Nordic Saint

Following a spell in North London, the black box now resides in Leipzig. All we have left now are those two transfer geniuses Les and Ross. The man responsible for our successful recruitment was our Head of Recruitment, Paul Mitchell. He was the man who found us players like Mane, Alderweireld and Wanyama. The last of the players he identified was van Dijk, who we were linked with before he left.

If Old Les gets himself shortlisted for another job he's applied for, I'm sure he'll let everybody know immediately. If he ever got as far as the job interview stage (unlikely I know), he'd probably make another of his self-promoting PR videos to brag about it. I wonder how many jobs he's applied for over the years? Nobody else would really be stupid enough to take him, would they?

You may think of us as a "small joke fish" but I don't and neither do other Saints fans that I know. We have the 11th biggest avreage home gates in the top flight and the 12th biggest in the country this century and social media figures indicate that we have the 10th biggest fanbase. To want to hide below the top 20 clubs because it's easier is pathetic. We have been in the top flight for 41 of the last 50 years. It's where we belong. I will miss being the top club on the south coast. To be a league below Bournemouth and Brighton is frankly embarrassing. Where tf is your pride?

But, when Reed finally gets rid of any of our worst staff, he always manages to find someone even worse to replace them, in this case, another relegation specialist: Kelvin Davis.

Mark Hughes looks like he'll have been manager during relegation seasons at his last 3 clubs, QPR, Stoke and Saints, although he was sacked before the end of the season at the last 2 so he's avoided the actual relegations.

He was our man of the match against Chelsea. He may not be Jose Fonte but he's the best captain we've got left. Our fans always seem to turn against our best players i.e. the ones Kat and Les want to cash in on next. We got the same rubbish about Mane, Wanyama, Fonte and van Dijk before they were sold, whereas the players who are so poor they know thy can't sell them, like Long, are left unscathed by Reed's negative PR campaigns. It' embarrasing how some of our fans dance so readily to Les Reed's tune. He's a con man.

I've been to games in South America, where the atmosphere is ten times better than here and they have bands with drums, usually behind the goal, even at the Maracana. It's a hell of a lot better than the occasional polite applause we currently get from the Chapel.

They're Saints Brass and they've been entertaining Saints fans before games for a long time, usually behind the Chapel Stand. They are good musicians too. Unlike the Pompey lot, they can actually play their instruments. I like them. They are quite young and are probably a bit unsure of their status inside the ground during matches and so keep the volume down. If they were in the middle of the Chapel Stand instead of being stuck in the corner, they'd help the atmosphere because let's face it there isn't any there at the moment. There are some right killjoys on here. https://twitter.com/saintsbrass?lang=en

We never had 3 consecutive defeats under Pellegrino. We used to draw a lot of games. Hughes hasn't just got terrible results here, he was awful at Stoke too. His Stoke team let in 9 goals against Chelsea this season. Like Pardew, he is a washed-up manager in terminal decline. We don't want a failure like him here if we want to be successful in future. He is just another in a the line of increasingly poor Les Reed appointments. I hope we can get rid of both Reed and Hughes this summer.

Not if we want points. He's averaged 0 points and 3 goals conceded per game so far. Even Pellegrino was doing better than that. I wanted Paul Cook appointed instead of Hughes to keep us up this season and I still would prefer him to Hughes next season to get us promoted. We want a manager with a recent record of success, not recent failures like Hughes and Pardew.

I don't agree with C.B. Fry's attitude attitude that an owner can do wtf he or she likes with a football club. Only someoe who has no piride or any real interest in his football club would talk like that. It is a privelege to be in charge of a club which represents a community, and most owners feel a sense of responsibility to the fans whose club they are entrusted with. Instead, she has made more money out of this football club than just about any other owner in the history of football and even the mainstream media are now begining to use the term asset-stripping to describe what she has done. Her father was a different matter and I have total respect for what he did for us. He earned it.

The board and owners seem to have given up the pretence that they have much interest in strengthening the football team. Their main focus now will be on making as big a profit as possible from the player sales in the summer.

He'll make more money from jogging about a bit on a football pitch during his Saints contract than most of us will in our lifetimes, so compared to most people, I'd say he is in a bloody great position and laughing all the way to the bank. Very few footballers of his standard will ever be able to say they were the record signing for a Premier League club so he'll even have lots of great tales to tell his grandchildren one day. As a bonus, the women of Southampton are probably throwing themselves at him whenever he ventures out at night in one of his luxury cars. And you want us to feel sorry for him?

Interesting now to compare what we paid for Forster (£10 million) with what we got for Bialkowski and Boruc (nothing).

Your memory is obviously playing tricks with you again then because Watford finished 2nd just once while Liverpool won the league 8 times between 1980 and 1990. Even with all the money they currently have, I doubt that Man City will ever be that dominant. In the last 5 years, 4 different teams have been champions and 4 different teams have finished runners-up.

Nowadays, the top 6 is different nearly every year, as is the top team. In those days it was nearly always Liverpool. Instead of Ipswich, Derby and Forest we have had Leicester, Everton, Newcastle and Spurs. With the exception of the almost ever-present Man United and Liverpool, The top teams are always changing and always will do. It is true, however, that whichever club has the owner spending the most money on it will be up there but owners are constantly changing too. Man City currently have the wealthiest one. Before it was Chelsea. At one time it was Blackburn. In the future it will be other clubs.

This is the main reason Les has kept his job until now. He has not only managed to convince many of our more gullible fans, through the skilful use of strategically placed 'leaks' to the media, that the Club really wanted to keep the players it has cashed in on but even got many of our fans to say good riddance when and even before he has sold them. That is why he has been so valuable to Kat: https://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/944667/Liverpool-Southampton-Saints-fans-Van-Dijk-Lallana-Mane-Pochettino-Colin-Mafham

To be fair, Les probably had little to do with any of them, good or bad. The people chiefly responsible were our heads of recruitment, Paul Mitchell then Ross Wilson. Les just makes sure he gets his mug in the club's PR photos of the new signings and is, of course, the man responsible for selling the players. He's having a bit more difficulty finding buyers for Wilson's recruits as they aren't very good.

Chelsea's 12th man will be playing on Saturday: https://www.football.london/chelsea-fc/fixtures-results/southampton-vs-chelsea-referee-dean-14515088

We never lost 3 consecutive league games under Pellegrino. So it will be a new low for the season if we lose this one. With our lack of a central defence, we're going to need to score at least 2 goals and with Austin back there is a chance of that whereas without him there would have been none.

Very true. Brighton have gone from 2,000 average home gates in 1998 to 30,000 average gates in 2018, largely thanks to investment from their owner, Tony Bloom. Bournemouth could easily emulate that with enough investment from ambitious owners.

The ones who made no effort to force Les Reed to retire and never complained about the sale of all our best players and lack of adequate replacements, you mean? Because they'd be the only ones you could really apportion any blame to for our current demise.

Without the points won by Jay Rodriguez's goals, Puel's Saints would have finished 17th, and he had van Dijk and Fonte for a lot of games that season too. As the squad has continued to be stripped of all talent, there really isn't much left for any manager. With our current squad, I doubt we'd be any higher than we are now with Puel in charge. Even Pellegrino could have got Leicester up to 9th this season with players as good as Schmeichel, Mahrez and Vardy. Remember, when he still had van Dijk here, we were up to 11th in December this season.

It's his 10th goal so far this season.

His winning and equalizing goals still won us 5 points last season, without which we'd have finished 9 places lower in the league. Imagine what a difference they'd have made this season compared to Carrillo and Long.