Patrick Bateman

Mane is an amazing player, was unlucky not to get the third after an excellent bit of defending by Colback (who was very good actually) and the angle for the second meant that I think it would have been knocked out for a corner had it been on target anyway. I thought Fonte had one of his poorest games, guess he was due one! We certainly do need Ryan back and to get another centre back in. I do also like Martina. A draw, disappointing, but given the fact we normally always lose up there, I'll take it, first point on the board.

I thought I'd be pushing my luck this week, I called the HT/FT and FT results correctly for both Saints/Vitesse matches and also got a correct score in the home leg, meaning I was £117 up on betting. Damn it, I should have gone with my conviction on this one, haha.

Morgan has been pretty good for them, we'll really miss him. Also pleased for Luke that he's looking more like his Saints form with tackles, running and only one dodgy moment where he put his keeper under pressure. As a side note, Toby okay for Spurs.

Come on Morgan! I see Luke is also starting for Man Utd; their team looks pretty strong actually (despite the goalie and Smalling), wouldn't be surprised to see them up or near the top of the league. I expect we'll see a normal Spurs/Pochettino performance of running like mad to close people down, lots of pretty possession football and 1 or 0 goals. I'm going for a boring 1-0 to Man Utd.

...

I don't get this, why wouldn't Saints have the higher coefficient if it boiled down to it? We entered the competition at a later (higher?) stage, so therefore should rank above them. I'd expect that to be the case if it were the other way around.

Good call. ONE JERRY EDWARDS ...

WTF?

All you need is the chip anyway, I personally don't like the wristbands (I hate wearing anything, watches, rings etc.), so if I were to use mine which I got last August (and haven't used), I'd just take the chip out and glue it to something I do hold often, like my wallet ... kind of defeats the purpose

Yes, i.e. the bPay band - payment wristband from Barclaycard. They were given out last year. Or even using Apple Pay.

Time to stock up on hip flasks from the Saints store

Just driven down to Hythe, passed 3 or 4 coaches of them on the M3, can't wait to get in town in a couple of hours, COYR!

Utter ridiculous, I do actually like my half time pint of dirty water in a flimsy plastic glass! And yes, more people turning up bang on 805pm then

I think that's exactly it - he was rated by everyone, but there aren't many people who thought he was a top bloke, he always came across as a big aloof and arrogant, but he did do a good job and we were p*ssed off with him leaving for exactly the reason that he'd done a good job.

No smoking, no drinking, no standing, no shouting, no swearing. You must very politely clap when your team scores a goal otherwise the noise police will ban you for 5 years from every ground in the world ... Well, not quite, but it's not far off!! I'm not sure about their Chelsea players either, they're all young and the only one I recognise is Isiah Brown who I think Chelsea bought/stole recently from West Brom (?) and was tipped to go on to good things. I can't see him being good enough to start for them!?

You utter helmet.

There was a day when the first match of the season would have the Chairman on the cover ...

Southampton isn't brilliant for things to do, but there are enough places to drink. If you want to start with some history, you can walk the old walls and look at whatever ships in (if that floats your boat, ahem). Seriously though, the walls and places like the Tudor house are actually pretty good; http://www.discoversouthampton.co.uk/visit/things-to-do/attractions That'll fill the 2 hours until lunch, then there are plenty of places to eat and drink from lunchtime until the match, sorted.

Feel sorry for these poor sods really - "welcome to England", deal with the delays on the M20, the inevitable car park of the M25 through Surrey, roadworks all the way down the M3 until Basingstoke, then they get dumped in Southampton to make their own way around in a city with essentially not a lot to do.

Was going to give you one of those at our next beer session ...

Probably kept it as one of those food lifts like you see in restaurants where the kitchen is below the dining room - at 2' tall, it would be perfect for that.

True. YOU HAVE TABLE (holds up 4 fingers) FOUR QUATROZE (or some other badly pronounced mishmash of languages) ... Brits abroad are hilarious for all the wrong reasons.

I'm not proclaiming to be a journalist, you lemon.

Exactly this. It's like the utter helmets who think they're quality journalists who sit writing blogs that 4 people read, or writing for crap online media outlets such as that "Here is the city" rubbish. No one cares, you're just recycling the no news that others have said. It's boring. Watched about 20 seconds of this shouty prat and turned it off. Is this what people really sit and watch on the internet?? FFS! Go and kick a ball, paint a fence, get a job, hang around a shop, anything other than waste your life making and/or sitting watching trash on the internet.

Agreed