Professor

This is something of a self-indulgence, so please feel free to ignore it. It is just a little bit of personal history as to why one football-mad teenager - me - became a dedicated Saints' fan. It was the summer of 1958 and there was a lot of emotion around football following the destruction of the Manchester United team in the Munich air crash in February. It was also the year that saw the end of the parallel divisions of Third Division South and Third North to be replaced for the 1958/59 season by the Third and Fourth Divisions. I was living in West Sussex so Brighton was my closest club but Portsmouth and Southampton weren't far away. In advance of the new season the press were speculating on how the northern and southern teams would do against each other and perhaps because of the focus on Manchester, there was a strong suggestion that Bury from the Third North would run away with the title in the new Third Division. As a southerner, even as a young teenager, I was irritated by the way football in the south seemed to be the poor relation of the north, especially with all the Lancashire sides in the Football League. On the first weekend of the season, I looked to see how the newspaper's favourites, Bury, had done and they had lost - 4-2 against Southampton! I began watching for Southampton's results and they did OK in the league as well as getting to the 3rd round of the FA Cup where they lost just 2-1 to First Division, Blackpool. I was still at school the following year, 1959/60 when Southampton really began to catch my imagination, especially when they got to the third round of the FAA Cup again and were drawn against another First Division side, Manchester City, away at Maine Road. The magic wingers, Terry Paine and John Sydenham ran rings around the first division team and George Reeves scored 4 goals in a 5-1 win away from home. Its fair to say I was hooked! As time went on, the club moved up to Division 2 and in 1966 to Division One. During the 1960s I made occasional visits from Sussex to The Dell with another Saints fan and to away games in London. By the early 1970s I was living in Hampshire, within 20 miles of the ground and going to most home games. It was work, rather than football, that made me move to Hampshire but if it hadn't been for the press trying to 'big up' Bury in 1958, I hate to think that I have grown up supporting Tottenham Hotspur like a good few of my old school friends.

Rickie is probably paid more at Liverpool than had he stayed at Southampton, so the money may feel like compensation for not playing but when he retires, he may well look back and realise it was a mistake to end his time as a first choice player as prematurely as he has. As a boy, he used to pay to watch Liverpool and now they pay him to do the same. Can't believe that was the prospect that made him feel really made up.

£25m for a player to warm the bench could make sense if Rogers is saving his star player for Saturday's home game against Hull. Given Arsenal's struggle at home to Hull, perhaps he's decided to protect Lallana for the domestic competition. It's Rickie I feel sorry for as his dream was to play for Liverpool, not just have a good seat from which to watch their games but if he was still at Southampton, he'd be struggling for playing time here as well. If keeping Rickie would have meant not signing Pelle, then Rickie did us a great favour which at the time, few people would have realised. Certainly, I didn't want him to go, or Lallana, but now I'm grateful to both of them for leaving.

Fans reading your post will be feeling very happy. So glad for you and your daughter. A wonderful experience!!!

Reluctantly, because he came across as a nice bloke, I have to agree. People who think we wouldn't have got promoted without him haven't stopped to think how much talent he inherited or was provided to him by the club. Fans were so grateful for promotion that perhaps people overlooked that we should have had a better shot at the No.1 spots. When Adkins left the building a blue line was drawn under him, along with some of the rather boring and repetitive interviews he tended to give. It was hard to believe that his style was motivating the team to maximum effort. After he left, Reading looked a good job for him at the time, but his latest quotes give the impression that he can see the writing on the wall. It will be a shame if he doesn't survive to the end of the season because he did leave Southampton with his reputation intact.

Obvious really, that teams near us should all drop points but as several are playing each other, some drawn games would go down well. If Chelsea draw with Man Utd and West Ham draw with Man City that would be four of the top 6 teams dropping 2 points each. The icing on the cake would be if Hull could a win at Liverpool. Given that Hull were unlucky only to get a draw at Arsenal and Liverpool were fortunate to beat QPR, a Hull win would not be a shock result. As for Arsenal, wouldn't it be nice to see them lose at Sunderland as the Black Cats bounce back from Saturday's humiliation.

Hindsight is great isn't it. If only you could have it in advance..... I didn't want ANY of the defectors to leave but now the only one I would still like to have kept is Chambers but even with him, because I would only have kept him as cover for Clyne, I think the money was worth more to us than the player. I wouldn't swop the players who are now playing in their positions for any of them.

Graham Poll made a statement that Forster 'clattered into' the attacker, which is not a fact, it is an opinion. When a Keeper dives and a player collides with him, it cannot automatically be a foul by the keeper, because if so, penalties would be given in almost every game. Collisions, by definition, involve more than one person so to be a foul by one or the other is a matter of judgement. Forster dived with the clear intention of blocking the ball and succeeded in making the striker send the kick off target. The collision after the ball was played was just that, a collision, on which the referee had three options (1) free kick for Southampton; (2) Penalty for Sunderland; (3) no action. He chose the third option which was also the fair option because the ball was going out of play and the collision had not affected the outcome. If Poll would have chosen an option that would give an unfair advantage to one team and create a goal scoring opportunity where there had not been one, its just as well he's no longer a referee.

Did enjoy seeing the clip of Mourinho's press conference when he was asked about not winning Manager of the Month. Usual petulance of a spoilt brat, even when he tries to laugh it off out of embarrassment.

He may already be with a CL side. If Arsenal, who Saints' knocked out of the League cup, and who have a much vaunted depth of squad, can struggle to draw at home to Hull, their place looks to be available. We are now 20% of the way though the season, so although there are hard matches to come, other teams have hard games as well. Hanging in there may seem unlikely but it's not impossible.

Obviously, these awards mean nothing to the BBC. Football Focus at 12.10-12.50pm managed to avoid any mention of either award and the name of the team in third place in the Premier League didn't crop up at all. All the usual concentration on the media's favourite few, Man City, Man Utd, Liverpool, Arsenal. Why don't they rename the programme "Saturday Kitchen" because these, plus Chelsea, are the teams that they stuff down your throat?

Three of last year's Saints' team on the pitch - although Lambert just for 10 minutes - and they all got the lowest rating of 5 on the BBC website match report. Are these players going downhill after having left Southampton, and if so, is that a corollary to players who have become better after joining Southampton? Even if I take my Saints' glasses off, Hodgson's team selection last night wasn't just mistaken, it was stupid. Couldn't see why he had Lambert in the squad since poor old Rickie just warms the bench at Liverpool, but having done so, he should have had him in the starting XI that was lacking a holding player up front. Having Clyne in the squad and not playing him is inexplicable. What was the point of wasting his time if a player bought in from the u-21s who couldn't dislodge Clyne from the Saints' team, was to play ahead of him. As for the keeper, if you aren't going to give your second GK a chance in a comparatively simple fixture, how on earth do you expect him to step in later when he might be up against some world class forwards? But Hodgson's biggest failing? He couldn't get me, a keen football fan for longer than I care to think, to even be bothered to watch the game or care about the result.

Watched on a computer stream and to me it was a balanced, hard fought game. Spurs did press hard but our players were up to it and I thought both sides played extremely well at an amazingly fast pace. First half, Spurs hardly had a goal threat. Ultimately, both teams had chances and the difference was that they took one of theirs while we didn't take any of ours.

I've never found anything said, written, or attributed to Robbie Savage, remotely interesting. Not a fan of his. Does it show?

The information that caught my eye in the BBC preview of the match was that so far this season 19 players have made premier league appearances for Saints, and that 14 different nationalities have been represented, the most of any premier league club. I don't criticise that in any way but it does show things are changing from when we had a predominantly English team and maybe felt a bit superior when clubs like Arsenal, Chelsea and Man City had so few English players in their sides. We will probably have three English players in the starting XI tomorrow and Steven Davis, plus others on the bench but all the same it is a sign of how even a club like ours with our highly rated Academy has to go abroad for the bargain buys.

Amazing strides he's made. When Saints got to the Prem, quite a few people thought Fonte was unlikely to be capable of the step up from L1 and the Champ but he's outdone that by reaching an international squad. I would never have imagined that by our third season in The Prem we would have 4 international CBs. What a good headache for Koeman.

We have the better team, the stronger defence, a fine midfield and the greater goal threat. Tottenham have home advantage. Will home advantage outweigh that they are up against a better team? It's always possible but IMHO the a win for Saints looks more likely. In effect that is what Lawrenson says as well, but then, against the logic of form, he opts to predict a home win. If he expects to taken seriously he should justify his predictions, not just toss a coin.

Wouldn't be surprised if the decision takes some account of who the opponents were. While Chelsea did draw one game that was away to Man City and they scored 6 goals away to Everton. They also scored 4 goals in their one home league against Swansea. We had two home games against arguably easier opposition and one away game which was against 10 men for over half the match. Much as Mourinho irritates me, I suspect he might get the award but the media are quite impressed with the turn around that Koeman has presided over from a depleted squad as they see it, so I wouldn't rule it out.

After a long perilous journey from England across the Artic circle, Jeff found the North Pole. As he slowly forced the pole into his anus he thought, "Now the whole World is revolving around me..."

Ups and downs are very true, as any Saints' fan can tell you. After all those years of hanging on to top flight football by the skin of our teeth things looked very positive when Strachan was here, except for the unpopularity of the Chairman, but few would have predicted administration and League 1 so soon after being in the cup final. Pompey's experience even outdoes ours while another up and down ride has been at Salisbury.

Just going back to the OP, I'm with those who think he should have been sacked on the information that was available at the time that indicated he did not intend to fulfil his contract. I wouldn't agree that there were performance grounds to sack him. Although he hadn't proved to be the step up from Nigel Adkins that may have been hoped, the team were playing attractive football, even if results had fallen to around average. In the end, the league position owed more to the good start to season 2013/14 whilst the points total was 13 points below 6th place and 8 points below the team above us. Not as good as it looked at one stage. So, not sackable on performance grounds but sackable on loyalty grounds. Having said that, I'm very glad he wasn't sacked because I think it is unlikely we would be where we are now if he'd been ousted sooner.

I saw it the same as Redslo that we were 2-1 up with only stoppage time to go, so an extra defender seemed to have some logic to it. Being on the pitch for a Premier League game, regardless of the short time, was also a nice reward to Matt Target for his performance in the League Cup and a step towards having him ready as Bertrand's understudy. As far as I know, that may have been Targett's first experience on the field for a League game. Good man management by Koeman without risking the result

Sure that's right but the authorities could do something about it if they chose to do so. In other sports, the decision on cheating doesn't only have to be made at the time by the official in charge but can be assessed afterwards. In football, it would be possible to produce a system for video reviews that would allow retrospective action on cheating, whether spotted at the time by the referee or not. If football is about winning at all costs, which seems to be implied by players being trained to cheat, responsible administrators would want to stamp it out. The question arises, then, do we have responsible administrators?

This is why trying to avoid giving away free kicks is never going to be the whole solution because players will simulate outside the area just as they do for penalties. It's all very well abusing a player from an opposing team for doing it, when we know perfectly well that Saints' players will do it as well. There does need to be a solution to simulation, just as there does to 'professional' fouls, which managers are also implying are part of the game. Cheating in any form should not be part of the game and punishments should be sufficiently strong as to deter cheating. If FIFA were to introduce something like an enforced substitution of any player who cheats followed by a lengthy ban, players would think hard before doing it. Harsh? Hardly. In other sports, cycling and snooker are two examples, cheats can be banned for life.

Hard to recall the exact timeline, but once it became known that Pochettino had been offered a new contract that he was failing to agree, it was apparent to many that he was planning to go. At the time, I'd have fully agreed with a decision to sack him and I felt the board were looking rather weak in the way they allowed him to string them along but if they had, we probably wouldn't be where we are now. As with the player exodus, events weren't planned but fortune has worked out to our advantage. It could have gone the other way, but it didn't, so in hindsight, I'm glad the board did nothing until it was forced on them, because by then they were able to appoint an exceptional manager who might not have been available in the Spring.