Nordic Saint

Post of the day

In retrospect, yes, van Dijk was the better of the two. It's an interesting thought that if Mitchell had stayed here, we might have had them both. We were also strongly linked with Trippier before Mitchell left. What might have been.

Van Dijk was the last off the Paul Mitchell conveyor belt. We were strongly linked with him before Mitchell left. But, Mitchell opted to take Alderweireld to Spurs instead so we still managed to get van Dijk.

Her boss again: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/paul-mitchell-4ba4b267

She has been a performance analyst at St Mary's for 8 years. Paul Mitchell, who is now overall technical director of all of the Red Bull football clubs, has recruited her.

It's nice that all England fans, not just the ones from Southampton and Charlton, are getting the chance to appreciate him now.

He's probably given them the same coaching manuals he gave to Pellegrino and Hughes.

"Les Reed has been appointed as our new technical director. Reed will return to The FA to take up his new role at St. George’s Park in February 2019, and will be responsible for all elite England men’s sides from development teams through to the seniors." Old Les is starting to have an effect.

To be fair we shouldn't blame little Englanders for Brexit propaganda like this as most of it emanates from Russia. Even Dominic Cummings with his 'Take Back Control' propaganda came here after his formative years living in Moscow in the 1990s.

We finished 6th as recently as 2016, above both Liverpool and Chelsea. A similar sized club to ours, Leicester, won the league then and reached the quarter-finals of the Champions League the following season and they have a good chance of getting into the Champions League again. I don't buy this, let's give up because it's too hard line. Teams rise and fall. It wasn't that long ago that Fulham and Middlesborough reached European finals while Man City were in the third tier just 20 years ago.

That is just where we rank in terms of number of fans and it's a hell of a lot better than not even being in the top 20. It gives us the spring base from which to get into Europe, which we have done in 10 of those 43 seasons and a better chance to get into cup finals and actually win a major trophy (yes, I know what we did in '76 and I was there but the vast majority of cup finalists are top flight teams). Our best finish in the top flight? 2nd. Our best finish in the 2nd tier? 2nd. We have had 13 top 8 finishes in the top flight and 17 in the 2nd tier. There is no evidence that we are any more likely to win things in the 2nd tier than we are in the 1st.

You mean like the 5.5 million British people currently living abroad who weren't allowed to vote in a referendum which will affect their lives much more than it will ours? https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/apr/28/british-expats-lose-legal-battle-right-to-vote-eu-referendum

Dominic Cummings' latest strategy appears to be to prepare people for the No Leave Brexit by getting government ministers to increase the number of times they repeat 17.4 million people voted for it. Michael Gove has just said it 6 times. Why doesn't somebody on the opposition bench, just once at least, point out that means 50.2 million people in this country did not vote for it? Also, sadly, as a disproportionate number of those leave voters were very old people, about a million of them have died since 2016 and been replaced by new young voters who are very much in favour of remaining in the EU.

One season in the Championship, and only one, would be worth it if we won it, and came straight back up again with a trophy. One thing we are short of is silverware. but, realistically, the chances of it working out that well are slim. We are perennial runners-up (6 times in the league and 5 times in cups). Stoke, the club our last manager, Hughes, came here from, currently sit bottom of the table and who's to say that wouldn't happen to us too?

I repeat. YES, I bloody well would. I think those fans who want to see us relegated are mostly those who started watching us in either the late 1950s or the late 2000s, and think of us as a small club which doesn't belong in the top flight. My first Saints game was in 1963. I remember the absolute joy of being one of the 15,000 Saints fans that night at Leyton Orient in 1966 when Terry Paine's goal ensured that we would be playing in the top flight for the first time in our history. Now, it is a source of pride to me and many other Saints' fans that this is our 43rd season in the top tier, during which we have seen 10 seasons of European football, while Pompey, who in the 50s were thought of as the big club, were only ever there for 33 years, only had 1 season in Europe and are now down in the third tier. Whatever we were in the 1950s or in 2010, we are now firmly established as one of the 12-14 biggest clubs in the country, based on our average gates and all other stats regarding size of fan base. We shouldn't give up easily what we have fought so hard to achieve.

Another factor was that in the past we had genuine 'dead-ball specialists' like Lambert and Le Tissier, who could score from a high percentage of our free-kicks around the opposition penalty area, instead of nearly always kicking them a yard high and to the right of the goal like our current so-called 'dead ball specialist' does. In the time JWP has been taking our free-kicks, we would have racked up about 20 more goals if either of them had been taking them. I'd like to see Boufal given the opportunity to take them as he has shown that he has the technical ability to curl a shot into the top corner of the net and would probably not need about 50 attempts to do so.

Sell him? We couldn't give him away. We broke our record transfer fee to buy him and then we broke it again to buy Vestergaard. We spent a total of £60 million in transfer fees on those two plus Elyounoussi. But, of course, that's not all. There are also their wages and agents' fees to factor in. The ridiculous thing is that at the time we bought them, most of our fans already knew they were a waste of money.

As we saw again yesterday, the away fans behind the goal have more influence on what happens on the pitch at St Mary's than the home fans do. You just know that any 50/50 refereeing decision at the Northam end is going to go the way of the away team. Our potentially most vocal fans being hidden away in a corner doesn't help.

I think you've answered your own question there.

Les Reed explained many times how recruitment works at the club and I doubt that his young protégé Ross Wilson would have changed that system. It's not like it used to be, where the manager tells the owner, I want you to sign this player. Instead, all the manager can do is tell the head of recruitment which position he wants filled. The HOR then offers him the names of a few players the club have scouted and can afford who play in that position and the manager then has the option to approve one of them. When Paul Mitchell was the HOR, the system worked well but now it doesn't seem to.

He played a total of 16 minutes for England, which plenty of other mediocre players have done, and now that they've seen him, I doubt he'll ever get picked for them again. For comparison, Højbjerg has played 26 games for Denmark and 40 games for Bayern Munich and Schalke, including winning the German Cup Final and playing in the Champions League. I loved JWP's attitude when we played Pompey but realistically, he isn't fast enough or skilful enough for the Premier League and is easily bypassed by the opposition midfield. He'd probably make a decent Championship player but at the top level he leaves us short in midfield and his team mates have to cover for him. Today Redmond was constantly having to come back to do just that.

Yes, shocking. Wouldn't get into our team. Man of the match - Calum Chambers (Arsenal) http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/49868091

Yes! We belong in the top flight.

He's still here, isn't he?

Yes, sounds like good news.