Nordic Saint

Rather him than Ward-Prowse. When you see the latter on the bench there is always a concern that he'll be brought on when we are a goal up and we'll let the opposition back into the game and they'll score.

It's our 13th league game, which means that if we lose, we'll be over a third of the way through the season with just 8 points. At the same stage last season, under Pellegrino, we had 16 points.

An excellent replacement is available: https://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/news/nathaniel-clyne-set-offered-liverpool-13625010

Very unfair on Ings. He has been one of our better players, although our training and coaching are beginning to take their toll of a player who looked really sharp when he arrived from Liverpool.

But, as results under Hughes have been worse than they were under Pellegrino, we probably would have been relegated if the change had occurred earlier in the season.

"Wilson has never played football to any significant level and graduated in social sciences at Strathclyde University.....Wilson stumbled into a career in football. A friend's father worked for the media department and needed reports on the under-18 team's games" I suppose you could argue that his record as our Head of Recruitment is his qualification as our 'football voice'. Personally, I wouldn't be too alarmed if he were sacked.

We once had arguably the best club central defensive pairing in the world. We couldn't have kept van Dijk because he was young and very much in demand but we could have kept Fonte. It was Les Reed's mistake to sell him, with the usual barrage of negative PR to turn the fans against him. Fortunately we have got rid of Reed so hopefully we won't make similar mistakes in the future.

Pied is the same at Lille as he was here: an average squad player. Fonte is the same as he ever was, an incredibly underrated player who leads defences and teams to great things, like 6th place for Saints, the European Championship title and Nations League finals for Portugal and a Champions League place for Lille. You'd probably have to go back to Alan Ball to find a Saints player like that. The Nations League finals in June will certainly have ex-Saints connections, with Fonte's Portugal and van Dijk's Netherlands team lining up against England.

Of course he was joking but this really was one of the best England games I've been to for decades. A few months ago people might have scoffed at this suggestion but we were watching a competitive game played between two of the best teams in the world and England won it. There haven't been many occasions when we could say that. This England squad and manager are really capturing the public's imagination. Apart from the Nations League finals in Portugal next summer, we also have the 2020 European Championships to look forward to and the final and semi-finals are at Wembley.

I was at the game today. It's the best atmosphere I've seen for an England game at Wembley since 2013 when we qualified for the World Cup Finals by beating Poland and beat Scotland 3-2 with that Rickie Lambert goal. It really was a great game.

Fonte is having a great season for Lille and Portugal. He played the full 90 minutes to gain his 36th cap for Portugal in their 0-0 draw with Italy and his Lille team are 2nd in the French league. How we could do with him this season.

You'll have a long wait. Ian Nairn died 35 years ago.

Away trips to northern towns in the 1970s were always interesting. Unfortunately I never made it to Halifax, which looks quite intriguing in this documentary, especially the Piece Hall, which is reminiscent of some of the great town squares of Europe, like the one in Salamanca. It definitely looks worth a visit. Fish & chip and beer always seemed much cheaper and better up there and if you stayed on at night the local girls seemed to find a visitor from the south quite exotic. One of the last away trips I made to a small northern town, was to Barnsley, which was worth wandering around before the game. It must also be one of the few grounds in the country where, because of a hill slope, you can see your car in the the away car park while you are watching the game. Ian Nairn, Ray Gosling and Fyfe Robertson used to make some wonderful TV documentaries about Britain. A bygone era: Football Towns contd. Huddersfield and Halifax.

Ian Nairn's 1970s BBC documentaries on northern football towns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cnOA_1ZP04

I've been to a Boca game at La Bombonera but not v River. I have been to other South American derby games including Botafogo v Fluminense at the Maracana and El Superclásico in Chile as well as several Copa Libertadores games. The atmosphere at La Bombonera, even for an ordinary league game, is more passionate than anything you find in Europe. But, away fans are placed in a small section very high up so they have little impact and nowadays away fans are totally banned from Boca v River games. I also used to go to quite a few derby games in this country in the 70s and 80s, including the Manchester derby when fighting spilled onto the pitch at Maine Road and several London ones. The fiercest I witnessed was the Chilean Superclásico, which has resulted in several deaths over the years. I'd recommend a game at La Bombonera. Buenos Aires is a great city to visit anyway and the Boca district is colourful. The stadium is incredibly steep sided. So much so, that if you are high up, as I was, you feel like you are going to topple down onto the pitch if you lean forward. There are thousands of flags waving, spectacular firework displays from the ultras and constant loud singing and chanting.

Some good news. There are reports that McCarthy will come on as a sub for the 2nd half v the USA and so become the 37th Saints player to win a full England cap. Good luck to him.

In all the discussions recently it seems to have been forgotten that Pardew was responsible for bringing Reed here. They were both sacked by Charlton during the season they got relegated from the Premier League and when Pardew came here he recommended Reed to Cortese.

I think you'll find that we are still left with the players, coaches, head of recruitment and manager appointed by Les and his appointees. Certainly in the case of the players recruited, Ross Wilson, the Head of Recruitment, must have been very heavily involved, and he is still here. That is the scale of the problem and It's going to take more than one day to fix all that. It does feel though that the club has taken the first step on the road to recovery.

That awful run under Puel when we lost 6 out of 7 league games was when Ward-Prowse was playing 90 minutes regularly. The good run at the start of that season was when he wasn't starting. The more minutes he plays, the worse we seem to get. The last 5 Premier League games Ward-Prowse played an hour or more in were: Newcastle 3 Saints 0 Arsenal 3 Saints 2 Saints 2 Chelsea 3 Everton 2 Saints 1 Man City 6 Saints 1

Even more useless at it than than Ward-Prowse? Over the years we have wasted so many scoring opportunities from free-kicks around the opposition penalty area because Ward-Prowse took them and kicked them a yard high and wide of the goal. On the rare occasion he does get one on target, he has such a weak shot that it's easily saved. These were from positions that a real dead-ball specialist, like Lambert or Le Tissier, regularly scored from.

Can't really fault our team for effort. They appeared to play to the limits of their ability although they tired towards the end. The referee was terrible but if he had got the major decisions right, in spot of the Austin goal, we might well have lost, as Watford would have had a penalty, but more importantly, Bertrand would have got a 2nd yellow and we'd have been reduced to ten men. Even with all 11 out there, we were getting overrun by Watford in the final ten minutes. My reaction when Ward-Prowse comes on as a sub is, now we're going to let the other team's midfield take control of the game, as that's what usually seems to happen when he appears. He is a player who divides opinion and I know he has some fans on here but with the impact he has on games, I'd rather see him come on for the opposition than for us. Gabbiadini and Yoshida both had very good games and should start regularly.

I think it's been proven now that both you and your slightly more intelligent mate mate Always do, sweetheart https://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?59242-Les-Reed-Out-protest

The few final remnants of the Reedites on here, like you, Always, Micky and C.B. Fry, who still want to credit our recruitment success during our successful phase to Reed rather than Mitchell have been proven to be total dickheads by what's happened since Reed replaced Mitchell with Wee Ross. Get over it. We are Saints fans, always have been, always will be, we are not fans of some ***t once voted the worst manager in the history of the OP Premier League... GET OVER IT.

Yes, and the same RB Leipzig team which is above Celtic in their Europa League group table and is currently 4th in their national league. If only we could have done that well...

Shaw was very unhappy when Reed sacked Dodd and Williams. In the end, Reed got rid of just about everyone who was doing a good job at the club, after taking credit for their work, and the emperor was left with no clothes. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/southampton/10843902/Luke-Shaw-dismayed-as-Southampton-sack-academy-coaches-Jason-Dodd-and-Paul-Williams.html