Neil

NA - "We'll look at the table in January and hope we are in the top 10, but there are 15 or 16 teams with aspirations to get promotion." Yes, I hope we are in the top 10 in January! Seriously, absolutely outstanding win and a super afternoon out in the elements!

A pretty good day for us, and our title odds have been cut again today without us even playing! Good that W Ham were held by Millwall, and that makes our 1-0 win against Millwall look even better. Skates are heading for trouble, and discipline problems out of hand. No surprise that Nigel Pearson side grinds out a 1-0 win!

An absolutely disgraceful championship season from Hampshire resulting in a deserved relegation. Giles White must be sacked immediately, and not given another job by HCCC. The amount of money we've wasted on mercenaries (Myburgh / De Wet) and crocks (Jones / Ali) must be staggering! Agreed that it's time for Bates to step up but Pothas won't be easy to replace. An average of 44 over his 9 years at the club, and more importantly an ability to hold together the lower order and show some steel / fight that many others don't seem to have.

Want to absolutely smash Brighton to pieces. Will be especially nice to smash them at their new place, with more watching this time! Still hate Derby with a passion, would be sweet to win at Pride Park and erase a few nightmares from the past. Funnily enough I was over the moon to win at Swindon, just to erase some memories of previous visits there.

£445k would be a decent total if we can get that by May 2013. The promotion bonus looks realistic this season or next (they're no bigger than 7/4 to go up this season), and gives me a reason to get behind Huddersfield in League One, they're probably "due" in any case. 20% cut of any sale profit is a bonus...

It's amazing those tinpot clubs like Skates/Cherries/Swindon/Plymouth all thought they were on a par or better than us. They all look miles away from us now, apart from Skates who are "only" 6 pts behind us but hopefully increasing!

I now believe we can finish in the top 4.

Promotion.

Would be nice to beat Swindon for a change, we owe them one. Would also be great to tonk them by hitting five or six, something that is possible the way we're playing at the moment. Then we can forget about Leicester and go into the break on a high. What pubs are people going to in Swindon?

Was thinking £15 was ok before I remembered that they're now in Div 4! About time we won in that ****hole of a town, we usually take over the pubs up there, bit of a derby etc.

"We had Southampton messing about for 3 weeks" - the alternative translation is "Southampton didn't cave in to our demands". "Brian McDermott was magnificent, Reading are a good club" - the alternative translation is "Reading caved in to our demands". Either way, you would have to ask the mighty Warnock how his massive Premiership club allowed themselves to get "messed about" by Championship small-fry for 3 weeks...

Would probably have taken a draw here at the start of the season. Now I'll be gutted if we don't win.

Bearing in mind the visits to SMS of Brum, Cardiff, Skates, Brighton, the police may well wish to "wise up" a bit ahead of those games. While they may have had one approach at the start of the match, the inability to change that when it became obvious that things weren't right during the game was naive in the extreme. Why do Saints fans continually have to put up with such ****e policing from the Hampshire boys? If we so much as sneezed at a London game the Met would give us a slap.

Well I'd happily take a 1-0 win today. But there's no way I want to rein in expectations! Expectations are sky high and climbing, can't beat the excitement about Saints at the moment, long may it continue!

A mixed bag like Sholing/Woolston/Bitterne. Depends on the road really.

Brighton and Poyet will get found out so easily and quickly this season. They got found out yesterday really, they were just very lucky and injured enough Doncaster players to take advantage.

Well Leeds weren't any better than when we played them in L1. I think they realised they were up against better players and resorted to the only tactic they know, kick lumps out of them. Thankfully it never really worked. Good all-round performance. Couldn't find many faults, but we will need to improve against far better teams than Leeds, so Davies must improve his distribution, the midfield must be careful where they give the ball away, and Martin needs to be a bit more decisive. Other than the above, pretty damn good and great to nail any opening day / Sky jinxes...

I will do an in-depth and balanced scientific survey of Cortese's popularity around the great pubs of Southampton and surrounding districts. Will report back in due course...

I like the fact that Cortese tries to extract the maximum amount of £££ he can from everyone - including Arsenal!

Agreed, anything under 25k for any league game this season would be embarrassing.

Complacency and underestimating the opposition will almost certainly prove costly, but who is doing that? I've got apprehension ahead of the new season (I always have), but that's only from Saints' traditional bad starts. Other than that, I'm very excited. The team/squad is easily good enough to survive and prosper in this division. De Ridder will make a good impact, I knew that after seeing him for about a minute in that friendly v West Brom!

Anything less than 32,689 would be a major disappointment.

"Southampton can use promotion from League One as a springboard for even more success..." Genius. Almost as good as the Times: "If they can make St Mary's a fortress they should be ok" or something enlightening like that." I suppose after about 20-odd pages of Premiership guff it's a token summary of the other divisions!

Is the Hare & Hounds still open? Otherwise a pub-free zone...

Times put us as low as 16th, but still one place above Pompey!