Professor

What's all this about jumping early! If a defender jumps early he misses the ball just as he does if he jumps late. As an ex-CB myself, I always tried to time my jump so as to actually meet the ball. Isn't that what Jos and Yoshida do? Its then a matter of opinion as to who you think does it best, not that effective heading is the only skill needed by a CB. On balance I feel that Yoshida, whilst good, is a close second to Jos. What I would like to know is how Forren compares to them and I'm wondering if he will get on the pitch before the end of the season, as a sub if not as a start.

Haven't read this all through but interested as I have long thought that CB is an area we need to strengthen. But focusing on a fan's assessment of errors isn't very scientific and is just one person's unsupported opinion. For example, in my opinion, the free kick awarded against Jos in the West Ham was incorrect and having seen it on Saints Player I would say that Jos got to the ball first and cleared it, with the West Ham player then falling over his leg. The commentator agrees with the ref's decision because he says Jos got a 'touch' on the WH player, but that overlooks that any touch is always 2-way and not automatically a foul. For me, its Yoshida who looks the weaker of our present two CBs but both of them are now well experienced in the Premier League and are not letting many goals through. In my opinion both are worth a place in the team but that doesn't mean that we couldn't find better in order to move up a level. Just not sure if its the priority I once thought it was.

We have to be realistic, remembering that other teams will have the same target of a top 6 finish. Its what makes the Premier League a competition. This season's top 6 will strengthen either to stay there or to improve and much of that will be splashing out fees well beyond what Southampton can afford, even if we spend big for us. Already, Chelsea, Man City and others are being linked with world class players as potential signings. Personally, I hope we don't go down that route and that we continue to look at bringing forward equal quality from the Academy with maybe a couple of signings to bridge the gap and to improve at CB. We have shown this year that some of these 'world stars' are quite ordinary against a team playing good football. On current form, its reasonable to expect a top half, or top 8, finish next year but its hard to make a strong prediction without knowing the strength of other squads and what our squad will look like for next year.

Yes, I'd be happy with JWP. At his age he is improving all the time so that the 18-yr old JWP in Sept 2013, 2 months off his 19th birthday, will not be the 17-yr old JWP of Sept 2012.

Would the silence drown out the cheers? Best not try to find out.

I wonder if Nigel gave the same repetitive reports full of clichés to Cortese as he did in his interviews. If so, Cortese might have changed manager so as to avoid dying of boredom.... NA getting another job seemed to draw the line, but had we lost to his new club, well, that would have really hurt. Maybe a good thing they are going down so we don't have the same issue to consider next year.

I was surprised when I did the Predictor before Easter and without over-egging the pudding had Saints finishing 10th but in the end this is football and games do not all go to form. If they did there would have been a lot more people winning the old Football Pools. It's feasible we could get to the end of the season without losing another game and with the 6 games to go, on form we could get 4 wins and 2 draws with the Tottenham game being the hardest but no harder than Adkins' last game away to Chelsea. The trouble is that on form we should not have lost at home to QPR and we should have got at least a draw at Newcastle instead of letting in 4 goals. After recent results we could even do better than 10th but it's just as well to be prepared for a couple of disappointments along the way that might come where we least expect them.

Waiting to see the Lawrensen prediction before assessing my confidence level. Lineker's comment on MotD may have put the 'expert' in a bit of a quandary.

Lineker: My Twitter followers tell me 'Lawro' that you haven't predicted Southampton to win since about August..... Lawrensen: They're telling you untruths. What a rectum.

By employing Lawrensen, a total has-been, and describing him as an 'expert' the BBC are defrauding the licence payers.

It's not the fans' money so what does it matter to supporters? Would the gate prices go down if he was paid any less? Doubt it. If it takes that salary to keep him at the Club, and despite the sackings of Pardew and Adkins, he appears to be an effective Chairman, then as supporters we do benefit from what the team is achieving under Cortese's direction.

The cheap red tops have spent so much energy on promoting their favoured clubs they have trouble coping with any change in the established order. The hacks at the star probably have no idea about SFC's financial position or that the club has no need to sell its players and that it has them on long contracts. J Rod is playing in a team that is better than Liverpool and he has as much chance here of European football as he would have there.

Safe No, but likely to go down, also No. With 2 clubs as good as done for there is only 1 relegation spot to argue over and logically, all the teams below us are worse placed. All six teams in positions 13 to 18 have to get above Southampton for us to be relegated. Not impossible, but extremely improbable.

Barry, Must assume you didn't see the Chelsea/Man U game on Monday because if you had you could easily have concluded that the Saints' team that played on Saturday, despite having 2 first choice players out, performed better than either of Monday's teams. Also indications in the Saints' line up on Saturday that Cortese's wish for home-grown players in a predominantly English team is feasible. In the second half against Liverpool there were 7 English players in the Saints' eleven including two teenagers. Of the non-English players involved during the game, two of those had other British international qualifications, Scotland and NI. Even one of the overseas players, Schneiderlin, qualifies as being home-grown. The team representing Chelsea on Monday was about as far removed from being a London side as possible, with only 1 English player, the others being 5 from various European countries, 2 Africans and 3 Brazillians. What on earth makes people who love Chelsea as their club want to support an international mix-and-match like that and no wonder most of their international players don't hang around long as money offers crop up elsewhere. Man U, on the other hand, did have 6 English players on show in Monday and they seem to hang on to their overseas players for longer than Chelsea. If Saints can get to the top 7 without going down the Chelsea road it will not only be great for we Saints' fans but quite a boost for English football as some of our squad would have to be considered for the England team, especially those who've already been picked for young England sides..

Stated ambition, how feasible? At the end of this season there is likely to be a significant gap in points between the top 7 and the teams that finish 8th and below. It’s almost as if the top 7 are playing in a separate competition. With several of the teams in the bottom half of the table playing each other, there is not impossible for Saints to finish in the top half of the table if they can win 4 or 5 of the remaining 7 games but the team in 7th place, Liverpool, despite losing at St Mary's, is a comfortable 14 points ahead of Southampton. Two wins and a draw for Liverpool out of 7 games and they are unreachable even if Saints were to win all 7 remaining matches, which no one would imagine possible anyway. But, here's another way of looking at this. Obviously, without the disastrous start to the season things would have been different, but if you watched the Chelsea/Man U FA cup game, something else stuck out. That neither team played better than Saints would have done. Two of the top 4 but too many passes went astray, players resorted to hoofball and chances on goal were missed. If Southampton had played as poorly as either team did at times, the fans would have rightly been on their backs. So, can we break into the top 7? With this squad, and maybe by adding a top calibre CB, I don’t see why not. They are looking good enough.

Agree. What is amazing is not just the timing of O'Neill's sacking but how anyone can imagine that Di Cannio is a better manager than Martin O'Neill is beyond me and with only 7 games to get to know the team I can see their descent gathering speed.

This game is set up for the Away Win of the season. Appreciate a lot of Saints' fans respected Nigel Adkins, especially for his loyalty to S****horpe when first offered the job at St Mary's. I was never one of them. He inherited a good team from Alan Pardew but I always felt he could have done more with it by winning a title instead of 2 second place promotions. If his repetitive post-match interviews were anything like the way he spoke to the players he will have struggled to add much to their self-motivation. If his strange selection policy and use of substitutes continues at Reading it can only be to our advantage. 5 goals away from home, not impossible.

Hooiveld keen, capable, has proved he can play at Prem level and scores the occasional goal, but is he good enough to be a first choice CB in a team that is looking to move up a level? Fonte, was Adkins' favoured selection but after being out with injury hasn't been able to regain his place from Hooiveld. Good as a squad player but is he good enough to be a first choice CB at this level? Yoshida, fills the CB role well and makes some important stops and blocks but also prone to mistakes. Sitting on his backside when the opponents score, or failing to mark adequately when the opposition CB comes up for a corner. Could we do better? Forren. Who knows? Is CB still a position that needs to be strengthened in the close season?

If my memory is right, MotD did start out as that, one selected match, with 50% or more of the game shown. These days the programme shows all the goals from every Prem game plus the shots on goal. That is Goal Action of the Day, not Match of the Day. If you saw the Saints game against Chelsea, you watched our team dominate the first half and hold their own in the second. But on MotD the snip of the match that was shown gave no impression at all of what the game was like. We can assume this will have been true of the other 7 games squeezed into the limited time available.

Great performance, especially first half, and as for commentators who talk about Benitez 'resting' some 'stars', so did Saints, even if Lallana was an enforced rest and Davis may have been preferred over Ramirez because his international game had been a bit closer to home than Ramirez's. But that's what squads are for and Chelsea have the squad they have because those are the players they have bought. No point complaining afterwards that a £50m striker isn't much good if you've lost the receipt or that your number 1 goalkeeper isn't good enough to stop a Rickie Lambert free kick. Still a shame about our two CBs though. Both give their all for the team but there do seem to be just a few too many mistakes such as yesterday's poor marking when Chelsea scored from the corner kick.

Lawro: My league table only has 6 places, the top 5 and the rest. Southampton are one of the rest who I always predict will lose against any of the top 5. 0 - 3

Come off it! Reading away has to be a fantastic game with Saints even more fired up to win all three points. Pochettino has also inherited a better team than Adkins has.

Lazy journalism. Just another story that Arsechelmanpool want to buy a player from any one of those unfashionable clubs likely to finish below 8th place in the Prem this year. Southampton? Oh yes, they always sell their best young players like Walcott, Bale and Chamberlain, so lets print a story about them selling someone else, but as Shaw's transfer to Arsechelmanpool has been done to death who else have they got? Does it have to be true? Come off it, since when did that it matter? There's a rumour that Southampton have now got wealthy owners. Don't know about that, haven't heard about any Arab-American consortium taking them over, and no Russian connection, so can't be true. Just run the story.

Anyone recall how much credit Rupert Lowe was given for Morgan's signing? Wasn't it suggested that it was a cover deal with Pompy or Arsenal to have Schneiderlin here for a short time and pass him on? Instead the club managed to hang on to him through the financial crisis and the administration period.

What does it matter? Saints are a far better team than Reading and will stuff them out of sight. Adkins being in charge of Reading, if that happened, would make no difference because telling his players about our players won't make the Reading team any better.