James

You're right he did but so did Stephens who let Abraham go for their only chance of the first half. I think the objection on here is that Stephens is almost universally praised as having had a good game whereas Yoshi is criticised. My observation was that they both had their moments (Stephens was guilty of overplaying at times) and we will definitely be punished by teams who have more attacking quality. We've got to find goals soon as I can't see us keeping a huge number of clean sheets. West Ham will pose a much greater threat.

Not sure we will get a striker of sufficient quality to displace Gabbi. We could do with a goal scoring midfielder to replace JWP. Someone like Armstrong from Celtic would be ideal I think.

Redmond is a bit lazy with his distribution I think. There were a number of times he got into good positions and then over hit a cross or under/over hit a pass. There was one in particular where he absolutely fired a pass at Cedric and we lost possession because Cedric couldn't control it. Strikes me as a lack of concentration as he does have the ability but is incredibly inconsistent even when it comes to doing the simple stuff.

Excellent summary, mirrors my thoughts perfectly. Much to be positive about but failure to score again is a bit worrying.

That was ridiculous. Might as well make it a non-contact sport. Ref was pretty bad today but it's Mike Jones and he isn't a very good referee.

Even against a side playing with absolutely no ambition we had a few wobbly moments at the back. We've got to address the goal scoring problem asap but I'm not quite sure what we can do without bringing in new blood and I don't think we will do that. We played much much better today than under Puel and I much prefer the way we were setup but if you can't score the end result is the same.

Completely agree. So much better than Puel's turgid, negative cr*p. Shame we can't finish our dinner.

Did you watch the game? It was far from atrocious and Tadic played very well. You really are clueless.

Agreed that some of our play was absolutely first class. However, this set of attacking players don't appear to have the composure required to hit the net regularly. Some of the misses were unforgivable.

Wow that really isn't good. We had a clear problem last year, we haven't addressed it in the summer and so can't be surprised at this.

Can't miss that many chances in this league. Same problem, same players.

No chance. It was about a yard away from him. Can't give those.

Not sure what we can expect. Same players that couldn't score goals are on the pitch today. Much better performance mind.

Playing much more attractive football and seem to go forward with a lot more purpose and press but just can't score.

Called out Charlie Nicholas for saying that both Saints and Liverpool should let VVD and Coutinho leave as they'd handed in transfer requests and then saying that there was no need for English clubs to introduce release clauses (like Spain) as clubs could just refuse to sell... There was also some back and forth with Thompson but only caught the tail end of that.

No Hoj on the bench...

They are, without doubt, the most deluded and self entitled set of fans in the country. Haven't won the Premier League ever, last won a major trophy over a decade ago and behave like a club far above their current station. Last week they were going to win the league because they beat Bayern in a meaningless friendly, this week they are being outplayed by Watford. The inconsistency of comments on the Coutinho vs the VVD situation is the most annoying. It's literally the same situation, was good to see MLT pointing out some of the hypocrisy on Sky this morning in front of their big club biased panel.

It's absolutely ridiculous. How they can get away with effectively endorsing breaking the rules on live TV is beyond me. Completely unprofessional. Whilst we have all these so called ex-pro experts showing disregard for the rules then they will never be properly enforced.

Jamie Redknapp: "call Van Dijk and add an extra £20k to the contract". How about first putting a bid in that's acceptable to his current club you humongous cretin?

Sky saying Lemina will start.

Our central defence was pretty bad under Poch but I'd say the midfield and attack were both comfortably better than what we've got now. How anyone could argue that the Wanyama and Morgan shield plus an attack of Lallana, J Rod and Lambert isn't better than what we've got now is beyond me. We arguably had better full backs under MP too. Our squad was a bit thinner under MP but ultimately the quality of the starting XI was better and we still had players like Cork, JWP and Yoshi in reserve. Two of those players are now starters...

Llorente is out with a broken arm I think. It's just assumed Sig won't play in the same way that Virgil won't play for us but don't think it's been confirmed he won't play.

The way that the pundits are appraising this situation is nothing short of disgraceful. Totally insulting to clubs like Southampton. Modern football is rotten to its core. Oh and Jamie, if you have any ambition to be a top player why on earth would you join Liverpool? Talk about living in the past.

Exactly. The notion that we are only risking £13m is completely moronic. We've got a potentially world record fee for a defender at stake here. Only the most irresponsible business would risk losing that out of "principle" - deep down most fans know that full well. We wanted to keep him because we wanted another year out of him and to then sell him for an even larger fee on the back of another good year and, hopefully, a top performance at the World Cup. He's forced out hand now so ultimately we will sell but it will be on our terms and probably not to Liverpool. Morgan and Vic showed the professionalism to buckle down but it doesn't look like Virgil is going to do us that courtesy so we will sell whilst his value is preserved. A patchy season followed by a Berahino situation won't do us any good at all and will only serve to decrease the fee we get.