VectisSaint

Apart from changing Vic for Romeu and Caulker for Yoshida this is the same team that were ripped apart by Everton. It didn't work then and it won't work tomorrow. Tadic, if he is fit, cannot play the AM role in front of 2 DMs. Assuming Vic doesn't play, it would be better to play Reed alongside Romeu with Davis in front. But don't hold your breath that Ronald will pick Reed. If you want to stick with your basic team then Ramirez would be better there than Tadic, but we all know that Ramirez is guilty of going missing and giving the ball away in dangerous positions, even if he is selected by Ronald (as he is clearly fit and has been for some time).

Pompey have made an offer?

He has been in several training picture galleries over the last couple of weeks. There is not much wrong with him, but doesn't get selected for the squad. Latest gallery from yesterday: http://www.saintsfc.co.uk/news/article/20150828-training-gallery-pre-norwich-city-home-2654431.aspx

Nor can I. Your point is?

I think you are just telling yourself that. I don't think anyone really "wouldn't be bothered" if we were bottom tomorrow. That would mean 4 games and 2 points. I know its early days, but to have played more than 10% of the available league games and picked up 2 points would be very concerning. We can't just fritter away games without picking up points and hope that everything comes right, the failure to win any of our first 4 games, against mediocre opposition would give some indication that we are not looking good. Long way to go I know but you can't just ignore these games. Anyway, I don't actually believe this is what will happen, just responding to Batman's post and commenting on his team's possible impact on our position. They drew 0-0 so its no longer relevant.

But is that really the issue? Of course we have alternatives, but with less than 72 hours until the window closes, signing one of the alternatives becomes less and less likely. We will probably end up with Ron Vlaar, since he is not window dependent (free agent) and is of course injured.

True-ish. Will you be happy with us bottom after 4 games? Of course if we are 10th as Batman suggested we could be then the table will still be meaningless.

Well **** me, thanks for stating the bleeding obvious. It is a possible indicator rhough that they have not started training with the squad yet. Players don't suddenly get well and fit Jeez.

On the other hand lose tomorrow and we will be 20th. Just saying. Unless of course your lot beat Spuds this evening.

Last update was "after the international break" but getting less and less likely, no sign of either in any training pictures, so they are not really close yet, with 2 weeks left before WBA.

Did he really say "if we don't it will be a disaster"? We can still sign Vlaar, even after Tuesday.

Victor looks OK in the training pictures. Will be disappointed if we start with JWP instead of Davis. Don't like Yoshida at LB, we have to play Targett, unless Martina could play there. Hopefully Bertrand will be back next game, though I'm not confident.

Guess he would have to get used to not receiving win bonuses nearly every week.

I'd somehow forgotten we had sold Jay Fulton for £200k in 2013/14. Perhaps it was because he never played for us or was signed by us or perhaps I am having a senior moment. Maybe Osvaldo never signed for us either.

LOL. Your favourite (only) subject. Obsessed.

On the other hand having a bug and passing it on to the rest of the team, or having suspected appendicitis (depending on who you are listening to) might stop you.

We would not have ended up in the group. If we had won last night we would have been in Pot 3 (we would have been 34th highest-ranked team). Midtjylland were in Pot 4 (46th ranked club). The draw would have been completely different. If you really want to think what might have been it would be better to use Augsburg fixtures as a guide as they ended up 34th ranked as a result of our demise, so that would have been Athletic Bilbao, AZ Alkmaar and Partizan Belgrade - that would have been interesting and 2nd place would have been well within our grasp. C'est la vie.

Exactly, and getting information like the bit about the u21s helps to piece together that there are issues behind the scenes. Ronald's disposition in the pre-match press conference in Denmark and in earlier ones and this little snippet that most of us wouldn't have seen (unless we were at the game), tells us a lot. There is some serious issue behind the scenes at the moment and while we may not like Ashton it is good that he is doing his job and reporting things that show all is not well as some have suspected for a little while.

Which CB do you think is 19? Stephens is already 21 (January) and Turnbull will be 21 in October. I know people don't like Ashton, but I guess part of that is that what he writes is accurate (while not being mind blowing) and does not fit the agenda of the ostriches on here who think the sun shines out of the arse of our current board and believe the hype spouted by our ice hockey coach.

WTF?

Yep, lets just ignore the evidence and blindly believe that everything will be OK because it was for (the first half) half of last season. Just because something worked well for a while last season doesn't mean its going to happen again.

The Solent/Saints Player link dropped just as Blackmore asked RK about the Wanyama situation. Anyone know what he actually said? Although to be honest, after hearing his analysis of the performance tonight anything he did say I would not take seriously, sounds like the meds for his achilles are affecting his thinking.

This is a bit of a myth. If plenty = 3 then I'll agree. The only games we played well without him were Everton, Arsenal and Villa. There were plenty of games when he played when we were poor as well. Its not so much that we are missing Morgan, though we are, but without him we are trying to play a different way and failing. So we miss him because we cannot play the way we did last season.

We aren't bringing a midfielder in. Need some realism rather than this continued blind optimism, some people need to wake up and smell the coffee.

There is much merit in this reply. Take away Morgan from the poor second half of last season and things are looking decidedly dodgy.