Patrick Bateman

Nicely written, but the only comment I'd make is that I wasn't sure about the focus just on Saints. You could have used other teams in our category like for instance Celtic, who seem to buy young, up and coming players (which they then sell to us!?). Would be interesting to compare strategies for a group of teams like that vs the Stoke/Palace/etc. strategy of spending on older players. Don't forget in the past Saints would have bought much older players and integrated them into the side, giving us some very enjoyable years. Ref; Alan Ball & Jimmy case etc. Another angle, what happens if all clubs employed the same strategy of looking for hungry younger players with a view to improving them? Who then becomes the buyer for these players in years to come? Does the bottom fall out of the market for players over 28, for example? Many angles to look at. I'm almost looking at Redslo to make some blog on this ... But yes, nice writing.

Followed by storms and pestilence and the world ending

He's probably about 15 years old.

Okay, thanks, all the best Gaston.

Got to be Westlife, surely ... You raise Juanmi up, so he can stand on mountains; You raise Juanmi up, to walk on stormy seas; He is strong, when he is on our shoulders; You raise Juanmi up... To f**king hate pompeeee. clap clap clap clap clap clap

Great effort. 9/10, as Trousers would say.

On the plus side, we had an away European match on Thursday night and didn't lose on the Sunday. Isn't it the law that Europa League teams lose their Sunday matches following?

He really wasn't poor - he was helping cover Targett (who was poor) and also not helped by Fonte easily having his worst game in a while (by his standards). The defence overall was however, pretty bad and far from what we've been used to. But they'll gel. We have Ryan to come back which will help.

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.

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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 ...