The9

Looks perfectly competent enough for backup to me now, having been utterly gash on his debut. 2 year deal suggests lack of expectation for him, and possibly some for McCarthy, Turnbull or Stephens.

Not to mention that he was almost certainly hanging his head about his dire performance at St Mary's on his return as he was being substituted.

Part of the reason he gets "bad press" is because playing at centre back he makes at least one awful error every single match. Usually they involve sprinting past a striker and getting wrong side, or hastily clearing to an opponent when better options are available, or just misreading a ball in the air and getting turned, or generally just beaten for pace. The last one is at least understandable, but a player in a top half Prem side should not be the kind of liability he proves himself to be on a regular basis. Having said all that, he's good enough to be cover in a side with the budgetary limitations we have, and he does provide a defensive option for the full back positions if we ever want that option. He's looked a lot better in the left back position than he did in the first few times he played there and should be considered as an option as opposed to the equally defensive and currently beleaguered Targett. The full back position is a little more forgiving of hastiness than the positions directly in front of goal. However, neither of them offer us what we're looking for in most matches from our fullbacks though, which is attacking, overlapping play and crosses from deep.

Italy Away Euro 2016 kit released (though it's basically the same as Watford's black away Puma kit this season, so no great reveal).

Better than Rodriguez or Mane (or Clasie for that matter) in the same position though?

We've got one in second - interesting stats from WhoScored.com and article on Sky Sports website: 2. Cedric Soares (Southampton) Cedric Soares has impressed at full-back for Southampton Tasked with replacing the outgoing Nathaniel Clyne, it's fair to say Cedric Soares has made a good early impression on the south coast. The Portuguese has looked an astute acquisition already, particularly impressing in attacking areas. The 24-year old has created eight chances for team-mates in four appearances, picking up an assist on his debut for the Saints with one of six accurate crosses for the club. Meanwhile he has been busy in the defensive phase too, making more tackles (12) than any team-mate with a further three interceptions per game. A WhoScored.com rating of 7.51 in August was the highest of any Southampton player to feature in all four of their league matches and Soares looks likely to be another more-than-capable replacement picked up by the club in recent seasons. FWIW the others are 5. Idrissa Gueye (Villa) - CM Only two players have produced more tackles and interceptions combined this season (29), 4. Yann M'Vila (Sunderland) - DM four tackles and 2.7 interceptions per game, while no team-mate has created more chances (five). Free kick goal on weekend. 3. Andre Ayew (Swansea) - AM® 3 goals in 4, averaging 3.3 shots and 1.5 key passes per game, only three team-mates producing more tackles (seven) 1. Jordan Amavi (Villa) - LB Most completed dribbles in PL (15), 1 assist, 3.5 tackles and 3.3 interceptions per game - but handed Crystal Palace victory getting caught in possession last week! Still highest ranked new player and Villa player based on average score of 7.62. http://www.skysports.com/football/news/11095/9976199/premier-league-new-signings-top-five-performers-in-august Interesting to see how good Cedric's personal stats are, seems to have been lost in the frothing about our missing defence.

Away to West Brom is a very different proposition from home to Norwich (with 10 men for an hour), I suspect we'll be keen to start with Romeu - and Wanyama if he's in the right frame of mind - maybe with the 5 at the back seen at Watford (though if VVD can play in that formation, I have no idea). Personally I'd prefer 4-2-3-1 with Fonte/Van Dijk and Romeu/Wanyama, Cedric at RB and Yoshida at LB. The 2 DM shield should be sufficient for defending the flanks in front of the FBs so I'd be ok with Tadic/Rodriguez/Mane across the AM and Pelle up top.

Seager is probably an exception in that his style is completely unsuited to the club's style, and making him play as "Pelle light" isn't going to play to his strengths or ours - he's a finisher with a bit of link play playing back to goal, but much better as a finisher than having to drop off into midfield, and he'd probably be much better off at another club with a more suited style. He's a Charlie Austin type of player and just doesn't fit when played up top in the way Saints want to play. Sam McQueen looks much more comfortable in the first team formation as an attacking wide player than Seager in what is nominally his position. This is the problem with re-working strikers into supporting attacking midfielder roles - some of them are strikers due to their quick movement over a short distance, ability to control or divert a touch into the net when off-balance, and anticipation and quick thinking in finishing, not their ability to get their head up, shoot from range, run at defenders or play accurate passes.

Bertrand and Romeu will already have plenty of "used to play for top 6 club but now I'm valued" stories.

I'm hopeful that Juanmi will turn into the number 10 for next season, suspect our new recruitment process involves getting players on board for a chunk of time before they are ready for the team - not sure whether it was a strength thing or height of the Danes, but we seemed to be resting Cedric midweek, maybe they're both on a bulking up/strength strategy. Can see the logic in playing Clasie in the hole, given that his strength seems to be quick short passes when in space and his physique is more suited to the attacking position. Hopeful Van Dijk will be an improvement on Yoshida and Caulker, which seems likely even never having watched him play. Caulker needs a bit of game time in a confident side to sharpen himself up, if he learns to pass on the deck a bit more he'll be an asset too, albeit most likely from the bench.

Can't see Liverpool selling him, can't see us paying the wages he wants, can't see him passing our character test any more either.

One of the keys to Schneiderlin's performance last season, by his own admission, was the fans supporting him at Liverpool after his twitter outburst. I see no reason for Wanyama to be different. Could be a few weeks until "he's a Kenyan..." gets another outing though, unless people just can't help themselves.

Don't make me research the careers of the last 40 England U21 captains or something...

It's like a Bat-sign to me.

He's just left the Premiership.

There's been a weird Football Manager placement going on with the BBC's site today, they've got an "FM Expert" reeling off the stats (which as we know from our own experience are pulled together by geeks with a massive amount of subjective judgement - James Ward-Prowse captains England to World Cup wins in literally ALL of my multi-year sims due to MLG giving him a preposterous amount of potential) and the name of the game is all over a couple of sites.

Stoke signed Andrew Davies from us a week before (19th August 2008 ) and it MUST have had something to do with that. At the time we were tangibly skint and Lowe was doing all the deals he could to ship out players - by August it became obvious we also needed some warm bodies in return where possible; Licka, Lundekvam, Makin, Idiakez, Ostlund, Viafara, Baseya, Powell, A Davies, Safri and J Wright were released or left by July '08 as well as the Bale lump sum, and August 2008 saw only Forecast and Pulis in (both from clubs we'd recently concluded deals with). So I suspect your answers are: Tony Pulis and Lowe both instigators and pushing the deal. I shouldn't think we had many scouts left by then.

Clarsie would be my guess.

Needs to bulk up a little bit for that, though he's already fairly tenacious and he did ok sitting in. Usual thing where he makes a couple of obvious passes in high-profile passages of play or takes a couple of free-kicks and people only notice those, but he was better at sitting than Davis has been, and you can't question his dedication to personal development based on his sudden free-kick skills appearing overnight two years ago, so hopefully he'll take away some pointers and grow into it. Wouldn't hurt for us to be able to sideline Wanyama for a few games.

Still time. Pelle was excellent at the start of last season, teams adjusted their systems to counter it, it took a few weeks for us to adjust our system, Mane started scoring more as a result. Now we have the best of both worlds as we vary the source. If we can get the balance right with the defensive players we'll be ok, but the defence is the source of the problems at the moment, not the attack. (Though I still can't explain why we were so inefficient with so much ball in Denmark).

29 Aug 08 to 01 Aug 11, nothing resembling any kind of first team appearance, in fact I only saw him twice for the reserves at a time I was going to Staplewood most matches, and he was dire.

Not a "current" one, but Jonno Quick Forte had no kind of on-field Saints career even by the time we were in the Championship, never mind the two years we paid him as a Prem player. Signed 31 Jan 2011, left 1 Aug 2014, started 2 league matches for Saints (scored 2 goals!). Actually had 4 goals in 5 starts in all competitions thanks to his 10 sub appearances. Mayuka started 1 league game (15 subs) and 2 League Cup games (1 sub). 1 goal.

For reasons best known to myself, when I got back from Denmark I listened to BT Sport's build up to our Europa League match. Owen Hargreaves made so many factual errors in the 30 seconds he was speaking I had to wonder why they even bothered having him on. "First European match in years" was the highlight of it. Well yeah, apart from the first leg a week previously and the other two matches the tv channel you're on has already showed live from the previous round... Still, at least that's ignorance, not calculated misinformation.

This is interesting from a coach... is that because you think it's too easy to exploit the seams between the zones or just because man-marking makes it easier to identify the flaws?

Just to counter, we also scored the fewest goals on counteracttacks of all teams in the Premier League last season, with a mighty zero.