Nordic Saint

Agreed. Stephens is turning into a very good footballer and the TV pundits are beginning to single him out for their praise. I can see him playing for England one day.

Four ex-Saints, Lallana, Oxlade-Chamberlain, van Dijk & Mane, are now World Champions. I know many Saints fans hate Liverpool because Les Reed flogged all of our best players to them but for fans of most clubs in England to have even one of you ex-players become a world champion would be something to be proud of. When I started supporting my local team, Saints in 1963, we'd never been in the top flight and had almost no players who'd ever won any trophy of significance in our entire history. Terry Paine's 19 games for England including one in the 1966 World Cup Finals were way above anything any Saints player had ever achieved. When we no longer wanted him, we sold him to Hereford so I do not begrudge the success of the ex-Saints players among some of the best footballers in the world tonight.

All of the goalkeepers coached by Dave Watson got worse, not just Forster. Now that Watson has been replaced, hopefully things will improve. Unfortunately though, he is now coaching our outfield players.

Just one big HK flag unfurled at a match televised in China and Gao would be ordered to sell the club. But, we could still be stuck with the real problem: Kat. I could be wrong but I think she is going to be a real stumbling block in any negotiations to sell the club as she is going to demand an unrealistically high amount for her 20%.

I agree. The money laundering theory is laughable. Gao doesn't have any money to launder. Kat took him to the cleaners. She sold him a vision of a business where stock would be produced or bought cheaply and sold for enormous profits, where ever-increasing Premier League income of more than £100 million would pour in to the coffers every year and where the overall value of the business would increase at an incredible rate. His greed got the better of him and he fell for it, hook, line and sinker.

Each manager has been dealt a worse hand than the previous one. The sales of Mané, Wanyama, van Dijk and Fonte obviously hurt us badly but perhaps the sale of Tadic was the final straw that broke the camel's back.

Pity he can't also be a player coach so he could teach Watson, Davis & co how to coach the Liverpool way, as opposed to the sideways and backwards passing Southampton way.

That's a very good summary of what was going on yesterday. When we got possession, we passed the ball sideways and backwards until passing it back to our goalkeeper, who then hoofed it upfield, where a West Ham player won the aerial duel for it every time. It would be interesting to see a breakdown of the percentage of our team's passes that go sideways and backwards as opposed to those that go forwards. Surely, we must have a higher percentage of sideways and backwards passes than any other team in the league. But, that was also the case before Ralph arrived. It's been coached into the players. In the club's coaching, at every level, undue stress is placed on keeping possession as opposed to trying to score goals. Ings, with his background of being coached at Liverpool, has been like a breath of fresh air.

I'm still not sure whether when Stephens kicked the ball against Antonio's hand, the contact was unavoidable or whether Antonio deliberately put his hand there to stop the Stephens clearance. But with the new VAR rules, any ball to hand contact seems to be given as hand ball. I'm surprised more teams haven't taken advantage by deliberately kicking the ball at a defender's arm in the penalty area.

Well he'll be playing in the Premier League next season. Let's hope we are too: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/50696229

Yes, he played very well.

Sorry got those dates wrong! The City cup game was after the Leicester defeat, of course. But, I still think there would be no better draw than getting Pompey at home. Whatever else happens this season, it would be remembered forever by Saints fans as the one when we knocked Pompey out of two cup competitions.

Our 0-9 defeat to Leicester followed an away cup tie against Man City, not one v Pompey. We took 3 points from our 2 league games in between them, with a 1-0 away win at Sheffield United. So, there is no evidence that a cup game v Pompey would do us any more harm than one against any other team. In fact. it is more likely to do us a lot of good.

Quite seriously, for those of us who don't live in the Shrewsbury area, no it isn't. It would be a tremendous boost to our season, for players and fans alike, to beat Pompey again, especially in front of a full house at St Mary's.

Long's top flight days should be behind him now. No other Premier League club would accept him. He gets no goals and no assists and mostly just gives possession away to the opposition. The fact that we have to resort to bringing him on when we need a goal just reflects how poor our squad is. These are his stats: https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/shane-long/leistungsdaten/spieler/37304

All those who want Redmond dropped for this game are forgetting that Norwich is his old club and ex-players have a habit of scoring against their old clubs. If he is going to be dropped, this is not the time to do it.

"36, Southampton will play 46, Portsmouth" Bring it on. We've got revenge for one of the 4-1 defeats but now let's avenge the other one. Another cup win v Pompey is something that will be remembered for a lifetime; a third round cup win v any other team will be played in a half-empty stadium and soon forgotten.

They have 4 very good players, Pukki, Aarons, McLean & Hernández and some very poor ones, especially in defence. Pukki and Ings both to score in a 3-3 draw, with Redmond getting a last minute equalizer against his old club?

Arsenal were very lucky to escape with a draw there. Norwich were far the better team. Only some great saves from Leno stopped them winning.

Guess who do not want to be drawn against us? https://fansonline.net/portsmouth/mb/view.php?id=782928

Pompey at home, of course. It would be great to thrash them twice in one season.

Those are home ends and our most vociferous fans are 'special'; they don't want a whole home end: they prefer to hide in the corners of the away end. As someone who started watching Saints from behind the goal under the chocolate boxes at the Dell in the 60s, who always wished we'd have a big covered home end like most other clubs, it saddened the hell our of me that, when we finally got one at St Mary's, our fans shied away from it and instead chose to divide themselves into two small groups and hide in the corners, where the worst acoustics are. I know the history of our most vocal fans moving around at the Dell, as I was part of it. The first move from behind the goal to the side in the 70s was because there was no roof over the Milton so the acoustics were poor. It was thought that at the side, where there was a roof, we'd sound louder. Then there was the move of a group of fans to be next to the away fans in the days when there was 'aggro'. But, today, what would be best would be to have a whole proper home end. That's what the clubs you've mentioned, like Borussia Dortmund and Celtic, have, and that's what we should have if we want to improve our home support.

Southampton FC reached its zenith in 1904 with the 6-1 victory over France and the first tour of South America by an English team, when we beat Argentina and Uruguay. Perhaps the long overseas tours were too much of a distraction as the club began to decline after that. If there had been a World Club Championship in those days, Saints would have been in it and probably would have won it.

Southampton FC reached its zenith in 1904 with the 6-1 victory over France and the first tour of South America by an English team, when we beat Argentina and Uruguay. Perhaps the long overseas tours were too much of a distraction as the club began to decline after that. If there had been a World Club Championship in those days, Saints would have been in it and probably would have won it.

Back in the early twentieth century, when Saints were one of the best teams in the world, we thrashed national teams like France, Argentina and Uruguay away, usually running up double figure scorelines against them.