Nordic Saint

When he starts regularly, Austin is a 15-20 goal a season Premier League striker.

They've got a very good squad, although they obviously miss Lukaku. I'd expect them to finish in the top 8 again this season. I'm not a big fan of Allardyce but remember he was the manager who led Bolton to their run of 4 consecutive top 8 finishes.

Sunderland and Hull are living your Championship dream. Their fans must be loving it.

Attendance: 1,780 (128 away fans) https://www.portsmouthfc.co.uk/news/2017/december/match-report-for-portsmouth-vs-northampton-town-on-02-dec-17/

Two players who used to be criticized a lot who are now really good: Raheem Sterling and Ashley Young. Sterling never used to have any end product. Now he is a deadly finisher. Young used to have little impact on games. Now, he is arguably the best crosser of a ball in the country. Maybe there is more to come from Redmond?

He's beginning to show us what he can do now.

City scored in the SIXTH minute of injury time. where did all that come from??? There shouldn't have been more than 4 minutes at tops. Feeling cheated of a well-deserved point by the officials.

In fact, Lukaku's scored 8 goals and had 3 assists in 13 Premier League games so far this season and scored 12 goals in 20 games in all competitions. But, you can't even spell his name and think "Jason Dodd is a legend". Whatever. You really don't know much about football, do you? https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/romelu-lukaku/profil/spieler/96341

We would have done if he hadn't taken off Gabbiadini and brought on Shane Long at a crucial moment, just when we were closing in on victory. That substitution gifted the game to Man U. He snatched defeat from the hands of victory.

Saints couldn't score goals this season with Shane Long up front; with Charlie Austin they can. Having a goal scorer up front makes a massive difference. Look at how Everton are struggling, now that they have lost theirs, Lukaku. We certainly struggled for goals after our 2 top goal scorers, Mane and Pelle, were sold. The crucial difference between the top teams and the bottom ones is that they have great goal scoring strikers, like Aguero, Kane, Vardy and Lukaku. With a Premier League goal scoring rate of a goal every 2.5 games, Austin is a fantastic asset for a club like ours. Of course, when he isn’t selected Austin can’t score and when Long is selected he can’t either

There are plenty of Saints fans in Portsmouth although Arsenal is the favourite PL club there. The residents of Paulsgrove celebrating Saints' cup win: https://bobbystokesbook.com/2016/01/28/the-day-portsmouth-celebrated-a-southampton-goal/

I don't think any of us have seen him play that well before. Even in his last game for the U23s, he looked anonymous. Against Everton, he seemed to grow in confidence as the game wore on and in the 2nd half especially was the best midfielder on the pitch. An absolute revelation. Let's hope he can keep it up.

Totally agree. I never understood why some of our fans raved about him as some sort of superstar. He was never anything more than an average Premier League midfielder. Playing alongside Wanyama made life very easy for him. Even then, Schneiderlin often used to get caught dwelling on the ball, and was too easily dispossessed. At times it's like he's daydreaming. He seems to find it hard to concentrate for a whole game.

Probably a good call. Long is not a goal scorer and it would be great if we could play Austin for 90 minutes of every game but he does have knees issues and was limping before he was subbed today.We need to save Austin for the games we can win, like Bournemouth and Huddersfield, where he will score goals, and use Long as an extra defender in the games we can't, like Man City away. It would have been ideal to have both Austin and Pelle in the squad, as between them, they'd have kept the goal scoring going all season. I'm still smiling at Charlie Austin's performance today. It was just so good to see a Saints striker look full of goals. Even the fact he was in the starting lineup semed to lift the crowd and there was none of the expected negativity The crowd was noisily behind the team right from the off. I know there are some who post on here who don't seem to care whether we win or lose and somehow think that makes them better fans but if you love the club with a passion, you really feel the highs and lows: defeats are depressing and victories are exhilarating. Today's game was just what the doctor ordered. Thank you, Charlie Austin and all of the team

Great performance and a very entertaining game. We can look forward to more of the same with Charlie Austin in the team. All of those wasted crosses the team has been putting into the opposition box for months, just for nobody to be there, apart from opposition defenders, can now be turned into goals. I remember when Pelle was sold and fans were saying it's OK, we've got Austin. But, then the managers didn't play him. Hopefully, Pellegrino has seen the light now.

What a difference it made to have a goal scorer in our lineup today. Austin is good for 15-20 goals a season and we wait until now to give him his first league start. Still, better late than never. Let's hope the rumours about Les trying to sell Austin to QPR in January are not true. I wonder how much we'd have to pay them to take Long instead? Playing him as our striker instead of Austin has caused a big problem for the whole team for months. The rest of a team looks lost without a goal scorer, as we saw with Everton today now that they no longer have Lukaku.

It would help the club more if someone could pull the trigger on Reed and his favourites, Black and Watson, before we appoint another manager.

Either Kat is a very shrewd investor herself or she has great financial advice, which is very likely as the only part of her father's business empire she hasn't sold is the Swiss investment bank, because before she sold the club, she got back the loan she'd made to it plus interest and then got the 210 million from Gao. So, she has cleared a profit of around a quarter of a billion pounds and still owns 20% of the business to top up her income with. There can be very few individuals who have ever made that much money out of a football club before. I guess the planned sale of van Dijk had to be delayed until January, as Mr Gao wouldn't have agreed to pay her if there was no one of note left to sell, but as she's retained 20%, she can still get some of that fee as well. Mr Gao must be quietly seething as the cupboard really does look exceedingly bare.

The highlight of The War On Drugs' gig at Portsmouth Guildhall was a superb extended version of An Ocean In Between The Waves. They ran up against the 11pm Guildhall curfew so there was only time for one encore. The Barr Brothers' performance of the title track of Queens Of The Breakers, especially, was much better than the recorded version. They really ae very good live musicians.

Thank you for clarifying that, Guan. I always find your posts interesting.

An insider who, as I recall, seemed to get 'leaks' from Les Reed or someone very close to him. Perhaps Reed wants to have the option to shift the blame for Pellegrino's sacking onto the fans just in case it turns out to be a bad decision. That way, rather than admitting he's got another appointment wrong, he can say he was just trying to keep the fans happy. Old Les seems to be very good at setting up scapegoats to take the blame when things go wrong whilst he loves to get in front of the cameras to appear wholly responsible when things go right. How many of the players and managers he's seen off in the last few years have left us with their reputations intact? They were all greedy, bigheaded b@stards, weren't they? Meanwhile, none of the blame for their departures was ever attached to Old Les

We are already experiencing that 'excitement'. Most bookies have us as 10/1 to be relegated and a couple have us as short as 8/1. Personally, I preferred the excitement of competing at the top rather than the bottom and qualifying for Europe in 2016. For me, 2015/16 ranks up there with 1968/69, 1970/71, 1980/81, 1983/84 and 1984/85, as one of our most exciting seasons. Most of the relegation struggle seasons of the 90s, apart from the final 1 or 2 games when we survived, were drab, especially the Branfoot years, relieved only by the individual skill of Le Tissier. This season, so far, reminds me a bit of the Branfoot era, except we don't have a Le Tissier. I really don't think it's that exciting. People in general tend to have a heightened sense of excitement when they are in their late teens and early 20s and so those are the times they remember as being the most exciting. That's when their musical tastes and, more pertinently in this thread, perceptions of what supporting Saints should be like are formed. For you it, it would seem, it was the 1990s and so you remember relegation struggles as exciting times. For some others, it will be more successful spells in the club's history. We're not all the same and that's not a bad thing.

Especially you it would seem, as you think you are somehow better than a whole load of people who post on here. I very much doubt that you are. You also seem to have a sense of entitlement that you are so superior you can insult everybody else.

Yet, Cortese advised Markus Liebherr to buy SFC, and Kat Liebherr must be incredibly grateful to him for one of the most profitable investments ever made in a football club. She has a profit of at last 200 million in her bank account to thank him for. I don't think the initial investment in players and infrastructure which brought her that massive profit have cost her one penny in the end as her loan to the club was paid back to her with interest (+5% per annum, I believe) before she got the 210 million from Gao. Without that initial very shrewd investment guided by Cortese, she'd now be a lot less wealthy.

Our best position in the 2nd tier ever 2nd; our best position in the top flight 2nd. We've been relegated from both twice. Also, this ******** about THE top six ithat other teams can't compete with is defeatist rubbish. The top six is different every year. We finished in it as recently as 2016 and Leicester were 1st. As long as we're in the top flight, we have a better chance of winning cups, qualifying for Europe and attracting exciting players to our club. Both our attendances and social media fugures show that we have the 12th biggest fanbase in the country, and we have been in the top flight for 41 of the last 50 years. To be relegated to the 2nd tier of football would be a massive underachievement for a club of our size. I don't recall any of our fans being unhappy with the Permier League at the end of the 2015/16 season. The root cause of dissatisfaction now is that our team is underperforming badly and the same thing could happen in the Championship with an even poorer standard of football. Saints are a top flight team. It's where we belong.