Professor

Great win at West Ham. Congratulations are due mainly to the players and the coaching team but a small amount of credit is also due to the fans who by their pressuring of the board by not laying down and accepting the dismantling of the squad, caused Kruguer and Reed to cancel the sale of Schneiderlin. Fans who criticise are not negative, they are just fans who want the best for the club and will not swallow every tale they are told instead of applauding every decision without question. The role of the Critical Friend is often key to improvement.

Funny thing, I was about to post the same. Bertrand has been excellent. Not missing the little fat boy at all (Sorry Luke, but you did let us down....)

Surprised anyone can disagree with this. SFC have been able to pass the loan on to Sassuolo so there is no adverse effect on InterMilan. If the loan had simply been cancelled, then we might well have seen Osvaldo on his way back. In reality of course, it couldn't be cancelled without the agreement of all parties.

If the Taider loan really was just a sweetner to allow the Osvaldo deal to go through, you have to wonder why the player went along with it. At the time it looked odd that the club should take on another player for the crowded midfield but surely Taider and his agent could have seen that he wasn't really needed.

Interesting. Is there any link to the source material or survey results that produced this opinion?

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Not a problem I'm experiencing so perhaps its a user end issue

The confidence shown by the BBC in their football expert is apparent from the quality of the alternative experts they are prepared to put him up against.

A contract is legally enforceable. It can only be varied with the agreement of all parties to the contract. A loan agreement is an additional contract. It does not replace or supercede the player's contract with the club that holds his registration but it can include any financial variations that are acceptable to the three parties, the owning club, the player and the borrowing club. No cut in pay can be imposed but it can be agreed to by the player, as he may see the playing opportunity as worth more to him in the longer term. How the player's wages are funded during the loan and who by are all matters for agreement between the clubs and the player.

In response to Lallana's Left Peg I would just say that while the lack of a level playing field has been true during the Prem era, it wasn't always thus, otherwise Ipswich wouldn't have won the title in the 1960s, nor Derby in the 1970s. Like Ipswich, Notts Forest won the championship the year after being promoted from Div 2 and they went on to win the European Cup twice in successive seasons. Man U were relegated in the 1970s, a few years after winning the European Cup, something that is unthinkable for an 'elite' club now. Today, the best players from upcoming clubs are being plundered due to the massive wealth difference and the panic amongst the elite when they slip as Man U have done. Depressing isn't it, because I share the view that the chances of anything being done to restore a proper competition are extremely remote. But I am suggesting that the fault lies with we fans who allow ourselves to be taken in, as much as it does by the greed in the game.

The poaching of Saints' players this summer has been done to death but it is symptomatic of all that is wrong with the Premier League. Of course clubs should be able to sell on players they no longer want, and players should be able to move on at the end of their contracts, or when released, if they can do better elsewhere but the garnering of players into just a few clubs at the expense of the rest has become a sickness. Man U spending £30m on a teenage FB and £60m on one player demonstrates absolutely that there is no such thing as a level playing field in this competition. It is only the failure of some expensive players, such as the £50m Torres at Chelsea, that prevents the farce of the whole thing being totally clear. High cost teams may only be marginally better than low cost teams - MK Don's trouncing of Man U by 4 goals to Nil has demonstrated that - but over time the money does produce just as you would expect it to. Allowing the best players to move into just a few teams doesn't just help to strengthen the few clubs, it also weakens the rest. We now have a Premier League that is not a proper competition at all. There might as well be an 8-team league with no relegation for all that the PL has now become. Entry of a new team is now only achieved through buying your way in as Chelsea and Man City have done and any club threatening the wealthy by way of home grown talent or careful buys, is quickly stripped of its best players. Is it ironic that FFP has made the situation even worse and has created the opposite of what we were told was its intention? Financial Unfair Play would be more accurate. Or was it done deliberately to benefit the wealthy clubs? But as long as the fans continue to turn up, or buy their Sky subscriptions, its impossible to see any change.

Why no Ramirez until the game was effectively over following the second goal with just 6 minutes to play? With two strikers there were limited places available in midfield, and those were filled by players who already had games under their belts this season. Isgrove seems to have been the weakest so he was replaced by Tadic, preferred ahead of Ramirez for obvious reasons based on his performances. To disrupt the settled midfield by taking off either JWP or Davis to bring on Ramirez would have been a risk so waiting until a striker could be removed made sense. Ramirez needs game time and when the second goal came, Koeman immediately brought Gaston on which could indicate that he wants to ready Ramirez for selection. It was just unfortunate that the goal came late on.

GK - Forster - upgrade from Boruk RB - Clyne - no change CB - Fonte - no change CB - Gardos - small downgrade from Lovren (Yoshida - no change as cover) LB - Bertrand - small downgrade from Shaw DMF - Wanyama - no change DMF - Schneiderlin - no change RMF - JWP - no change (Ramirez - no change as cover) CMF - Davis - no change LMF - Tadic - equivalent to Lallana Striker - Pelle - equivalent to Lambert (Long - cover, or second striker - in place of injured JRod) Others can make their own assessments of the individual comparisons but the point of this is see how the present team compares following the departures. Overall, in terms of quality, it doesn't look that different with only four outfield changes. Blending them together may be a factor but adapting to a different structure and different tactics could be the bigger challenge.

I do agree with SOG. A home draw this season is hardly any worse than a 1-0 defeat away to Norwich last year, a club that eventually was relegated. The majority of Saturday's team played for most of last season, so it was surprising that they did seem to struggle with the passing game that was so fluid last year but I'd expect that to improve as the new players settle into the side. The Koemans saw just what the fans saw and I'm confident they will be working hard this week.

Pochettino used the league cup to play a second string side so it will be interesting to see if Koeman takes a different approach. A side that is close to the first XI would be logical as an opportunity to continue to gel together but I wouldn't be surprised if he gives a start to one or two who have been on the bench for the League games. Long and Gallagher, as well as Gardos if fit.

Can't really complain about a relegation prediction after 2 games when many people make their predictions before the season starts. But why the BBC pay Savage is beyond me. If he's the best they can do the football world must be very short of knowledgeable people. My recollection of him as a player was that his career was only high profile because of accusations of cheating through simulation and the number of bookings he received. Hardly a role model and someone who's opinion isn't worth a candle.

That 58% is amazing as it didn't look like that to me and my pals while watching. So many passes seemed to go astray. Koeman's comments indicated he wasn't satisfied either so perhaps the stats numbers are a bit of a blunt instrument.

The 'pathetic moaners' are just as entitled to label the others as 'pathetic happy clappers'. Both are entitled to their opinions but insulting those with an a different view to your own doesn't do anything to invalidate the alternative judgement. Koeman said on MotD that he thought the team did not play well. Does that make him a pathetic moaner?

The possession game that was so attractive to watch last year and so well executed last season, simply did not happen so it's not surprising that many of the crowd were voicing their disappointment. My little group had our own post-match analysis just as many other fans must have had. Our conclusion - that we had expected too much of the new players; they did not perform as well as those we had lost and the outcome was that the passing game disintegrated. But on the positive side, this could be due to lack of experience, with Tadic and Pelle having to adapt to the Premier League, Long still the new boy, and the whole team having to adapt to the overall number of changes in the side. The clean sheet absolves the defence from criticism but perhaps the pre-season against lower level teams wasn't as testing as was needed. This performance could turn out to be a low point from which things can only get better.

There was another difference - Shane Long headed wide when it was easier to head on target.

I'd overlooked that he could be living in Liverpool, enjoying the cosmopolitan atmosphere, going for walks on the Wirral and spending days on the beach at Southport. Beats the New Forest and English Channel beaches any day......not to mention the fantastic North East climate.

With Liverpool signing Ballotelli it's looking like Rickie may be about to relive his boyhood, watching Liverpool from the sidelines. At least a seat on the bench may give him a better view than a place on the Kop, but you can't help thinking he would have done better to stay at St Mary's and actually play 90 min football matches.

You expect a lot of footballers to be immature because many of them inhabit the same schoolboy world well into their twenties but you would expect them to have grown up by 30. Boruk should look at realities, principally that at 34 the footballer sell-by date is approaching, even for goalkeepers. He has been as aware as the rest of us that the club were pursuing Forster and he was probably more aware because its very unlikely that Koeman would not have spoken to him. Boruk should be considering how to make the best of the situation he is in, whether that is to accept a number 2 role or to ask for a transfer. Posting comments on a social media site is frankly childish and unlikely to help him at all.

The Academy does feel like a two-edged sword after this summer. There was that sense of pride when Saints had 5 Academy products on the pitch and 4 of them teenagers, but with three having gone the pride element feels flat when all those years of effort turn out just to be money, not a team. Can't see any alternative though because without selling people like Shaw, where else would the money come from to buy the foreign imports that we are coming to rely on like all the other Premier clubs. The irony is that instead of being stars here and standing out, Shaw is now a smaller fish in a bigger pool with a club that will bring other big fishes in so that he won't be guaranteed a regular starting place. Who is Manure's LB, is it some guy called Rojo? And as for our LB? Looks as good as Shaw but he isn't actually ours at all, so the pride element isn't quite there and there will be two games he's not allowed to play in.

two years ago Rickie Lambert had become our icon and last year it was probably Lallana. The lesson learned is fairly obvious......