James

Will have to play an awful lot better and actually but in a passionate performance to beat a pretty vibrant villa side. With Gazza in goal we will realistically concede and given our paucity of attacking threat I can't see anything other than a defeat here. Only thing which might change it is if villa rest players for the cup.

What is a disgrace is the fact that 3000 fans paid £35 a head to watch an awful awful performance. It was a throw back to the gutless performances of the dark wilderness years imo, really shocking to see. The worst performance I've seen in a long long time. I wouldn't mind but it didn't even look as though the players were trying/cared really. We conceded two sloppy goals from missed challenges and general incompetence. Vic and Fonte promised us a reaction but what we got was even worse than Sunderland. I do slightly worry that Ron isn't able to motivate the team as effectively as he might. Something has gone badly wrong, hope they figure out what it is over the summer as this is relegation form at the moment and could cause a hangover to next season especially if we have the distraction of qualifying for Europe by default.

Davis is and has been utter garbage for weeks. No knee jerk just facts. Cost us v Spurs and will now cost us v Leicester.

****ing pathetic from Davis.

Gazza starting equals inevitable defeat. He is just awful. How have we allowed ourselves to be in this position?!

Of course not, but as we found out last summer player power is king. If Toby genuinely wants to stay with us and we put our money where our mouths are then we might be able to do a deal. It'll be a long summer but I'm confident we can keep him.

Looks like dodgy info.

This would be a massive boost. Spurs is our most important game left, if he has a chance of playing then he should IMO.

Were you one of them? If not, maybe don't criticize those who expend money to travel the country in support. If so, why not break the silence? I've been to 9-10 aways this year and can honestly say that our support is pretty fantastic compared to other clubs. The criticism of our support is pretty tiresome and mostly incorrect imo.

Not always the case if it pops straight back in. I suspect that Koeman wouldn't say that he 'looks to be ok' if he wasn't. Presumably the medical staff are well aware of any potential follow ups and would have informed the manager. RK tends to be pretty accurate when disclosing time frames for injuries etc. and I doubt he'd have said anything ill informed.

Pelle really isn't playing too badly, he gets nothing out of the ref ever. It's just fashionable to say he's rubbish these days.

They really wouldn't. Our defence and midfield is far far superior to what they are up against in the Champ. They've got some good attackers but otherwise they look very ordinary to me. Will get murdered next season if they don't invest.

So you'd rather we missed out on Europe than Liverpool win the cup? Honestly, I sometimes wonder whether some of our fans actually support Saints.

Bar Newcastle, what has he done of note? He's been ineffective to say the least.

Ha. Obviously not, but not playing our best attacker against a very slow defence is a very interesting decision. I don't understand it at all.

Not playing Mane is an unbelievable decision. Elia has been useless.

This is an excellent post - sets out exactly the way I see it as well.

What a surprise that you have taken the negative view. Look forward to your summer musings already.

I'm not sure I'd call the save he made from Ings "routine". I also don't recall his distribution or hesitancy with the ball at his feet nearly costing us goals today. He's also gained universal praise from all our players and manager for his performance. I'd say he played ok but what do I know? Obviously we will miss Fraser but it sounds like he's out for the season so we are stuck with Kelv so we may as well get behind him. That said, maybe we can get a non-contract keeper in during the break.

Have you ever seen him? Most incompetent keeper that I've seen have a sustained run in our team. There was a stat last year when he was in the team which basically indicated if a shot hit the target it was going in.

And there we have it from the man himself (Hi Artur). Happy to stick with Kelvin - shame about FF but I'm confident Kelv won't let us down.

My last post so all I will say until tomorrow! My only thought is that if City were coming in he'd likely know about it or at least have a fairly strong indication of it. My question is why say what he has said if he would actually prefer to go to one of the big boys. It's fairly certain there will be a lot of interest and he could just have said that he'd see what happened/wait until the summer but he didn't, he said he wanted to stay with us. We will have to wait and see, but if he were holding out for Man City then I struggle to understand why he made such a positive statement. As others have said, the fact he is even considering staying is unbelievably good news.

...and neither do you. My point is more 'it is quite possible that we could match the bid that a big club is willing to make'. KBilly said we didn't have the wherewithal to sign a striker in January but he didn't give much detail. Maybe the right player wasn't available at the right price.

Well no - we could feasibly match the 'big bid' - if we paid 12m for Shane Long then we can go in big for a player like Toby (who realistically, nobody is going to pay more than 15-20m for). If we do that then he would have to go back on what he has said. Why can't some people just accept promising news for what it is? Saints fans = eternal pessimists.

Caught by the grammar police. Prat.