Nordic Saint

Yes, he is the best goal scorer we've got, even if he is going to miss a lot of games through injury. The reason we got our only proven goal scorers, Austin and Ings, was because they were injury-prone. If they hadn't been, we couldn't have afforded them and other clubs would have wanted them so they wouldn't have come here anyway. It means in both cases though, as we are already discovering with Austin, that their careers are not going to last as long as those of less injury-prone players

The problem is the few good players left have to work with the dross around them. They still try but football is a team game. Unfortunately our fans tend to turn against the wrong players, the best ones, and accuse them of sulking and not trying. This negativity got further fuelled by PR 'leaks' from the club about the players they wanted to sell. It happened to Mane, Wanyama, van Dijk, Fonte and Tadic and now it's happening to Bertrand.

The club's intention was always to cash in on van Dijk, the same as all of our saleable commodities, and he knew it. The only reason the sale was delayed was because Gao wouldn't pay Kat the money for the club if she sold any more players before he took over. Meanwhile the fans were fed the usual Les Reed PR spin on it all, about how we were standing up to Liverpool and didn't want to sell him and many seemed to fall for it.

We have won 1 game out of 16. We have only won 1 home game in the last year. We have 22 games left. So, on current form, you'd expect 1 or 2 more wins. A big improvement might give us 4 or 5. It would be a massive turnaround if we managed to win 8. Under Puel, when we finished 8th, we won 7 of or last 22 games. We all believe we have the right manager for the task but the question is do we have the right players? Winning the first of those games on Sunday would show that we do.

Well, at least he's improving. He didn't score any last season. If he keeps improving at this rate, he could eventually become as prolific a goal scorer as Shane Long.

Well, that's good. The players and referee would notice you shouting and singing a lot more if you were in the middle of the Northam end, where there is currently just an empty block used for fan segregation, and the away fans would be heard less if they and the empty block were shifted over to the Itchen/Northam corner. The acoustics in the corners are the worst in the ground as the sound get directed inwards, not outwards, and is muffled.

The problem is that the home fans in the Northam/Kingsland corner won't move because they think that by being there they are having 'bantz' with the away fans in the Northam, even though there is an empty block and sometimes even two next to them and 90% of the away fans don't even notice they are there. As you say, they'd get noticed a lot more if they were in the designated home end, the Chapel, and the away fans could actually see them and hear them but because of inertia they won't move there. That is why the players have taken the initiative and asked if the away fans could be moved as they would like our most home vocal fans to be behind the goal in the Northam, where they and the referee could see them and hear them more. Anyway, it would support the players' initiative if we had a poll on here which showed that the majority of our fans are in agreement with them. So, based on the club's remit, a simple poll with 2 choices, move the away fans into a corner or leave them where they are, would be the best way to canvas opinion and very helpful for our club. Is it at all possible for anyone on here to organise that? At this stage, we really don’t need to worry about the minutiae of moving a partition in the concourse, how many yards away fans have to walk to their coaches or who sits in particular corporate boxes. The club will obviously deal with that later and anyway, in terms of obstacles to progress, they don’t seem to be particularly insuperable ones.

They'd have even easier access to Britannia Road if they were shifted a couple of blocks across. The only argument given against that has been having to move a concourse partition and having away fans below a few corporate boxes at the end of the Itchen North. That should in fact be seen as an opportunity. How many of the corporate boxes are sold out over the season? Let the few that would be above away fans be reserved for neutrals and visiting fans and perhaps we would sell out a few more and improve crowd control as about the only disorder we've had inside St Mary's in recent years has been caused by away fans and home fans sharing the same corporate boxes. Football fans have known for decades that you get the best atmosphere by having a large number of noisy home fans directly behind one of the goals. You only have to look at any top 10 best atmospheres at football grounds lists, both in this country and abroad, and they nearly all have that in common.

And that is the easiest and cheapest solution and would enable us to have home fans, rather than an empty block or away fans, behind the goal at the Northam end for all of our games.

Also, as large numbers of both home and away fans arrive and leave via the footbridge, where there is usually little or no police presence, there is already as much if not more mingling of fans than you would get around the megastore. Plenty of clubs around the country have moved the location of their away section in recent years including some like Leeds with far more troublesome fans than ours. In fact, the current setup at St Mary's is more likely to cause flashpoints between the most volatile fans of both teams than just about any alternative, although crowds are so peaceful nowadays that the police probably get more criminal activity from Saturday afternoon shoppers. The point made earlier that our singers being split into two groups in the corners of the Northam, who can't hear each other and usually sing different songs, means they are easily outsung by a large, united bank of away fans, is a valid one. I also return to the fact that the players themselves are unhappy with the current setup and want a proper home end supporting them. This isn't just because it lifts the team but also because it has an influence on refereeing decisions. Any 50/50 decision at the Northam end tends to go the way of the away team because of the loud howls of protest from their fans, whereas at the Chapel end our fans rarely do more than murmur. Any minor obstacles to moving the away fans, like a dividing wall in a concourse, are not going to cost a fortune to remove so let's back the club's initiative on this.

An excellent idea. Move them into a corner like they have at Leicester. I have heard the initiative for this may have come from our players who feel they get little advantage from playing at home and would like to see us have a proper home 'kop'. For many games there is just an empty block behind the Northam goal, which is used for fan segregation, whilst for big cup games the away fans take over almost all of the Northam end and our singers disappear. Meanwhile, the block behind the goal at the Chapel end seems to be used by some of our most silent fans. The best home support has been when the away team has brought very few fans so our fans have been behind the goal at the Northam end. The worst has been when we've played at home to big clubs like Man United and Chelsea in cup games and they've taken over most of the Northam end. One problem is that the club didn't really put any thought into what type of fans they wanted in each section when the new stadium was opened and so there were no guidelines. In contrast, Leicester made it very clear in their published plans where their kop would be before they put their first season tickets on sale. They also decided to put the away fans in a corner, where they would be least noticed and have minimal influence on a game. For their FA Cup game v Chelsea, even though there was a large contingent of Chelsea fans, because they were stuck in a corner and Leicester had a whole home end, the Leicester fans outsang them and you hardly heard the away fans. In contrast, when we last played at home to Chelsea in the FA Cup, they took over the Northam end and you hardly heard our fans at all. In football stadiums, corners have the worst acoustics, as most of the sound is directed inwards into the adjacent fans rather than outwards onto the pitch. I understand that moving 1 or 2 blocks to one side would be a slight annoyance to some fans but if the club made it clear that there would be a designated singing section behind one of the goals, I hope most would appreciate it.

We certainly have, Micky. Van Dijk and Lovren's Liverpool are top of the Premier League, with Alderweireld's Spurs in 3rd place while Fonte's Lille are 2nd in the French League and, of course, they are also all starring for their national teams. I suppose, to take the positives out of it, you could at least say, we once had some very good players.

For those who still say that he can be coached to be a good Premier League player, he can't: he simply doesn't have the basic physical attributes required. We should try to sell him in January because if we keep him here longer and people see more of him, we'll struggle to even find anybody prepared to take him on loan. Jack Stephens and Bednarek are the best of the bunch we've currently got and Christoph Klarer is a good prospect for the future but to have any hope of staying up we need a new central defender as soon as possible.

It looks like Bednarek and Stephens are the best of a poor bunch of central defenders. I really think we should try to offload Vestergaard and Hoedt in January and use the money top buy one good central defender. Les Reed has wasted a huge amount of money and left us with an utter shambles. It's going to take at least a couple of transfer windows to sort that out.

Nobody is going to have a problem with that. This is the first managerial appointment since Koeman that we've all been happy with. Sticking with Hughes and Pellegrino no matter what was never going to unite the fanbase when so many of us thought they were poor appointments. Furthermore, getting rid of one of the most divisive characters we've ever had in the club, Les Reed, (you just have to look at the number of bitter arguments about him on here to see that) has brought all the fans and club together again.

I can see that you're confused, Strangely, but take a deep breath and try to stay calm. You're not supposed to hate anyone. We have a good new manager and things are looking up.

I don't know. A lot depends on what happens in the January transfer window. We have replaced a bad manager with a good one but we are still stuck with the same bad coaches and players. It's going to take at least a couple of transfer windows to sort out the mess Les has left us with.

What have these 2 ex-goalkeepers done over the last two years to suggest they are good enough to be first team coaches to the outfield players of a Premier League team??? Davis was promoted from his job in hospitality, without any previous coaching experience, on the strength of the fact he'd just passed a coaching course, while Watson seems to have moved from being more or less Fraser Forster's personal coach to becoming increasingly involved under Pellegrino and Hughes with the the coaching of the outfield players. Pellegrino and Hughes may have been replaced but we are still stuck with the same disappointing first team coaches who failed with them.

No, and the funny thing when you look back is that we only lost 2 of Pellegrino's last 8 league games in charge, which included tough games against Liverpool and Spurs, and he'd also just got us through to an easy FA Cup quarter-final v Wigan by beating 3 Premier League teams, whereas we lost 4 of the 8 games under Hughes and got knocked out of the cup. You could certainly argue that what kept us up as much if not more than the 2 wins from 8 games at the end of the season under Hughes were the 3 wins from 9 games at the beginning of the season under Pellegrino. I still believe that if Hughes had taken over earlier in the season, we'd have been relegated. The managers seemed to get progressively worse under Reed: Koeman>Puel>Pellegrino>Hughes. Anyway, that's all water under the bridge now. It makes a very nice change to get a good manager like Hasenhüttl, who is clearly an improvement on the previous one.

Very good news indeed. I have not been as happy as this about a managerial appointment at our club since 2014 when we got Koeman. Of course the new manager still has to contend with the poor quality of some of the players recruited over the last few years and it will take at least a couple of transfer windows to sort that out but our club appears to be back on track, making common sense decisions again.

We can only speculate but, based on his Stoke and Saints' stats this season and last, if Hughes had replaced Pellegrino earlier in the season than he did, it's very likely we'd have been relegated.

It sounds like the deal is done and Hassenhuttl will be revealed as our new manager at St Mary's on Wednesday. At last we have recruited a manager who is better than the previous one. Things are looking up!

Perhaps it would have been if Les Reed had still been here as every manager he appointed seemed to be worse than the previous one but this is a new era and we can look forward to getting a better manager now so it is a sensible decision.

Good news, I think. Of all the names we've been linked with, he seems to be the best of the bunch.

Pompey. Let's get them now while we can still beat them.