Saint Garrett

I'd be surprised.....!

Last season at Millwall..... Forster Clyne Fonte Yoshi Targett Wanyama Davis JWP Isgrove Pelle Long I wouldn't expect many changes on Weds, Koeman clearly wants to win a trophy.

Steklenberg Cedric Fonte Van Dijk Targett Reed Wanyama Mane Juanmi JRod Pelle

Martina is absolutely shocking, do not understand the whole deal with Cedric. I would guess he's not good enough defensively so we went with the more steady Yoshida...however if he's not a better RB than Yoshida then what's the point in buying him?! Full backs are such an important part of the modern game, and ours at the moment would struggle to get In a championship side. Unsure of the other signings, hopefully Clasie is decent, but I'm not hugely sure we need him. We should have signed a proper RB and some assistance for Pelle who is good enough to get on the pitch. I look forward to seeing a few of the youth on Wednesday an the fringe players. Juanmi looks promising from the little I've seen of him.

He's fantastic, surprised how many Saints fans dont seem to rate him. Brilliant player for us, and we arguably would have gone down if he hadn't replaced Davis/JWP in DM in our first season back. He's better than Mason, arguably better than Shelvey, a better DM than Wilshere too IMO.

They seem to think we're as good as the last few seasons....

Pretty sure he can join whoever he wants as hes a free agent - not 100% sure though.

Can't disagree with that, although the last two seasons haven't bad either....!

A good watch so far - some great memories, had some brilliant fun going away in League 1.

He's not that bad mate, certainly more than capable of being a decent part of our squad this year if he wants to be.

I think we have to focus on shutting them out, and then look for one on the break or from a set piece with Mane/Pelle. Tadic is more than capable of creating something and Mane can create something out of nothing. Keep a clean sheet and see what happens.

I like him, I think we're a better side when he plays, you just need to get the balance right around him, he's not going to win a game on his own, but he can certainly help not lose it. More than happy for him to start the majority of games, even if he doesn't stay on. IMO him and JWP are fighting for one place, it's when they both play where we seem to have a problem.

I'd be more worried by Martial, Rooney is always crap when he plays us.

I'd rather have our support than the embarrassment which is Leicester at the moment. Clappers and a drum, think I'd stop going if that was at St Mary's.

You don't beat Man Utd by sticking 4 up front.... Almost guarenteed it'll be Wanyama Romeu and Davis in midfield, flanked by Tadic and Mane with Pelle through the middle.

4-3-3....Stek; Cedric Fonte VVD Targett; Romeu Wanyama Davis; Tadic Pelle Mane

Marian Pahars

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/34202470 Interesting Article... By Richard Wilson BBC Scotland There have been dramas and difficult choices along the way, but Ross Wilson's journey has taken him to the summit of the British game. If there was a moment when the sheer scale of his progress was emphasised, it might have been during the summer, when he met the Southampton manager Ronald Koeman for the first time. "I was taken aback by Ronald because he's so low ego," the club's new director of scouting and recruitment reflects. "He is a legend of the game." Wilson has never played football to any significant level and graduated in social sciences at Strathclyde University. Yet he is representative of a growing trend in football, with clubs beginning to acknowledge that leading positions are not the sole domain of former players. "There will be some clubs steeped in the tradition that you do need to have played the game, but fortunately the club's I've been at, the mindset has been very open," Wilson says. Each stop on the road has been a reward for his ability, passion and intelligence, qualities that Southampton prized enough to take the 32-year-old to the Premier League from Huddersfield Town. Wilson started out at Falkirk, where in effect he stumbled into a career in football. A friend's father worked for the media department and needed reports on the under-18 team's games. There was no looking back, and particularly not after the first-team manager John Hughes decided that Wilson was a good fit for the club. Falkirk's backroom team of season 2010-11: kitman Stephen Sproule, physio Kenny Cross, Lee Bullen, Steven Pressley, Embassadors Club member Bob Worgan, Alex Smith, goalkeeping coach Jim Preston, academy director Craig McPherson and director of football Ross Wilson Falkirk's managerial and backroom team of season 2010-11: kitman Stephen Sproule, physio Kenny Cross, Lee Bullen, manager Steven Pressley, Ambassadors Club member Bob Worgan, technical director Alex Smith, goalkeeping coach Jim Preston, academy director Craig McPherson and director of football Ross Wilson "At the end of that first season he said to me that they wanted to bring somebody in to do a player liaison role," Wilson recalls. "I just agreed, because that's what you did with Yogi. "I was playing at it at the time, I never thought that 12 years later I'd still be in the industry. I only did that job that they created for six or seven months and then they created another one, and it took off from there. I loved it. "What you see is what you get with Yogi, he's very straight talking, very direct, absolutely intense, driving you on all the time. You could go in the shower at 10 o'clock at night and come out and he's phoned you five times. "It might be something that wasn't that important, but it was to him. If you give your opinion when he asks for it and you work hard, he's phenomenal." Wilson did not enter football with a specific ambition, but his five years at Falkirk left him with a clear idea of where he wanted to go. Hughes left for Hibernian and wanted Wilson to join him, while another opportunity arose to work alongside John Park, Celtic's football development manager and chief scout. Wilson, though, had his sights set on England. "To not go to Hibs with John was really tough," he admits. "There was a point where I thought he was never going to talk to me again. It just didn't fit for me at that time. John Hughes Wilson describes former Falkirk boss John Hughes, now at Inverness, as "phenomenal" "How many times do you get the opportunity to join Celtic? Probably once. The success that John Park has had at Celtic in terms of player recruitment is huge. I'm close with John and he's been a huge influence on me as well. That was a big decision, but it was for the same reason, that I had something else in mind." Instead, Wilson ended up at Watford. That decision initially seemed a misjudgement, after the man who hired him - Julian Winter - was sacked when Wilson was four days into the job. Twenty-four hours later, the club was taken over, but Wilson embraced the upheaval as another opportunity to grow. "You're sitting in the office thinking, 'God, I'm a guy from Falkirk, what am I doing here? They've just sacked the fellow who's brought me in and the club's been taken over'," he laughs. "But I had a brilliant chairman in Graham Taylor, who gave incredible support. We had three different owners, but they never replaced the chief exec so I got a whole host of responsibilities that I probably wouldn't have got otherwise. "After the final change in ownership [to the Pozzo family in 2012] I could have stayed and worked with an Italian technical director, but I went to Huddersfield, who had just won promotion from League One. "Dean Hoyle [the chairman] is a Huddersfield supporter and he's ploughed £40m into the club. What he wanted to do was build the model that we had at Watford, a proper training ground, academy and scouting network. The club finished in three consecutive highest positions and made quite a lot of money in player trading." It was during lunch with Les Reed, Southampton's executive director, that Wilson was offered the chance to move to St Mary's. His role is to manage the scouting and recruitment of players, with the club's approach considered to be one of the most extensive and rewarding in the English top-flight. Virgil van Dijk Ross Wilson worked to bring Celtic defender Virgil van Dijk to Southampton Among the first tasks was signing at least one centre-back for Koeman's starting line-up, which ended with the signing of Virgil van Dijk from Celtic for £13m. "It's not rocket science," Wilson says. "I oversee the process and we have a team of scouts who are constantly looking at players within their territories. They know the attributes we're looking for at Southampton, which is part of our identity, so they know what a player needs to be able to do in each position. "But alongside that we're speaking to agents, we're doing due diligence into their background, finding out about their character, speaking to people who have worked with them before. So it's just building that whole dossier, while the analysts are building a technical profile alongside that, looking at his statistics and comparing them with other targets. "At any time we might have 20 in the mix for one position, then we narrow it down to three or four. I wouldn't say there were concerns [with Van Dijk's European performances]. We look all across Europe and we know what the market is telling us in terms of where the centre-backs are and the ones that fit Southampton." Wilson has come a long way from writing match reports for Falkirk's under-18 team, but it has been a worthwhile journey.

Yup - agree. I like him though, he just needs 3 attacking players round him, and his lack of goalscoring ability is frustrating, but he is such a good link player between defence and attack.

Looks like a car park to me,

He's an important cog to our team, we miss him when he doesn't play.

Agree he was at his best when he was with us, but he was never particularly mobile. His technical ability is outstanding.

He's still a decent player, don't think it's very fair to say he's now past it, he's more than capable to cause us some problems. Especially when he drops into midfield and has runners past him.

Personally would go ------------Stek Cedric Fonte Van Dijk Targett --------Romeu-JWP------------- Mane-------Davis---------Tadic --------------Pelle---------------- Obviously Bertrand if he's fit. Clasie on the bench if back (unlikely?) Wanyama on the bench if he manages to screw his head back onto his body.

------------Stek Cedric Fonte VVD Bertrand -----Wanyama Romeu------- Mane------Davis-------Tadic ------------Pelle------------- With options of Juanmi, Long, JRod, Clasie, JWP, Yoshi, Gaston (maybe) on the bench....!