we win one more major trophy in my lifetime, I will be happy even if we wear blue and white checked shirts.

I wasn't arguing: just stating a fact. I have no agenda in this debate. It's like the shirt: whatever we end up with each season, so be it. In spite of our great age, we're not really a 'traditional' football club; we're more of a business. If we ran out in blue and white checks, few would bat an eyelid as long as it made money. As for me, I've been supporting Saints for 60 years and the traditional red and white roses badge was what I was brought up on: not worn on the players' shirts in those days but as fans, it was the badge we wore when we went to away games. But, I'd trade it all - our traditional badge with the red and white roses and kits with the red and white striped shirts to see us win one more major trophy in my lifetime.

We said the same in the 70s when they changed it to the current one.

Yes, really. It's even got the amber trimming to represent Newport County's home colours. This was the Hummel PR blurb when it was first introduced: "The shirt - inspired by the River Usk which flows through the city - features light and dark shades of teal, while the Exiles' traditional home colours are also present. The panel graphic on the front of the shirt is developed directly from looking at the river and is representative of the ripples and eddies that appear as it flows."

I bet he says that to all the shirts from Newport.

The possibilities are endless: "Blue Army", "Come on you Blues", "Blue Moon".....

Gosport win the Portsmouth Harbour derby: Gosport Borough 1-0 Portsmouth

Anyway, trying to sell McCarthy to another football club would be as futile as trying to sell sand to a Bedouin tribe.

I'll probably like him if he moves to another club but at the moment nothing annoys me more than seeing Alex McCarthy appear in our goal.

He is quite a character and there aren't many in the game today. He reminds me of Stan Bowles. He has a lot of fun when he's out there on the pitch and he doesn't take himself too seriously. When he was on the receiving end of some abuse from someone in the crowd at St Mary's, he found it quite amusing and turned round and laughed. Also his faux outrage when JWP tried to copy one of his rag doll flops to the ground after Grealish himself had won several free-kicks with them was clearly very tongue in cheek.

But that ponytail would have been very uncomfortable even with just a bit of brylcreem on it.

The Bochum fans really like him and wish him well. I hope he has a great career here.

Yes. it's difficult to judge a player when he's in a struggling team. Defenders from teams with good defensive records, like Sven Botman at Lille, tend to be more expensive so maybe the club feel they have played a bit of moneyball by getting a bargain from a poor team. They've certainly been tracking him for a long time - well before the new owners arrived.

Well, he certainly didn't solve Bochum's last season. We can only hope that playing alongside better defenders at Southampton, he'll improve. He's No. 37: Even though he was in a poor team at Bochum, he was highly thought of there and Saints were linked with him more than a year ago, so our scouts must have been watching him for a long time and rate him highly. Welcome to Saints.

If you are going to continue your obsession with me, you'll have to do better than that, I'm afraid. You are just becoming dull and boring now. Maybe you should go on a sarcasm retraining course.

Jesus wept. Is that the best you can do? lol

Absolutely and I'm going to post sarcastic comments about it, every day for the rest of my life. I think I might start them all with the words Jesus wept.

I bet Scotland wish they had a striker as good as Obafemi.

He scored for us against Man United, Chelsea and West Ham. I'd rather see him coming on in the final 10 minutes of a game than Shane Long.

He always had pace and an eye for goal. He looks a class above any of our current strikers. He's going to be worth a lot of money in the future.

Talking of Middlebrough, I'm surprised nobody has snapped up Dael Fry yet. He's the sort of central defender who'd be ideal for a club like Southampton.