Nordic Saint

And we weren't in the bottom 3 when we sacked him. Now we are 4 points adrift and out of the FA Cup. It's shocking how fast things have gone downhill since then, isn't it?

No, things are not as childish and simplistic as that, which is why I haven't said it, whereas the statements I quoted are listed as if they are established 'facts' without anyone stopping to question who the source was or what their motive was for feeding such stories to the press. Les Reed seems to have fallen out with just about every manager, coach, scout and player who was doing a good job for the club so it's hardly surprising they either leave of their own accord or get nudged out. Of course, going to a bigger club is attractive to most of them so it often suits them very well too. But, the club's modus operandi has been to produce players from the Academy or talent spot them abroad so that they can be sold for a profit to rival clubs (which presumably is the vision of a cash cow that Kat managed to sell to Gao). It wouldn't be good PR to simply tell the fans that (although some of us might appreciate the honesty) so we get this constant stream of rumours about players 'sulking', 'threatening to go on strike', 'thinking they are billy big ********', how 'the other players will be glad to see the back of them' etc etc, being fed to the internet and the press with the effect that some fans have been successfully convinced that the board and owner really wanted to keep them and weren't motivated by money at all whereas I think players like Mane, Wanyama and van Dijk weren't bought with the intention of them having a long-term career at our club but rather as business investments to be sold for profit to other clubs. The board has been so focussed on making money, with players viewed as no more than stock, that it has neglected building a football team. Successful teams usually have a large nucleus of good players who have played together for many years; with our club's revolving door policy, we don't.

As a matter of interest, how do you know all this 'information'? A lot of it would have involved contract negotiations behind closed doors between Les Reed, the players and their agents. I remember very similar stories about Koeman and Fonte and in fact just about everyone else Les Reed wanted to sell or get rid of. So, who exactly is is the source of all these rumours about players and managers, whcih many fans on here seem to take as gospel? I also heard that Les wanted to sell van Dijk in the summer but that Gao wouldn't pay Kat for the club if any more players were sold before he took over, presumably because he wanted his slice of the action. Yet, we heard stories about Les making a bold stand against Liverpool.

Mo Salah is a wonderful player. Pompey fans, for example, have never seen him play live and probably never will do. Seeing great players and even occasionally a few of them like Mane playing for us is one of the things I'm going to miss about the Premier League. . I know it's unfashionable to be a football fan, as opposed to a hater of all footballers, but I am. If I just wanted to drink with my mates, buy cheap tickets, always have 3 O' clock Saturday kick-offs and support a local team, I'd go to watch Sholing instead. But, as a football fan, I enjoy good quality football and when Saints win games at the highest level it's even better.

After every big game, you're going to get some fans whingeing on here because everybody else didn't look like them, dress like them and behave exactly like them. They're always going to be disappointed because that's never going to happen as this isn't North Korea. The random seating arrangments at Wembley inevitably throw people together who wouldn't normally choose to be. When the game goes well, nobody minds; when it goes badly, these little things seem to irritate some people. To my right there were 2 drunk chaps in their 20s, who started, 'Stand up if you love the Saints' half a dozen times: a bit like people who are desperate to start Mexican waves at cricket. Then, when that didn't work, one of them shouted 'Get into them' while the other one replied 'F--k them up' for much of the 2nd half. Then to my left there was a 30 something husband and wife with their 6-year-old son, who sat quietly throughout the game and then there a few like me, who joined in some songs, sat for much of the game and stood up when everybody else stood up. I even heard someone near me mention popcorn, although I didn't take a photograph of them. None of them bothered me. They were all enjoying the game in their own way. Life would be boring if we were all the same - ask the North Koreans.

Bad news for us too. But did anybody realistically expect them to give a job to Les Reed? I guess this means we can soon expect his next 'leak' to the media that he has been 'shortlisted' for another job (a euphemism for 'he's applied'), which, of course, he won't get either.

To be fair, Gabbiadini was and he'd only been on the pitch a few minutes.

The board and owners have alienated the fanbase to an extent I can't recall since the Branfoot era,when there were also fan boycotts. I went today, hoping we'd pull off a miracle but realistically expecting us to lose. Considering the current shambolic state the club and team are in, I thought those of us who turned up gave decent support, although I was in the lower tier, which was full. It wasn't up to the League Cup Final standard but we didn't have any goals to cheer and it was only when we scored in the final that the support really took off. Our support was the least of our problems today. Even the most loyal of fans needs something to cheer occasionally, like a goal or better still, a win or even the hope of a win.

Hughes is a record-breaker already! The first man to manage 2 Premier League teams knocked out of the FA Cup in the same year and soon to be added to that another record: the first manager to manage 2 Premier League teams relegated in the same year. So that will be a double record. There is a reason why that has never happened before. No other club was ever stupid enough to appoint a amanager who had just been sacked from a rival club below them in the league because he was getting them relegated, when they themselves were trying to avoid relegation. We weren't even in the bottom 3 when Pellegrino was sacked.

We need to get rid of as much of the dead wood as possible and use the money to buy some of the best Championship and League One players, who have been regular first teamers and stars for their teams. Some to consider: David Raya, Sam Morsy, Dan Burn, Dael Fry, Nick Powell, James Maddison, Ollie Watkins and Albert Adomah. If Austin can stay fit, he'll be the top scorer in the Championship. I also think Josh Sims and Sam McQueen will thrive there.

Long had just one good season in the Championship, 2010/11. That was the only season in his entire career when he scored more than 10 league goals. The other seasons in the Championship he didn't score many. 2005/06 3 2008/09 9 2009/10 6 His finishing has deteriorated over the years so it's unlikely he'd be a great finisher in the Championship. If we have to rely on Long to score our goals, we're going to be in as much trouble next season as we are in this one as his poor finishing has been one of the key reasons why we are in the relegation zone. Last night was another example of how his woeful finishing costs us points.

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).