Nordic Saint

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.

I agree and if Hughes wants to play 3 central defenders then those 3: Stephens, Yoshida and Bednarek. Hoedt and Vestergaard should be sold at the earliest available opportunity and the money reinvested in a player who can cope in the Premier League.

Yet she still felt the need to charge 'her' club interest on loans. She has certainly squeezed every penny out of her father's initial £12 million investment. She owes Cortese an enormous debt of gratitude for persuading her father to buy the club and then increasing its value by so much. He has made her a fortune.

The recurring theme seems to be the lack of money. That suggests we would be plunged into debt if we did get relegated. Let's hope we don't as the aftermath would more than likely be a repeat of the last time it happened.

Whether you choose to believe the figures or not, that link came from the leading academic researcher on football finance so he would have researched those figures about as thoroughly as anyone possibly could. It's his job. https://twitter.com/KieranMaguire

Our wage bill is not only bigger than Everton's and West Ham's, it's not far behind Spurs'! There has been much talk about how well our club is run financially but the truth is huge amounts of money have been wasted in transfer fees and wages to produce a poor team which looks like getting us relegated. Those expensive failures will then have to be offloaded for far less than we paid for them and the wages of those we can't offload will probably cripple us financially.

Whether he is here or not seems to make little difference apart from reducing the wage bill. I guess it's only when we're recruiting new players and staff that we'll notice any difference. But as his appointee, Ross Wilson, appears to have stepped into his shoes, things will probably continue much as they were. I guess we all hoped that they had someone new in mind ready to replace him and that person would have chosen our next manager and overseen player recruitment in January. It's still not too late for that to happen but there doesn't appear to havebeen much long term planning going on at the club in recent times. The club has been more reactive than proactive.

That would mean we'd be singing it to ourselves then.

They have become thoroughly demoralized. But, even in our last game I could see they were still trying and most are playing to the best of their limited ability, minus the 1 or 2% you get from confidence and being surrounded by quality team mates, albeit in a shambolic, disorganised team. Since Fonte and van Dijk left, there is no real leadership on the pitch and it's clear there is very little effective leadership from Hughes and his coaching team off it. Also, the lack of match fitness from what is apparently a poor training regime at the club means that their efforts flag in the final twenty minutes of games.

That has to be a joke. You can see the impact his coaching has had on our players. I watched him trying to coach Charlie Austin how to shoot. No wonder Austin doesn't score any more.

I think Jack Stephens has a lot more potential but having Hughes and three goalkeepers as first team coaches isn't going to improve anybody.