Charlie Wayman

Not an issue, Villa will wipe the floor with them on Monday. Derby aren't ready or good enough to justify promotion.

UK is well known abroad as a tax haven for the super rich. Good for them not good for any of us as their money is tied up in assets and so does not trickle down to stimulate the economy. Probably going to be ten times worse after we leave Europe. A form of prostitution really, if the price is right....

What should worry us all is that Ralph doesn't really believe in us being anything other than a mid-table team, I was surprised to hear him say in his big interview that the "privilege" of us being able to play 12 matches per season against European League status teams was his/our champions league. That to me smacks of lost hope of us ever being a top six challenger again which isn't much of a prospect to look forward to and certainly not what most fans want to hear. You can't settle for mediocrity these days as others with more ambition will rightly take our place and there are plenty of them. WE either keep improving and looking upwards or we are dead meat.

Don't bet against Troy Deaney replacing Chas Austin. Chas + £35 of Tesco vouchers.

Surely all the ref has to do is stop his watch when the substitution board goes up and start it again only when the subbed player has crossed the touch line. Then it doesn't matter how long it takes although the momentum of play will be lost of course.

Not funny at all, both deserved every bit of criticism that came their way over the past 2/3 years. Only since Ralph's arrival with a Big Stick has either of them pulled their socks up and acted like the well paid professional football players they were supposed to be. We'll see if it lasts.

Very good entertainment for the under 5's so maybe that's the level at which we now aim to recruit?

We do not have single player who has been able to rise to Ralph's challenging style of play for 90 minutes despite over a half season of coaching, every one of them has had more off days than on and none has eliminated costly errors of judgement from their game. At no time has this bunch of players been able to emulate the slick style that we saw from all those RB Leipzig videos at the time of Ralph's recruitment. Major surgery needs to happen this summer and I mean major to transform our performance and style of play into something akin to what Ralph purports to want. I am not overly excited about what lies ahead because it is hard to see how financially or otherwise we can bring in two, three or four transformative players of the quality needed to form the core of a new dynamic Saints nor how Ralph can possible squeeze more performance or consistency out of his current players than he has already. There is no magic pill and the odd new face will make only an incremental difference. 14th may be as good as we can hope for - bit like Palace - and yes, Ralph will leave at the end of the season.

Sounds like the missus might be agitating doesn't it. Of course we will not give him the easy option. It never pays to foul up your own front door-step. Objectively he can't run very fast, he can't tackle back and he is not physically strong in the mold of Hoj and Romeu, he just doesn't fit what we aim to become.

Black is not the happiest of colors in traditional Chinese color symbolism, representing destruction, evil, cruelty, and sadness.

There are better shirts in Primark at 3 for £10. Can things get any worse, we said last year? Apparently they can, they have! Nightmare on Brittania Road. These kits would have been embarrassing if some other club had chosen them. Who the hell carries the can for this rubbish?

Very enjoyable match to watch although Newcastle looked a bit one dimensional all evening and quite physical with not a lot of creative flair on display. We deserved to win as by and large we were a far better team. O'Connor, Klarer & Vokins continue to impress. Ramsey like Valery seems to have this gift of stumbling through tackles with the ball still at his feet even when closely marked and can run so it will be a headache for Ralph to have to choose between them in the years ahead. Valery is at the moment clearly better, Ramsey's positional sense and passing decisions need to be worked on. N’Lundulu looks like he will be a handful, he has pace, strength and height and willing to battle for everything. He was great target man last night actually winning most of the high balls aimed at him and although not yet the finished article he does look like a decent prospect in the Lukaku mold. He also has a great sounding name for a top striker! Nobody played badly and all could be possible candidates for first team squad selection in the next couple of years but we know that all will not make it which just goes to show how fine the margins are at this level. The two or three players who have played a game in the PL were not obviously superior to the others last night. In fact one of them, Tyreke Johnson looked a bit lost apart from being in the right place to help score our second goal. Great turn-out but more should have made the effort as these lads are part of our future. A very good way to spend a fine spring evening in the sunshine and for free! Well done lads.

Ralph Kreuger was nobody's fool and is morally upright, he has just jumped ship. Now that's what you call a co-incidence.

Truth is we should have gone to Specsavers.

Oh Dear! You've made yourself a hostage to fortune again, this promises to be a vey interesting day reading this thread.

Totally unenjoyable and probably our worst performances since the last relegation season. It is hard to believe that the owner will have enough money to sort this mess out.

Is he an exceptional coach? Sure, he kept us up but he also coached the abysmal rubbish that we had to endure today and last week and many weeks before that. On that basis he has achieved only what Hughes achieved last season. On another note it is utterly moronic to question Gunn's competence as a goalkeeper just because he has made one stupid error.

Are there any houses on Park Lane, don't recall seeing any? Did you mean Park Lane, Bournemouth perhaps next to the flash hair salon.

I've never met a woman who really likes football, some will fake most things for their man 'though.

One of the academy staff mentioned next Friday at the Awards dinner?

Since there has been no information on the OS about ticketing for this match, I phoned the ticket office today to find out what is happening, supposedly the match to be played on Thursday evening. The ticket office said there has been as yet no conformation from the PL of when this match will be played (?!) so no ticketing arrangements can be announced. They are in the dark, we are in the dark. I suggested they should post an item on the OS to at least keep fans up-dated on what is happening as many I know will want to see this match.

I've not seen you post before but you must be the only one with fingers crossed that Ward Prowse doesn't leave. Where have you been these past few years? Who would want him and which other PL team would give him game time. Many of us would give him away just to put us out of our misery.

It's tricky for refs and hard to believe they are in any way biased in their decisions. By and large one suspects they are on the side of football and players, that they like if possible to keep games flowing and not keep blowing their whistles for the sake of it. They use common sense if you will to apply rules that are not black & white in situations that often are not at all clear-cut. They must be crucially aware that their interventions should not wreck the match or atmosphere nor give a clear advantage to one of the teams. Handing out a yellow is no big deal intended as it is as a warning to a player to calm down, handing out a second yellow is a very big decision and a game changer; the referee knows that he could by that single act change the outcome of a match so he has to judge the incident by a different standard to that used for the first yellow. It shouldn't be so but it is! The problem is that a first yellow doesn't often change a player's behaviour and certainly not in the case of head strong players like Hojberg or our beloved Romeu. Maybe the answer is not to hand out the first yellow too easily when perhaps a verbal from the ref and the coach would do the trick? Or maybe change the system to three yellows and off. Sadly referees have become the butt of most club's poor performances. Media and pundits make matters worse by focussing only on a few minor incidents of a match and magnifying them beyond all proportion to their importance to the match... "Let's take a look at that penalty shout" being typical and after ten re-run video reviews they pronounce solemnly "The Ref got that one right!" If I were a ref, I'd tell them where to stick their punditry but of course TV is king and lower league journey-men footballers assume the mantle of world class status for insight despite no formal studies, training or qualifications for the job. The abuse and criticism that referees get is far beyond anything that most decent people would regard as fair minded or acceptable.

Not long ago, the rumor announced Southampton's interest in Victor Osimhen, the Wolfsburg striker on loan to Charleroi with an option to buy. An option that Sporting was quick to raise for an amount of 3.5 million, well aware of the added value it could achieve. And this should be the case since Lille would be willing to extend between 12 and 13 million to acquire the Lagos striker, leaving a profit of 4 to 5 million for the Zebras since the German club must receive a percentage on the capital gain. If the Nigerian goes to France, it's probably because Southampton has other aims. And the eyes of the "Saints" is rather than one hundred kilometers from Mambourg, or Sclessin where this season broke a certain Moussa Djenepo. Negotiations would have taken place last week to consider the transfer of the Mali Eagle to a club that, during the 2017-2018 winter transfer window, had received $ 84 million for the sale of Virgil van Dijk in Liverpool. If this transfer is confirmed, it would be the second largest outgoing transfer from Belgium.

That is certainly a controversial statement. Like you I'd hoped there was a way out of this fiasco but wiser heads on here assure me that there isn't. I much prefer your answer.