Nordic Saint

I really rate McQueen. He looks a more talented player than Ward-Prowse or Targett, as he has strength, pace and that very rare quality in our current squad, he is a good finisher. I think he will turn into a very good attacking midfielder. We will regret selling him.

Let's hope not. We need a clearout of the dead wood. One ex-goalkeeper as a first team coach is enough.

Ben Gibson, Nick Powell, Carlos Bacca and Nils Petersen.

Why on earth would Vicenza be our feeder club? If Gao buys them it will be for the ssame reason he bought Saints, to help promote Lander Sports new chain of soccer centres in China. https://www.caixinglobal.com/2017-03-08/101063881.html

An all-expenses paid trip to Kiev to see his beloved Liverpool play? I wouldn't be surprised if he then pops up at the world cup finals, all on business expenses of course. Hopefully, he'll manage to fit in a proper holiday in between.

Haven't Kat and Gao's 'innovative' accounting techniques already attracted some interest in both Germany and China? https://www.90min.com/posts/5107050-german-tax-inquiry-could-force-southampton-owner-katharina-liebherr-to-sell-club https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/3422978/premier-league-blocked-gao-jisheng-200m-southampton/

Another factor is that as he has got older, he has got fatter, slower and lazier. So much of what doesn't happen at the club nowadays reflects laziness at the top.

You sir are very astute.

He's 66 this year, he is not keeping himself in good shape. In fact, for someone involved in a professional sport, he's setting a very poor example. With the facilities at hsi disposal he could at least make an effort. He appears lazy and set in his ways. A lot of what's happened at the club recently suggests there has been an air of lethargy and stagnation about the place. His mental and physical energy levels are clearly in decline. He's not going to do any better. I know you are a big fan of his, Duncan, but his best days are clearly behind him. It's time for someone sharper and younger, with more energy and enthusiasm, to take over.

Well, as we have the 12th biggest average gates in the country this century, in spite of our limited capacity, and social media figures indicate that we have one of the 10 biggest fanbases, that was hardly a massive overachievement, was it? Admittedly, in terms of trophies won, for a club of our size, we are historically just about the most underachieving team in the country and last season was another example of it. It's still underchievment though. If you want to see real overachievement, you need look no further than Bournemouth, who finished above us.

CB Fry seems to just exist in world of his own, totally out of touch with other human beings, all of whom he preceives as his enemies. His discovery of the internet has at least enabled him to express all of the pent-up frustration he feels about his isolation so we should cut him some slack.

Not according to that link you've posted. He's only started in 9 league games this season.

Reed fired Puel, not the fans. You clearly know very little about Reed anyway as you can't even spell his name.

In the world of professional football, where even a few months of failure cost most managers and DOFs their jobs, the two years of decline we've experienced under Reed would be enough to see most people fired. This isn't the Civil Service, where people have a job for life. It's a high stakes, high earning game. When someone has passed retirement age anyway, looks physically in bad shape and his performance is clearly deteriorating and it's having an adverse effect on those around him, even the Civil Service would get rid of him, espcially when he must already have more money in the bank and a bigger pension fund than 95% of the population so there's really no need to feel sorry for him.

Why should Reed be allowed to stay anyway? He has passed retirement age, he hasn't bothered to keep himself in shape, which has to be affecting both his physical and mental levels of energy, he seems to fall out with all of our best players and managers and his mistakes are costing the club a lot both on and off the pitch.

The board and owners' main objective is to make money by selling players for profit and that's what they do. If it were to strengthen the first team squad, our better players would be retained longer and our worse ones replaced sooner. The consequence is that our best players are sold while the mediocre ones are retained. Unless the owners' priorities have changed, that's what I'd expect to happen again this summer. So players like Bertrand, Tadic and Gabbiadini will be sold while players like Carrillo, Long, Redmond and Hoedt will be retained, with the net result being another downgrade in the quality of the squad.

You're right. He probably is worth our entire team but he was just a sub for Man City. He scored the winning goal though.

Go.

According to this thread, Reed has been on gardening leave for months and the club is just waiting for him to find another job (which could takes many more months if not years as who would want him?): https://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/football/southampton/forum/223868/page:1

Our former head of recruitment, Paul Mitchell, did it, both here and at Tottenham and now he's going to do it for RB Leipzig. His replacement Ross Wilson hasn't shown that he can and therein lies our core problem.

I am. We can't scrape through another season without a goal scorer. We don't have one in midfield either.

You could equally well say he's finished below Puel in 2 consecutive seasons so that makes Puel a better manager. We are in the same position today as we were when Pellegrino was sacked, one place above the bottom 3. Whilst I share the euphoria we all feel and agree that Hughes deserves his million pound bonus for keeping us up, I'm also mindful of his overall results over the last two years and the fact that fans and players of previous clubs he's managed were glad to se the back of him. Today will tell us a lot. Pellegrino's Saints were incredibly unlucky to lose away to Man City, a game we deserved to draw, to a goal in extra time added to added time, a bit like the Everton goal. Meanwhile Hughes' Stoke team lost 7-2 to them. Let's see today if Hughes has learned from his failure at Stoke. A win or draw today will go a long way towards convincing me that we should keep him.

Swansea have never beaten Stoke by more than a 3 goal margin and they've played them 69 times.

Can we now expect Les to resume being the public face of Southampton FC, Ralph to fly back to Canada and Les's PR videos to start again for the first time since we reached the League Cup Final?

Apply for planning permission to put an upper tier on the Kingsland, to take the capacity up to 38,000. Next season will be the 11th of our 11 top-flight seasons at St Mary's when our average gates are over 30,000. We should plan for future growth now. Other clubs are expanding. We need to keep pace if we want to stay in the top flight.