Nordic Saint

You mean Old Les and Kat took orders from certain players? I very much doubt it. The board, led by Les and Ralph. in consultation with Kat, decided to sack Puel. Those who still credit Les and Kat with everything good that ever happened at the club, but nothing bad, will of course try to deflect the blame onto everyone else, including the players and fans.

I'd do what Cortese did: meticulously analyse how other clubs have achieved success recently. He and his team went round Europe doing that before putting together their action plan together here. In England, Wolves is one I'd take a close look at. They have recruited from Portugal, which arguably has the best value league to buy from at the moment, and I notice that Forest have started to copy them. Building a relationship with one of the top agents in Europe is another thing that's helped them. I've also been impressed by what Wigan have achieved in the last couple of years. They have some good players, like Nick Powell, we should consider buying. But, Cortese analysed a lot of clubs, not just one or two, although what he saw at Barcelona heavily influenced his plans for our Academy.

But could he manage a small club like Leganés to beat Barcelona like the great Pellegrino? Seriously though, Puel wasn't sacked because of any pressure from fans. Although there was a lot of criticism online during the season, there were no protests at games and by May most fans thought he'd done enough to deserve to start the next season still as our manager. The decision to sack him would have been made by the board in consultation with the owner. So, it was Les and Kat who wanted to get rid of him, and neither of them has ever done anything because of what fans posted online. Personally, I think he deserved longer than he got here. He was an average manager but most of us knew that it was unlikely our board would replace him with anyone better.

Pellegrino dropping Carrillo did the trick, giving Leganes a comfortable victory over Barcelona. He's obviously a managerial genius. The downside is that we're going to be stuck with Carrillo again at the end of the season beacause I can't see anyone else agreeing to take him if even Pellegrino doesn't want him any more.

Yes, excellent post from Turkish.

He's a bit of a waste of space, quite honestly, and so shouldn't really be in the team in any position. He's not even the great dead ball specialist everybody keeps saying he is. Whenever we get a free-kick in a scoring position just outside the opposition penalty area, he wastes it by kicking it a yard high and wide of the goal.

If Hughes drops Hoedt, Vestergaard and Long and replaces them with Yoshida, Bednarek and Ings, we could possibly get a draw at Wolves. I don't know why posters on here keep putting Vestergaard in their best starting XI, as he is as much of a problem as Hoedt. The pair of them look like worse versions of Hooiveld.

At the time of the sale wasn't it reported in the Echo that there would be no changes to the board for the next three years? So, presumably that was a clause written into the contract Gao had to agree to.

Yes, he seemed to regard a 0-3 defeat as something of a victory. He was obviously expecting worse as in his last two seasons there his Stoke team were on the receiving end of some real drubbings: 0-4, 2-4, 0-5 v Chelsea, 1-4, 2-7 v Man City, 0-4, 1-5 v Spurs, 1-4 v Liverpool & 1-4 v Arsenal.

The change in the quality of our recruitment would largely be down to the change in our Head of Recruitment. Ross Wilson got by in his first few months here as we bought players his predecessor Mitchell had already identified, particularly van Dijk, whom we'd been linked with before Mitchell went to Spurs. but since then we have seen that Wilson is simply not up to the job, our transfer budget has been woefully wasted and the quality of our squad has badly deteriorated. The key figures who were responsible for our success: Cortese, Mitchell, Pochettino, Koeman, Fonte. They've all gone now.

His Lille team are 2nd in the French League with only PSG ahead of them now. What a fantastic end to his career it will be if he adds a French League winner's medal to his European Championship winner's medal and goes on to play in the Champions League. He was an absolute legend for us and the best captain and leader our team has had this century. He deserves this success.

Yes, the eight points we got from our relatively easy first five games last season cushioned the blow of the later defeats by the big six and were what ultimately kept us up.

Just as long as he's not stupid enough to have three goalkeepers as first team coaches.

I see Paul Cook's win percentage at Wigan is now up to nearly 60%.Thank God he left Pompey after getting them promoted as at the rate he's going he'd have got them into the Champions' League. Couldn't we get him as our manager as well as some of his best players, like Nick Powell?

That is the sort of lazy thinking that brought us Hughes. You could add Pardew to that tired old list as well. They are all managers who've run out of ideas, whose careers have been in decline for some time. What we need is a manager whose career is in the ascendant, like Darren Moore (win percentage of 56.3% in his current job at West Brom), Eddie Howe (win percentage of 43.7% in his current spell at Bournemouth) or Paul Cook (win percentage of 58.8% at Wigan). There are also many more successful managers to choose from outside of this country.

I think Vestergaard is even more of a liability than Hoedt. His one asset is his great size but he seems to be easily brushed aside. As for his ground play, he just doesn't have the quickness of feet you need to survive in the Premier League. Premier League managers are now aware of his chronic lack of pace and they are all going to exploit it. With Hoedt, there is still some hope that he could be coached into being an adequate footballer if our first team coaches weren't goalkeepers. Yoshida is the best central defender we've got and most importantly, he's the fastest.

Stoke's decline under Hughes over the last 3 years mirrors our own decline in the same period: 2015/16 Saints 63 pts Stoke 51 pts 2016/17 Saints 46 pts Stoke 44 pts 2017/18 Saints 36 pts Stoke 33 pts I you want a decline, he's your man. His predecessors, Hodgson at Fulham, Warnock at QPR and Pulis at Stoke were all more successful than Hughes was after he took over from them.

We are seeing it now. We are becoming the new Stoke: a dispirited team with a shambolic defence. Mark Hughes' record in his last 50 Premier League games as manager at Stoke and Southampton: P50 W11 D13 L26 F49 A86 Pts 46

We haven't had the negative PR campaign against him yet: bad influence, billy big boots, greedy etc. But, it sounds like he might be the next one to be added to the 'defectors' list, as the club is running our of players they can get a sizeable transfer fee for.

They were missing their best player, Pascal Gross. We've been incredibly lucky so far this season to face Leicester minus Vardy, Palace minus Zaha and Brighton minus Gross.

Well that's the easy games out of the way: possibly the easiest set of opening fixtures we've ever had in the Premier League. We'll only really be able to rate the team after we've played one of the better teams. We've still got all 12 fixtures to come against the big six. Early evidence againts weak opposition suggests that our central defenders will be far too slow slow to cope against the fast-paced strikers the top teams have.

Does anyone? The club's famous policy, which they happily basked in the light of, was discovering talented young footballers and selling them on for profit (usually to Liverpool). The problem is that the man who discovered the cheap talent, our Head of Recruitment, Paul 'The Black Box' Mitchell, is no longer here. So, now, under his replacement, Ross Wilson, we are faced with the problem of buying expensive players and then finding a way to offload them for free to anyone desperate enough to take them off our hands.

Jose Fonte's Lille side won today and are now 2nd in the French League. His brother Rui Fonte played up front but Pied has yet to make an appearance.

Police getting things wrong shocker. Perhaps among their well-publicised staff shortages are the people who can count properly. Another interesting figure I saw in the media recently: nobody is convicted for 97% of the crimes committed in this country.

I really hope he gets at least 45 minutes on the pitch, perhaps against Switzerland. It's always great to see another Saints player capped for England.