Middlewordie

Put him straight in on Saturday. Tell him he needs to put Josh Coburn on his backside at least twice and then sit back and watch the sparks fly.

My next free agent suggestion is Jadon Sancho. No club interested so far, and I'd consider him an upgrade on Fellows...

He's had a good stint with us but I'm not convinced he's the real CB deal in the PL. He's certainly not a Man City product of the Palmer, Rogers or Lavia standard. Let Villa spend £30M to find out and maybe we can have him back for 800k in 3 years time.

Millwall CF and CBs are physically imposing, rest of them less so, but they are all committed - their fans/club dont tolerate anything less. I dont think our options are so limited though or that we will neccessarily lose. Larin can definitely keep their CBs busy. We clearly need JWP and Flynn to come out firing with come controlled aggression and plenty of direct fwd passing. Scienza should to stick to their right back - he's their get out man when they have the ball in the back 4 and is the place to start the press. And tell the rest of the team that anyone who comes off without a yellow card is getting fined.

Dwarf

Millwalls defence isnt very good at dealing with the through ball - not much pace there. I went to the game against Norwich and Norwich created plenty of chances but finishing was terrible. And they had a man sent off. Conversely Millwall attack the same way generally, lots of through balls in channels. I think they are very beatable but you have to run your socks off.

Harvey Elliott on loan? He wants to play and will easily get 30+ games in our team. Ball playing dynamic midfielder, who looked good in the same England U21 team as Palmer, Rogers and Anderson. Bit ambitious maybe...

Man City are in a different league to us. Probably the richest club in the world as they dont have to worry about financial fair play. Saints are realistically 2 financial levels below them. Everyone else's academies can produce good players, but Chelsea, City etc wil take the best players at 11/12 and their families will probably be well rewarded for that decision. I would like our academy to focus on producing players for our team, not for sale. We want local talent who want to play for Saints first and foremost. So don't pick kids outside our area, and dont make anyone who is not an employee of the club move home - it's not fair on the families or the kids. Fine once they are 16 and being paid a wage, not before. And make it club policy to have minimum 3 academy graduates in every first team squad, forever. If we end up selling one, there should be another one ready to go.

Evan Ferguson is still looking for a home as Brighton under Hurzeler doesn't seem to be willing to use him. If he's fit he'd be a step up for us and we'd be a stepping stone for him.

What kind of medical are they doing that Stewart will pass? Airway, breathing and circulation only?

I would like to see a detailed video analysis review of the reffing at this world cup. It was great to see them waving on play, but they'd clearly had some direction to not apply the laws of the game fully. Lots of cynical professional fouls - straight yellows - were ignored. Taking people out in the air is a straight red in rugby, bit I saw three let go entirely in the final. I'd also like to see all the blocking stopped. You can shield the ball if you are in playing distance (less than 1.5m away?), otherwise it's obstruction. If you aren't running towards the ball and you run onto someone else's path as they go for the ball, its obstruction. If you run into contact with your arms out at head height, its dangerous play. There is a great documentary to be made by interviewing all the refs from this world cup to find out how and why the refs got it so consistently wrong.

Yes but we admitted all 3....

My Dad hates football but took me and my brother to watch Saints in 1982 because he felt he should do. We won and it was great and I've been SFC ever since. He took us once more when my younger brother was old enough. Even though we lost 4-0 at home to QPR, he still loves Saints too. Now I have my own son and we've been to a few games together, I realise that Saints represents one of very few constants in my life. I wouldn't ever want that to change. Whatever else happens, the experience of going to watch Saints is something I will always want to do, whoever is going with me and regardless of the result (fortunately).

Agreed, rules only work if the governing authorities can apply deterrent responses to a breach. Today's hearing will test if EFL are more able to do that than PL, who seem to have caved to Man City (but not Everton). The rest of the PL clubs take the PL money (and City academy products) and stay quiet (including Saints). EFL teams don't have financial incentive to be quiet, in fact quite the opposite - hence the noise.

No no no. Jo Tessem loves us and he nailed it. "We have rules and we need to follow them. We have been punished hard for not following very simple rules and maybe football needs to set these rules and punish hard to get people to follow them." Saints 100% deserve to be called out on it, even if it's a tough listen.

His position at Saints is untenable - ban or not. He and others have planned, organised and sanctioned activities (we only know about those events so far) to "dope" Saints' data analysis, solely to gain an advantage over other teams. The players all bought into his "preparation" without realising he was cheating. The out turn result, fair or not, is huge. He's let the fans, players and the club down, so it's a tough ask for anyone to trust him - or anyone else knowingly involved in this - again at Saints. The expected ban will make his departure much easier, I just hope Dragan realises he needs new management from the top down too.

Surely Tonda is off to Man City? Systematic rule breaking in the big time!

Tonda, Tonda, Tonda.. you silly boy. EFL could have done this smarter by making us forfeit each game where we broke the rules with a 3-0 loss. Same outcome, no impact on playoff places or relegation, and no one could really challenge that as being an unfair outcome. Are EFL really saying that just for breach of this rule, a team is excluded from promotion chances? That seems unfair enough to challenge, especially as it is an untested rule. Interested to see how far Saints want to take it...

EFL have to be seen to let the tribunal do it's stuff. Whatever they find regarding Saints guilt (which could be not much if the video was deleted - there is no evidence Soutthampton Football club were spying, just a picture of a man with his IPhone out so far...), punishment is unlikely to involve Saints not playing in the Final. As previously posted, it will create a legal storm for all parties. But I think Will Salt has probably fucked his career up.

Oh when the saints were watching you, oh when the saints were watching you, Now we know all about your set pieces because the saints were watching you.

A brilliant day out at Wembley with my son, Saints were great, Man City were average (much better) and the atmosphere was amazing. We didn't win but we looked like we could have. This season has been all the best bits (which also includes some terrible bits) of supporting Saints and I can't remember feeling so positive about my team in years. I'm expecting them to play well, work hard and score goals every game. I'm ambivalent about the PL - nice if we get there, but not a disaster if we don't. Please just keep the club happy, hardworking and something to be proud of, just like yesterday.

If we can get thru on Saturday, who cares...

Me too - I realised i wasnt logged into the website before i joined the queue. As soon as i logged into the sfc website it remebered me and took me straight to the seating map.

Upper Tier is on sale and selling out fast from what I can see. I'm a Member, not ST holder, so only able to buy today - just got through having joined queue at 0931... Two tix bought tho

Looking forward to another birthday trip with my son. His best mate and Dad are Derby fans so hopefully we can keep the winning run going and provide them some constructive feedback on the way home 😀