Nordic Saint

A goal and an assist for him today in Leyton Orient's 2-1 win at Northampton.

Sport Republic seem to have finally found a model that works, more by luck than judgement. You have a coach who takes the young players through the U21s and then into the first team with him. You rarely get that sort of continuity. Who knew? "Tonda Eckert has the luxury of working with the academy players and knows what each of them is capable of. As far as Sillah Dibaga is concerned, Eckert had been working on the winger's defensive skills, playing him as a wing-back in the Under-21s." Sillah-Dibaga makes an honest pledge after making surprising Southampton debut

Like most fans, I wasn't happy with the team selection when it was announced, but we won again, and that's 6 matches without defeat now. Eckert is an ice-cold, ruthless manager. He makes unpopular decisions, but he does what it takes to win games, like no manager we've ever had before. We haven't had a manager with a win rate this good in our entire Football League history, and he's already managed more games than most of our recent managers: List of Southampton F.C. managers - Wikipedia

I always think this is a pretty good gauge of a club's size: All time Football League Rankings average attendances

About the same standard as our other goalkeepers then.

The match stats are ridiculously one-sided in Saints favour. It should have been a comfortable victory but our goalkeeper didn't make a single save and we missed chances. When was the last time a team had only 3 shots on target against us and scored 3 goals? Shots: Leicester 6 Saints 16 Shots on target: Leicester 3 Saints 7 Corners: Leicester 3 Saints 9 Touches inside the opposition box: Leicester 14 Saints 32 Total crosses: Leicester 7 Saints 25

High level of punditry there. He should do Match of the Day.

Eckert has the best win percentage of any Saints' manager in our entire history in the Football League and the best since 1897 in our Southern League days. List of Southampton F.C. managers - Wikipedia

We really need a couple of substitutions now to turn this game around. Larin and Charles would be the best options.

I agree. He's the best manager we've had for quite a while. You can see how the team spirit has improved, and a bond between manager, players and fans is developing. Everyone is looking forward to the next game.

I was very impressed by Larin today. I don't think we have another player who could have scored a diving bullet header like that. But, it wasn't just his goal; his all-round game was good too. Of course, it'e early days, but today at least he reminded me of Cyrille Regis. I'm looking forward to seeing him score more goals. The 2nd half performance was good. The team really seemed to click, especially when Larin came on. After he scored, we stayed in control and the Watford fans fell silent because they could see their team wasn't going to come back.

They won't let us have any of their best players. They sold their star striker, Rômulo, to RB Lepzig for £20 mill in the last transfer window and now he's scoring goals in the Bundesliga.

Another passenger then. Well, what an exciting transfer deadline day this is. Will we sign Cyle Larin or won't we? I guess most of us are hoping for the latter. Failing that, at least we can look forward to that surge of hope we'll get when we manage to offload him at the end of the season.

Tevye the Dairyman and Motl the Cantor's Son by Sholem Aleichem. Why? I watched Fiddler on the Roof, found it more poignant than I'd expected, and wanted to know more about it so I dug out the book it was based on. I also decided to learn a little Hebrew. It is VERY similar to Arabic, which I speak already. You'll probably recognise the author's pen name as the Hebrew equivalent of As-salamu alaykum.

I'm talking about football results, not how good your eyes are. So, who was the Saints manager who had a better record in his first 18 games? Jon B, thanks. Yes, Adkins did 16 years ago.

Who had a better record? I couldn't find anyone. So, who was it?

9 wins and 4 draws in his first 18 games. Is this the best ever start by a Saints manager?

Kasper Høgh

It's frustrating that there was no VAR to disallow their handball goal but that's still 5 games and 16 years undefeated against them.

When you were there, you didn't happen to see a fella covered in bananas, did you? He said he went home from Fratton covered in them, but he didn't say whether he taped them to his clothes or just balanced huge bunches of them on top of his head. If they were hanging down in front of his eyes, it would explain why he couldn't see all the Saints' shirts in Portsmouth, especially the yellow away ones.

And 7 places above them in the all-time average attendance table: All time Football League Rankings average attendances

I agree. It looks like he joined yesterday so he's a Pompey fan pretending to be a Saints fan. They are weird. They do things like that online. "Walk around Southsea in a Saints shirt and you wouldn't last five minutes." Classic pompey bullshIt. A few years back. a Saints fan went into the Fratton End, on his own, at one of their league games, and for a bet, took off his jacket to reveal his Saints colours. I believe he also waved a flag. The Pompey fans just chanted 'scummer' at him before the police eventually led him away to protect them from further embarrassment. On the TrueBlueArmy forum afterwards they found it really hard to put a spin on it.

Covered in bananas lol. I was in the middle of the Fratton End with Dougal's mob when we beat Pompey 5-2 in 1966 and never even saw a grape.

THB to Burnley (Says FourFourTwo)

Just because Sport Republic waste a lot of money doesn't make it a good squad. Damion Downs cost more than most players in the Championship. Unfortunately, the manager doesn't decide who they sign.