Nordic Saint

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.

I agree with you. Saints are a top flight club. It's where we belong. Those who wish to embrace the lower leagues can go and find a lower leaguue team to support. There's one 18 miles east of us, who'd love to be where we are.

We could have put another tier on the Kingsland, which would have been a decent long-term investment as stadium construction costs increase at a phenomenal rate.

Yes, Stoke players and fans seem to hate Hughes so I guess they'll be quite happy to lose to Swansea. "Bojan Mackey All Time Stoke City XI ********** Posts: 10,676 Hughes Go on, send two clubs down in one season you boring, useless *****."

Like most of our rivals, they've got better players than we have in key positions: Lewis Dunk is better than any of our central defenders, Pascal Groß creates more goals than any of our midfielders and Glenn Murray scores more goals than any of our strikers. Considering all the money we have splashed out on players like Hoedt, Boufal and Carrillo, it shows just how damaging our poor recruitment has been in the last couple of years when the teams around us have bought much better players for less.

I was there, having just flown back from Brazil in time for the game. The atmosphere was brilliant and we were all on the pitch at the end. I thought Sheffield United fans took it all very well, considering the fact it was a crucial game for them too, whch they needed to win to get into the play-offs. There were a few Pompey fans there, who'd come to see us get relegated. They were a glum bunch who got on the train at Woolston after the game and kept close to the guard but started getting vocal when as we got farther east.

We weren't in the bottom 3 and we were still in th FA Cup when Pellegrino was sacked. That's the position, I'd prefer now: above the relegation zone. I'm not saying Pellegrino ws a good manager but I'd certainly prefer the position we were in then.

As a Saints fan, I appreciate any trophy. It's a pity the club didn't do more to promote the game more as there could have been a much bigger crowd. A hat-trick from one of the U18 players in the team, Will Smallbone, was a highlight. He looks like quite a prospect

Do we have anyone in our squad good enough that Swansea fans would be relieved to see missing from our team when we play them? I'm struggling to think of anyone. Possibly, on current form, Tadic. But, most teams would look at our team sheet nowadays and think there's really nothing to worry about there: all of their best players have been sold.

It's been deleted as Bournemouth fans weren't very happy about it: https://bournemouth-forum.vitalfootball.co.uk/threads/southampton-v-afc-bournemouth.5741/page-20

Bournemouth players were impressed by the atmosphere: Joshua King tweeted this: "In all fairness all anger aside, that was a proper football atmosphere."

The singing, clapping and chanting from the Chapel end was a real surprise. It's long been rumoured that's what the players have wanted and they applauded the Chapel end after the game, although they went to the Northam/Kingland corner first. Could this be the beginning of a home kop at last? Let's hope so. It will give us a real home advantage.

A win and a draw from our final 3 games should be enough to keep us up. With little left to play for, Everton may be our best chance of that win.

If you want gossip and negative rumours about Saints players and managers, Uncle Les is you man. He'd throw his own grandmother under a bus to save himself.

"which, under the guidance of the vice-chairman Les Reed and director of football operations Ross Wilson, had long been one of their greatest strengths." I think that's pretty obvious. The same source as most of the other stories which emanate from the club.