Professor

Beats me why fans allow themselves to be ripped off by thinking they have to wear the shirt of the season. Just don't buy it. It would serve the club right if fans simply stuck with the best example of red & white stripes that each can get hold of and not keep buying over-priced replacements. This silly looking home shirt, with a totally inappropriate black splodge, is almost a badge for victims of a fraud.

Southampton FC is becoming less and less like the Saints I began supporting over 50 years ago. Chinese ownership with a touch of Swiss, can’t possibly have the emotional feelings most of us grew up with. If it wasn’t for the Academy it would hard to see much connection to Hampshire or the City except for matches being played here. The sponsor is just the latest example of the disconnect. It’s not just this club that’s affected and shows why so many people are ignoring their local team to become glory supporters of whichever top six club takes their fancy.

Sitting in the car, glad I’ve got to drive home because I wouldn’t want a beer in Wetherspoons after such a miserable afternoon. OK, so the Huddersfield goal was down to a silly mistake by Gunn, but the performance was dire. Ralph can only play the players he has and it’s worth remembering that when he came here, Saints were below Huddersfield in the table. The club has to unload half the squad at least and rebuild from the ground up.

Can anyone explain why the club pays a multi-million salary for a professional manager when we have so many amateurs on the forum who know far much more about team selection, line-ups and tactics?

Let’s not pretend that a wealthy owner could turn Southampton into a Liverpool or Man U. Man City was the last club created by wealth, but after that FFP put a stop to it. Owners can’t pump money in because clubs must balance spending on the team out of revenue earned. The international recognition of the usual suspects in North London, Manchester and Liverpool earns them huge income from commercial sales whereas Southampton depends on TV money, attendance income and profit on transfers. It’s unlikely to ever change.

The stats suggest that the decision to reduce the squad in January was the right one with only 1 win out of 14 games under Hughes to 8 wins since, out of 22 games. When Ralph came in December, he made sense for him to assess a bloated squad before buying even more players. He said publicly that the January window would be used to offload and that he would be developing some of the younger players. Throwing money around works for the clubs that can spend £50m plus on one player but at our level, £15m is no guarantee of getting anything better than what you already have. Some of last summer's transfers in haven't made as much impact as was hoped, something that is also true for other clubs. I seem to remember that Huddersfield signed a raft of players last summer and look where that's got them. So, lets not judge the owners' support for the manager just by the transfer budget. It's exciting to see what Ralph intends to do to rebuild and to what extend that will be departures and promotions from the youth team as well as moving in the transfer market.

Couldn’t believe a statistic in the BBC report on today’s game until I’d checked it. It said Saints have won eight of their 18 League games Hassenhuttl, which is as many as they had won in 52 games under their two previous permanent managers combined. I know it was bad but how bad is incredible. Mark Hughes managed three wins from 22 and Mauricio Pellegrino managed 5 from 30. Hughes wouldn’t use the Academy, made Ward-Prowse a fringe player and demotivated Redmond. Now we have Ward-Prowse in the England squad and the likes of Valery and Sims as regulars in the side. I’ll be surprised if Hughes ever works again.

You’ve missed the point. I’m not condoning diving by Saints’ players. The sickness is in every club. I say it’s unrealistic to expect referees to spot every simulation. It would help if cheating was severely punished when discovered by retrospective study of incidents. The punishment in football is laughable while cheats in other sports can be banned for life. But I’d prefer seeing a penakttonly awarded for preventing a clear scoring chance with other fouls resulting in an indirect free kick.

It’s because when the penalty was invented in the 1890s, a Line was drawn right across the pitch at 18 yards with the kick being taken from anywhere on that line. In1902, fouls out on the wings were excluded by shortening the line, so creating the penalty area with the kick taken from a fixed spot 12 yards out. Although the laws today express the distance in metric length it is still 12 yards.

Glad you mentioned Rodney Marsh because you’re quite right that he gained a reputation for diving in the early years of Match of the Day. His influence was such that amateur players in The Hampshire League where I was playing began copying him.

VAR is NOT the answer. The game can't be stopped for every incident to be checked but this misses the point entirely. The rules of the game ENCOURAGE cheating.

The penalty has become a huge problem for football as it now impacts on the outcome of so many matches and is a major focus for players, managers and pundits. The penalty was invented in the 1890s with the penalty area and penalty spot being introduced in 1902. It was a proper award for handballs and fouls where the attacking team had a good chance of scoring a goal. Today, the penalty dominates the game because the award of a free shot from 12 yards is completely out of proportion to most of the incidents for which a penalty is given. Consequently, players cheat to get a penalty instead of trying to score a goal in open play. Too often people focus on the decision of the referee, instead of on the way the penalty rule has corrupted the game. Simulation has become endemic. We see players pretending to have been fouled by throwing themselves to the ground if there is any contact with a defender, sometimes when they initiate the contact themselves and often with no contact at all. When there is a genuine foul, such as shirt pulling, players throw themselves down to make the incident look more serious. The same is happening just outside the penalty area where a direct free kick from a close position is better than using footballing skills to get the ball past the defenders. An example was Tottenham's player, Rose, in the game on Saturday (9 March). The highlights of the game show Rose diving to the ground with arms thrown out sideways when faced by Romeu, just outside the area. It is important to be clear that Romeu did not make any contact with Rose. People can make their own judgement from the video of the game and the replay of the incident. It was impossible for the referee to see what had actually happened in the split second that he had to decide but he could see a player falling as if tripped. When players simulate a foul they make all the body actions as if a trip had actually occurred. If anything, these are sometimes exaggerated. In the particular game, Tottenham very nearly scored from the free kick and had they done so, the game could have been an away win instead of a home win. The impact on the outcome of matches by decisions on penalties and free kicks cannot be under estimated. The point is, the focus should not be on the referees who can be misled into making incorrect decisions, it should be on the cheating and it needs to be recognised that the rules of the game give too great an incentive to cheat. So, what to do? In my opinion there needs to be a serious investigation by the football authorities into the cancer of simulation that is undermining football and has only got worse in recent years. Harsher punishments might be of some help. For example, retrospective punishment where a video of a match shows deliberate simulation with cheating being met by lengthy suspensions, not just a game of two but for periods of months. But it must be remembered that video evidence isn't available in all matches, only those at the top of the game. The real cause is the Penalty Kick being such an excessive reward for a foul where the player doesn't have a clear chance of scoring, or for a handball that doesn't make scoring a goal less likely. It is time to consider if the penalty rule needs to be completely overhauled so that the number of penalties awarded is massively reduced. Far fewer games would then turn on goals scored that way and players would need to continue to try to score from open play instead of attempting to draw a foul. If a foul does not stop an obvious goal scoring chance, an indirect fee kick might be the more appropriate award. What has become clear is that action is essential to remove the incentive for cheating as well as increasing punishments, because at the moment the game is truly sick.

Just caught up with Press Conference, which was an impressive performance by the manager. Ralph said they have been working to improve in defence and although he was pleased at having Yoshida back, and Betrand available, he was clear that doesn't want to change the back five for this game. As a manager who gets more out of players by encouragement and advice, it makes good sense to continue with the players currently holding the shirts. His praise for Jack Stephens was striking. A player who was often criticised on the forum by fans who didn't think he'd make the grade, Stephens is fulfilling the promise he was showing when he joined the club as a 17-year old. Ralph also defended him over the penalty at Burnley, saying that Jack only put his arm up to let the ref know about Crouch pulling his shirt. It will be a tough game against Cardiff, with the emotion that is understandably about, but the match being at St Mary's should be a great help. It would have been far more difficult in Cardiff. The bottom line is that we are the better team and despite missing some forwards we still have proven goalscorers to play up front. Confidently expecting to win this.

The list of strikers shows that selling before buying isn't just a funding issue, or about keeping within FFP rules. Six strikers looks adequate, even though they all offer something different. If Austin has gone, that would open up a space as well as freeing money to increase the bid for Adams.

Strange. When Puel was at St Mary’s I wasn’t keen on him but now I like him a lot!

It's interesting after being away for a while to come back to read some of this debate. I did think Hughes was the right appointment at the time, although the Pellegrino sacking had been left far too late but in my opinion it is a myth that Hughes saved us from relegation. Almost anyone who wasn't MP could have done the same. As others have said, I believe we were fortunate that a couple of other teams were even worse.

I'm inclined to think it's something of a myth, that Hughes kept us up. Unless I've miscalculated, there were 8 league matches in 2017/18 after Hughes became manager with a record of P8 W2 D2 L4 (8 points out of a possible 24). it appears we stayed up because other clubs had worse results than we did. If there is to be a sacking before a new director of football is appointed, it will be down to Ross Wilson to convince Kruegar of the recommended replacement. The short list is already there for all to see in the betting odds, although maybe there is someone unexpected, and maybe some on the list wouldn't take the job. For me, I'd like to think they will first of all, ask Arsene Wenger if he's prepared to go down market and if not, then look at the others.

No football match is ever a foregone conclusion. City have an obscenely expensive collection of the World’s best players but luck still plays its part. We can score if one or two of our chances go in, and they can fail to score from the chances they will have. Doom and gloom beforehand is pointless.

I was under the impression that only 3 teams get relegated and that there are more than 3 beneath us. Also it is only mid-October but we have played some of the hardest games in the first half of the season. If only one of the chances we had yesterday had gone in, say, one of Pierre-Emile's shots, today's discussion would be quite different. As for those who like to blame the manager, how was it Mark Hughes' fault that Charlie took one touch too many when he was one-on-one with their keeper?

You could say Hughes is rewarding players who have performed well in training or in the Everton game but that’s probably not accurate in that he’s chosen that line up on his assessment of current form and with regard to the opposition. In my opinion, he’s done this to put out what he sees as the best team as at today, not to reward individuals.

According to the radio commentary I was listening to on the Everton game, the best penalty kick for Southampton was taken by Steven Davis. Wonder if he’s encouraged to advise others.

People who say JWP isn't Premier League standard simply demonstrate why they don't hold coaching jobs in professional football. He's been playing top level football for 7 years, since he was 16 years old and still has a lengthy career in front of him. Someone suggested he could be sold for £15m. That sort of fee would only be met be another Premier League, so if it's thought he's of that value to another club, he's certainly worth keeping here. Fortunately, only a few people show such lack of appreciation for a player who's been here since he was 8 years old.

If the Brighton keeper, Ryan, hadn’t pulled of a remarkable save in injury time, we’d have won 3-2. How goes that fit in with the theory?

Here we go again - more rubbish. Which of our best players could we have refused to sell? Van Dijk, perhaps?

Personally, I don't rate Wetherspoon's food very highly but they do a cheap Sunday roast and The Admiral Sir Lucius Curtis by Ocean Village has a public car park to the rear. About 15 mins walk to SMS. Likely to be very busy on a match day, though.