Professor

Appreciate we're all entitled to our opinions, but it is odd that people, whose football qualifications are somewhat limited are so confident t hat they are better placed to assess the ability of individual players than the manager and the professional coaches. The coaching staff, with their qualifications and experience see the players week in and week out, whereas most fans opinions are based on watching a 90 minute match every couple of weeks or seeing the team on TV or on-line. Maybe opinions that are critical of some of our international standard players should be less assertive and maybe toned down a little. On the other hand, if we didn't have a go at some of the squad I expect this forum would be somewhat duller.

WE dropped too many points from late November to early January in games were we should have done better. That put us under a handicap that has been difficult to overcome. There is a view that a good outcome for us now would be to finish in the highest possible position that does NOT attract European football. Scraping into the Europa League qualifiers did us no favours at the beginning of this season. Better that we have a strong season in the Premier League with a top four place as the ambition, and to do that, getting off to a good start would give us the chance to get close to what Leicester have done.

You may be right about the challenge on Long and the Ref seems to have taken your view, but I saw it again on MotD and to me it looked as if Long got to the ball first. Certainly, the ball went forward in the direction Long was heading and not away from the goal, which was the keeper's objective. But under the rules of the game (rule 37), a foul is committed if a tackle on a player is careless, reckless or using excessive force. In my view the tackle on Long was at least two of these and could have resulted in a serious injury, which is why I believe Koeman's view of current refereeing standards might have further deteriorated. If the ref was influenced by the possibility of having to send the keeper off, that should not have come into the matter at all However, you are, of course, entitled to your opinion (even if its wrong....) At least we won the game.

I wouldn't be surprised if Ronald thought that his poor opinion of recent refereeing decisions was confirmed yesterday by the ref's failure to penalise Darlow, the Newcastle keeper, for his reckless challenge on Shane Long. Long got to ball first and played it forward. The keeper would have been aware that he wasn't going to win the race to the ball but he went through with both feet anyway, sweeping Longs legs away. If ever there was a justification for a free kick, that was it, and for a red card. Because Saints' were already leading and went on to an easy win, not much was made of the bad decision in post-match comments but it is poor refereeing like that which can give a result to the wrong team. Had that foul been in the area, I suspect the ref would have found it much harder to ignore it.

We have so many expert football coaches on here, and people extremely adept at explaining how players such as the Italy striker and other international players could improve their game, I just can't understand why the club doesn't employ us. It would be so much more effective than relying on the paid coaching staff.

My brother, who is a Chelsea supporter and is therefore unreliable, claims that Koeman is reported to have upset 2 or 3 of the Saints' players by adopting a more abrasive attitude recently. If true, maybe it would be time to move on, but I have my doubts as to whether there is any truth in this. Anyone have any information?

This is the solution and changes to the rules of the game do happen, as with the current off-side interpretation, but we need bigger changes to reflect the modern game and the cheating that goes on within the present rules. Removing the grey areas would take away some of the subjective decisions, removing some of the things that referees have most difficulty with. Off-side and handball are certainly two of these things. But the penalty for a 'foul' in the area is probably the biggest issue. Everyone in football knows that players are cheating but the administrators need to accept that the reason for the cheating is that a penalty kick is far too big a reward for many of the incidents that occur. There are other options, such as reducing the size and shape of the penalty area, or better, to have penalty kicks only when a clear goal scoring opportunity is prevented but for other fouls in the area, the offending player should go to a sin bin for a set period. Or maybe play the rest of the game with his boot laces tied together....no, but there are other ways it would be possible to punish fouls near the goal without awarding an almost certain goal which encourages players to pretend that they have been fouled.

Hampshire is such an awful place to live, what with the climate, the miserable countryside, the crime rate, drunks spilling out of town centre pubs and the aggressive attitude amongst some of the locals. Why would Steven Davis want to remain here when he could be living in Glasgow?

Like any Saints' fan I want us to win every game, although no team ever does that. Did yesterday's result really matter? It probably made no difference to the end-of-season outcome. To be in the top 10 of the Premier League, with no relegation worries is a position that football fans all over the country can only dream of for their team. If we can go into next season with no European involvement to disrupt the preseason preparations I'll be quite content.

Can't agree with this. Seeing the Mané penalty incident replayed on MotD2, demonstrated how video technology would lead to fairer results. In the replay you could see that Simpson did not have his arm close to his body and that he actually used his elbow to deflect the ball. Instead of being praised on the BBC Football site for a 'Superb' block he should have been sent off. It also seems likely that with video technology players would have to be much more careful about committing offences, knowing that the camera would spot them. It is true that incidents are down to interpretation and whether they were seen by the referee who only has a split second to make a decision, but the whole point of video technology is to assist the referee to do this better.

Confirmed that Leicester deserve to be where they are and that although we are a top 10 side this season, we are not equipped for the top 4, or even top 6. But how much does that matter? We have a fair proportion of results going our way and compete in some good football matches at a high level. Better than it has been for the last 20 years or so.

At Chelsea, communication with the team seems to have been the problem during Mourinho's time so who better as the long-term replacement than Paul Whitehouse.

Its widely thought that sports writers, desperate to get a story past their editor, will make up any fiction necessary. In the real world, football clubs make decisions on which players to try to recruit on a whole range of different factors. The player having been at the club previously is most unlikely to be a factor in such a decision, unless the player was so keen that it affected his wage demand or the transfer fee. This 'story' has all the hallmarks of a manufactured sports page filler. My only regret now is that I wasted 2 or 3 minutes commenting on it......

Anyone got a hat I can eat!!

Listening on Radio Solent, its been clear from the first minute that there's a lesson from this - that this squad isn't as good as we thought it was. Maybe we should be grateful if we manage a top 10 finish and that may be the best we can expect for the next season or so. Really big signings needed to get into the top 4, as made by the wealthy clubs, are beyond us but it does make you respect even more what has happened at Leicester.

On the Radio Solent commentary, long before the sending-off, I thought I heard someone say it was a shame we didn't have a real referee this week and instead we had Lee Mason. If I heard that correctly, it seems Mason's reputation precedes him. We must expect referees to make mistakes but some are worse than others. When a bad error is made, if the official was barred form officiating, even as fourth official, for a number of weeks the punishment and loss of income might encourage improvement.

Personal opinion is that Europa League via the qualifiers is not worth the effort. Disrupts pre-season and carries risks of injury for players who have hardly had time to recover from the last season. Our good performance in the first half of 2014/15 was down to a good run of results in the early season with no European involvement. Our exit from the Euro league competition in 2015/16 after 4 qualifying games was accompanied by a poor start in the Premier League - only one win in our first 6 games. If Watford win the FA Cup and finish mid-table, that would suit me but it might mean a relegation struggle for Watford next season.

One of my 1960's memories is Saint's first ever appearance in a European competition, The Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. In the autumn of 1969 we'd got through the first two rounds on aggregate and I went with a mate to The Dell for the home game in the third round. It was January, so it would have been 1970. I remember the rain pouring down through the glare of the floodlights on the top of the stands on a cold, wet, mid-week night. After drawing the away game, we had all the expectation of more progress in our first European competition, but we drew 1-1 and lost the tie on the away goals rule - against Newcastle. The other thing I remember about those days was that, living in New Milton, I would join quite a crowd at the newsagents by the station on a Saturday evening for the pink Echo to arrive by train about 7.30pm to catch up on the day's results and read the first match reports.

If we can't win at Bournemouth we don't deserve a top 6/7 finish but given our surfeit of excellent players we should win with goals to spare. Seeing the discussion about line-ups does raise a question about whether we now have so many good players so that a settled team is hard to agree on.

In a way I don't feel so bad about losing as a result of two serious mistakes by the referee, one which Derry has mentioned above, when the ref ignored his Assistant's flag and the other when he failed to give a penalty for handball by Cahill who had already fouled Long before handling the ball on the turf. It does seem that paying referees more money hasn't improved their standards. There isn't much point in having Assistant Refs if the man with the whistle can ignore them with no consequences to himself. What I do feel bad about, is that I thought Koeman got his substitutions wrong. I thought they were wrong when he made them, not just with the benefit of hindsight. I couldn't understand Pelle for Long because it was Austin who had made less impact and we were left with two players of similar style whilst losing speed. If he wanted to take Long off because of injury, the replacement should have been Mane while the other change could have been Pelle for Austin later in the game to introduce fresh legs. I also thought Koeman should have shown more flexibility when Chelsea started to work out the back three system by switching to a back four - which he could have done by taking off Matt Targett and bringing on Ward-Prowse in midfield. I am available if Ron wants any advice on tactics......

Just because a player has previously played for Southampton should have no bearing on whether to sign him. The club should spend its transfer budget on the best player(s) available.

Silly question. I want Saints to win by several clear goals and don't care in the slightest about any affect on other teams.

Usually I prefer games between teams near us in the table to be draws so that they both drop a couple of points but I did prefer Man City losing to Tottenham as that has allowed us to move 3 points closer to 4th place. The low point though, for me, was the punditry on MotD2 in relation to the Leicester/Arsenal game when T Sherwood said that strikers are 'entitled' to run into defenders in the penalty area and throw themselves to the ground. Managers encouraging players to cheat should be eradicated from the game just as cheats are being dealt with in cycling, tennis and athletics. It was disappointing that the BBC presenter didn't challenge Sherwood on his unacceptable comments.

The player raids on Southampton by Man U and especially Liverpool, have been well-documented as the distasteful face of the Premier league which allows a few clubs to try to gain an advantage by picking off the star players from the competition. For that reason, if Man U drop down the table, as Liverpool have done, there will be few tears shed on the south coast. Obviously, money will always be the big draw but its a healthy thing to show that moving to one of the so-called 'big' clubs isn't a guarantee of Champions' League football.

Watched Man U on MotD to see how Morgan was doing. He featured very little in the, admittedly brief, highlights and eventually was substituted. Looked a bit part player without much commitment, compared to the influential role he had when he was here.