The9

He must have been there for a while, that's also where I bothered him, as did the wife, and a couple of our mates, all whilst "defending our table" by leaving one person there, going off to get pics with the other half of the team in duty free, and getting food...

I think he's been equally effective out wide and in the middle. He'll be glad for Rodriguez being injured when Boufal is fit though.

He has a similar role in practice to the one Lallana and Mane had - gets the ball in midfield and holds it up, links play, creates space for others. Probably shouldn't be judging him on his goalscoring record. Goes sideways a fair bit but doesn't matter as long as we make a chance eventually.

First one of the season I'm missing (not counting Checkatrade stuff) - I'm at Twickenham for NFL at the same time.

Have £4.50.

Some fans seem surprised when we wear our away kit against teams in red, so...

Having seen us concede to Leicester and drop 2 points at St Mary's due to a useless Kelvin kick straight to one of their players last season, I was a tad surprised to see Forster do the same - that and Van Dijk's backpass could probably go down to recovery after Israel.

They'll probably check all of them when it comes to posting the tickets to the address on the customer number...

Re: Romeu - he's been immense for a while now. Nice bloke too, for the 30 seconds I bothered him for a picture in Tel Aviv airport.

The MotD2 interview yesterday was Classic Claude. Started off with possibilities, moved onto chances and opportunities. His English is developing nicely.

Nah, it was because he tangibly didn't give a toss last season apart from against the teams he wanted to sign for (and he clearly didn't fancy going to Liverpool either judging by the League Cup game). Martina and Mane get and got completely different treatment, all depending on their ability. I should also point out the incredibly loud Wanyama chanting in Arnhem which only stopped after he refused to play for Saints in Denmark and got himself an attitude.

Good shout, unfortunately didn't see it until I was on a desktop. Even now we're phoning up due to the outright refusal to deal with disabled tickets online...

We did. I had the BBQ pork ribs, just to be contrary.

Actually the mobile version of the Saints ticket website doesn't allow you to change the name of the person you're buying for, so if you want to buy more than one ticket and get them together, you can't. Plus since the new site there's no longer an option to use the desktop site. So yeah, actually, despite logging on at 11am Israeli time from Tel Aviv airport on Friday I was unable to buy the three tickets together for Sunderland I wanted to.

I think "Maaaaaatty Targett... He's a legend of the Saints Academy" without all the rest of it might catch on.

It was 30 degrees and we did exactly what was expected of us without overexerting ourselves. We need 10 points to get out of the group and this means if we win at home we'll go through. It was spot on as far as I'm concerned.

2, near the front with my wife.

I have a couple of awesome sunset photos just as we arrived, that dirt track and the armed escorts casually hanging out at the Yellow service station pretty much made the trip for me.

Pretty loud in places, though a bit too organised for my liking, not an organic response to what was happening on the pitch, but then we were trying our best to quieten you down anyway. I'd like to have seen what you were like without a drum and loud hailer... Nice tifo (though if you are around to explain it to us that would be nice as I didn't recognise the people). A great experience though, your "... is on fire" was really good! Oh and tell your club they REALLY need a shop at the ground and for the away fans, we had to send people into the home end to buy souvenirs of the visit and it was a surprising oversight when you consider the South Ultras managed to set up a table to sell their t-shirts and scarves but the official club only have a shop in the city and not at the stadium.

On the bright side, got to have a bunch of selfies with them (well, Martina, Clasie, Van Dijk, Reed and Romeu - also saw Stephens, McQueen and Olomola but they were staying a bit more out of the way).

Those in the box made runs but were not found - a completely different issue. Though tbh we also didn't want to overcommit the midfield so it was only ever Redmond and Long in there, and the ball was still in front of the defence, which means far lower expectations than when you're crossing to a breaking runner and retreating defenders. Our game plan of staying goalside and keeping possession hugely reduced the likelihood of us being able to find a Saints player in the box when we did attack.

He took Hesketh off because he wasn't getting near their two big players in his area (the number 30 and the centre back who was stepping up) and was getting eased off the ball every time it came near him. Switching Redmond to the middle where he could get hold of the ball and feed the wings to keep the ball away from their central midfielders and putting Tadić on to threaten out wide hugely improved us immediately and was a masterstroke by Puel (somewhat tempered by the mistake of putting Hesketh there in the first place having only seen him against an underperforming Palace side).

We played very well, I'm gobsmacked about what people actually expect from us tbh. We were always going to go and kill the game and minimise effort in that situation. No-one going was expecting a 5 goal smashing and the first team haring around for 90 minutes in the middle of the desert and it was an excellent performance overall (with a few dodgy moments individually) for which the club should be proud. As for "never getting those days back", the trip itself (from which I'm not home yet) was an absolutely fantastic experience and it's a shame not more than 350 or so got to experience it.

Please don't, we had a fantastic time, including at the match.

Strikers aren't often to blame for a lack of opportunities and he worked his balls off closing down in front of their defence.