Nordic Saint

Klarer came on for the last 20 minutes so no more goals conceded and we won 3-1. A good result.

We could see him playing in England again this season as his Lille team, which he captained to the best defensive record in the league, are through to the group stage of the Champions League with a good chance of being drawn in the same group as one of the English clubs.

He also added a UEFA Nations League winner's medal to his European Championship winner's medal and was voted in the Ligue 1 team of the season. In fact, he's just had the best season of his career so far.

He seems to be in the pre-season squad so I wonder if he will make a first team appearance in any of the friendly games? Although he's very young he could be part of the solution to our central defensive problem.

Saints have spent £30m on Djenepo and Adams + the deferred payment of £20m on Ings, West Ham £60m on Fornals and Haller, and Leicester £80m on Tielemans, Perez and Justin. Hope that helps.

Like all of the signings RB Leipzig have made since Mitchell arrived, Lookman is under 22 and will be worth a lot more in the future. It will be interesting to see how he and Mitchell's other Leipzig signings, Hannes Wolf, Luan Candido, Amadou Haidara, Nordi Mukiele, Matheus Cunha etc, develop in the future. I guess some of them would have been Saints players if Mitchell had been here.

Paul Mitchell strikes again. He is a very good head of recruitment.

Adams looks good but we've still got major problems in the centre of our defence.

It didn't when he was at Juventus and I doubt very much that it would if Man United were gullible enough to take him.

No manager has before at any other club he's ever played at and he's played for some very good managers, like Allegri. Lemina is, and probably always will be, a bit of a Carlos Kaiser.

They were two of the easiest to offload as they are young, not absolute turkeys, have good attitudes, are capable of playing regularly, are not on huge salaries and we only wanted small fees for them. The other players we want to get rid of, like Lemina and Carrillo, don't tick many of those boxes. But, so far, on balance, this has still been our best transfer window for some time and Ralph seems to have brought some common sense back to our transfer activity.

A similar ratio to Boufal, who scored 3 league goals and 1 league cup goal, 2 of which were among the best goals ever scored at St Mary's, in his 56 games for us. I agree that Cuco Martina should also be in that elite group but was his wonder goal a fluke? Did he just take a swing at the ball and hit lucky? Because he never showed in any other game in his career that he had the skill in his locker to do that deliberately.

His goal v West Brom was special too. He only ever scored 3 league goals and 1 league cup goal for us in 50 games and yet won 2 Goal of the Season awards. That has to be a record.

Yep. Boufal v Sunderland. One of the best goals ever scored at St Mary's was the only highlight of one of the dullest games ever played there.

The last time most of us were this happy with a new signing was when we got Ralph as manager. So, that bodes well. Adams is the sort of signing that definitely has the feelgood factor. Let's face it, when we signed players like Carrillo, most of us, with the exception of a few hardcore happy clappers, were disappointed and said so at the time.

Dael Fry?

Totally agree. It's great to have good news again in a transfer window.

An excellent signing. He is fast, scores goals, he's improving and he is still only 22. This is the happiest I've been about one of our signings since it was rumoured we were going to sign James Maddison but this time it looks like we've got our man.

Matt Clarke is a central defender and he was their Player of the Season. It will be interesting to see how he does in the Premier League.

For the players we can't give away, like Clasie and Carrillo, that may be the only solution. Their wages would cost more. To be fair to Les Reed, one thing he was good at was unsettling and getting rid of players (unfortunately our best ones). Maybe Ross is being too nice to them.

To be fair to the board and owners, he is one of the few saleable commodities they have left. They can't even give most of the players away.

You probably didn't notice but he was forced to sell his main business, Lander Sports, which had been rapidly declining in value.

I think it's just wishful thinking. All available evidence indicates Gao is a poor owner by Premier League standards. Wolves got lucky or perhaps they did their research. Every one of their Chinese owners is in the Forbes Top 400 Chinese rich list and considerably wealthier than Gao, who isn't even in it.

Our average position in the top flight is 12th, which matches our average home gate, so anything above that is good. But, most clubs of our size have won at least 4 major trophies in their history so we have underachieved so far. Another FA Cup or League Cup is long overdue.

We were strongly linked with van Dijk before Paul Mitchell left. He was the last off the Mitchell conveyor belt and he'd probably have taken him to Spurs if they hadn't opted for Alderweireld instead, so we got lucky there, which we didn't with Trippier, who we were also linked with before Mitchell left. Bednarek is OK but we paid too much for Vestergaard and he is too slow. Overall, Ross Wilson has wasted a lot of money on mediocre players. The average poster on here couldn't have done any worse than Wilson has, which is hardly surprising as Wilson never played football. He got his foot on the ladder when his best friend's dad asked him to write a report on a youth team match and then he took a massive leap up that career ladder when he met Les Reed at a conference. His learning process is currently costing the club a hell of a lot of money.