Nordic Saint

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.

3 away wins in 3 different competitions in 8 days! Our teams are winning again.

Two away wins in a week! Fan-bloody-tastic. Well done Hughes and all the players. Having a goal poacher like Ings is really making a difference. It gives a lift to all of the team when they know there is someone they can rely on to put the ball in the net. When was the last time we won 2 away games in a week?

Moussa Dembele joins Lyon for £19.7m. What a bargain when you consider what we paid for Carrillo.

Yes, I re-read it. You are right. It just seems to be the opnion of that writer but, as you say, he is a prospect and already attracting attention. He's one of those players who is so good you can't fail to be impressed whenever you see him play.

Sunderland want him. He is one of our best young players and potentially already the most talented young central defender we've got. https://www.footballfancast.com/league-one/sunderland/sunderland-must-sign-christoph-klarer-on-loan-from-southampton-before-deadline

Forest seem to have followed Wolves' example by bringing in Portuguese players, João Carvalho, Gil Bastião Dias, Diogo Gonçalves and Tobias Figueiredo, and it's working for them too.

Largely agree with this. But, I would say Yoshida and Bednarek instead of Vestergaard and Hoedt because I think last night we saw our best central defensive pairing.

Gunn Cedric Bednarek Yoshida Bertrand Lemina Romeu Davis Redmond Austin Ings

Dael Fry You may not have heard of him but watch him over the next couple of years and you will see what I mean. There's no finer young central defender out there. Our own Christoph Klarer will be ready in a couple of years too. In fact, I'd have been tempted to play him alongside Yoshida at Brighton tonight. Great players break into the first team at a very young age. Fry's international honours so far: England U-17 UEFA European Under-17 Championship: Winner 2014 England U20 Tournoi Under-20 Four Nations: Winner 2017 FIFA Under-20 World Cup: Winner 2017 England U21 Toulon Tournament: Winner 2018 Toulon Tournament: Best XI 2018

It must be bloody obvious to nearly everyone by now from the dramatic downturn in the quality of our recruitment since our head of recruitment changed from Mitchell to Wilson who was mainly responsible for our sucess. We got by in the few months after Mitchell left by recruitng targets he'd already identfifed, particularly van Dijk, who we'd been linked with before Mitchell left but since Ross Wilson has had to identify targets himself, the quality of our squad and managers has rapidly declined. Meanwhile, Reed has continued selling all of our best players. The problem is they are now being replaced by dross. It's no surprise that Manchester United are interested in getting Mitchell as their Director of Football, not Reed.

Fonte is off to a flying start in France. No goals conceded in his first two games and his team is 3rd in the league. It would certainly be a great end to his career if he won another trophy. Pied is also in the squad but he's yet to make an appearance.

As you don't bother going to games, how would you know this exactly? Have you visited St Mary's yet this season? Considering the results, the support has been remarkably positive so far this season. These messageboards are where people who go to games and support the team can express their critcism of things they see going wrong. I've noticed that most of the fans on here who don't care whether we win or lose, just as long as they can praise the board of directors and slag off our fans on meessageboards, rarely bother going to games themselves and generally live as far away from Southampton as possible. The ones who are unhappy with the way our club is being run at the moment are the ones who have paid hard-earned money, seen it wasted by the club in the transfer market and had to endure a string of awful results.

We are one of the bookies' four favourites for relegation this season, along with Burnley, Cardiff and Huddersfield, so 17th would be the dream. We are back to underachieving alongside clubs with much smaller fanbases than ours. For a club of our size I think only Birmingham City can rival our history of underachievement so most of our fans have very low expectations anyway and expect next to nothing. We are, in fact, the ideal club for lazy, unambitious owners, directors, managers, coaches and players, which is perhaps why we accumulate so many of them.

Yes, a Burnley team which had just flown back from a tough game in Turkey and a Leicester team missing their goal scorer and focus of their attack, Vardy. In order to stay up these are the home games you need to really target as crucial 3-pointers because we tend to lose both our home and away games against the top 6 teams and our away games against most teams.