The9

...meanwhile I'm keeping an eye on Champions League games to see who Saints might be playing in the Europa League group stages.

Ooh, 2-0 to Morecambe. They're 20th on the live table...

Jack Dunn is the Liverpool loanee... hat-trick in the EFL Cup last week and a goal in L2 on the weekend... left midfielder.

Hm, Rostov 1-0 up in Amsterdam away to Ajax, that would leave us needing two upsets for Pot 3. Though it could lead to us playing Ajax!

Well done on ignoring the "your" as well.

He was their best player for the first 4 months or so last season, then started getting dropped for no apparent reason and his form tailed off.

Not from the bench he isn't.

An interesting theory, but Koeman was a big a player name as we're ever likely to get, and it's not like we signed any Dutch players who were significantly better than any other nationality (apart from Van Dijk, but he was obvious enough that even I knew we should and could sign him and I barely take any notice of transfer rumours). Also, how many stars of Prem quality are there in Ligue 1 who haven't already been signed, aren't being signed by Prem clubs with more money than us, and would actually improve us?

Your argument is promoting that we let players' contracts expire and don't get a transfer fee for them, rather than our far more sensible approach of signing them to longer deals and selling them when their value is much higher than it would be if they left on a free. It also ignores that anyone decent who the club wants to keep will get offered a new contract but if they want to leave won't sign it - which was the case with Wanyama and a few others.

Well, if we hadn't just offered them better money I'm fairly sure some of them also wouldn't be here already, so that's "when has contracts meant anything".

To be fair, they're not always backwards.

Yeah, you helmet.

A full complement of L2 games this midweek... Lovely midweek evening trip to Morecambe for the (very) few tonight. Given that my trip to Morecambe 2 seasons ago took the best part of 8 hours I do hope they don't get stuck around Winchester like everyone seemed to last night for hours on end...

Yep, those 5 players or so who just signed new deals are indeed "compelling evidence that players are very keen to leave as soon as humanly possible".

Wot no CL fixtures? Due to the games being played on Tue/Wed, and only 3 CL Playoff round teams being rated lower than us, the only one we care about today is Ajax v Rostov, and we want Rostov to lose, which tbf looks pretty likely. A reminder that we only need one upset in the EL ties (which start with Beitar Jerusalem on Wednesday, and there are 22 of them) as long as the 3 unseeded CL teams with worse coefficients than Saints lose. The other two in the CL we want to lose are Dundalk and Hapoel Be'er Sheva.

Koeman took weeks to change a system that wasn't working when we didn't win for ages last season, and Pochettino's biggest criticism was that he had absolutely no plan B, so let's not talk rubbish here... at least Puel can argue he's still getting the players used to a new system and, as last season, there are key players missing in defence, yet unlike last year we didn't comfortably lose at home to a side that'll probably finish in the bottom half. I do think we'll lose on Friday though, Man U looked a lot less crappy against Bournemouth, they've shipped out all the rubbish kids and signed expensive experienced replacements, and Zlatan looked like he could be an aerial threat at any point even when he wasn't doing anything else. Rooney looked primed to be the bloke Mourinho picks on though, so maybe they won't score... though we've conceded in 13 successive games now, and anything other than Forster/a right back/Fonte/Van Dijk/Bertrand looks weak.

Our STs in L1 used to be behind a couple of little kids and their dad, who occasionally stood on their seats so they could see. The elder boy is now approximately 7ft tall and his brother is rapidly catching up (they are very evident in pic 22 on the fans' gallery from Saturday on the OS). I get to see both wings quite nicely, but lots of bobbing about is required for anything down the middle now. Maybe I should stand on my seat.

Morecambe seem to have unearthed a bit of a gem in some scouser they have on loan who's scoring for fun, and as a result don't look like the relegation favourite they were a couple of weeks ago, so that'll be interesting for them.

We lost to Everton 3-0 at home last season with Fonte, Wanyama, Mane and Pelle in the team. So I think your theory falls apart there.

He didn't cheat, he deliberately committed a foul and was punished for that foul. How's he cheating? He's not even cheating if he does it and gets away with it.

August 2013, we also won away at Coventry circa '99 that I remember (and possibly others) - we haven't won at home in the first game in the top division since 1988 though.

"Hi".

Hojbjerg looked like he'd been playing in the Prem for 5 years already, great strength, gets around, sharp passing including forward, looks like an excellent prospect. Ward-Prowse has gone backwards since the Groningen game when he also looked incisive and involved, but it doesn't help when the defence knows what you're trying to do every single time you attack, and is able to dismiss any aerial threat and just focus on the one type of attacking they know they will face.

I'm looking forward to the club announcing completely different shirt numbers for the Europa League, just to f'ck with us. It's not unprecedented either, a few clubs have used slightly different numbers for youth players in Europe compared to domestic fixtures (probably something to do with consecutive numbering rules, but who knows...).

I deliberately didn't get into Academy sponsors (Orchard, Centerprise etc) or testimonials. Just competitive first team matches. Mary's Meals only sponsored the training kit for the first team.