washsaint

A really good point made by Robbie Earle on NBC yesterday (he has become a very good pundit IMO). Said our club is run exceptionally well all the way from top to bottom. By not having a team of 'stars' like Man U the club can focus on getting the little things right that make differences. Nothing particularly new there but easy for media to ignore/discount this fact.

Lol.,....what has happened to you Alpine? FWIW, I think Saints just need to keep winning games and not worry about the other teams. Good news is that Liverpool are still 7 points behind despite being on a good run (they will have a blip at some stage), Spurs 5 points (with tough run of games coming up). 3rd to 8th (including West Ham) is where we will finish and its too tight to call right now. If we win 5 of the next 6 then I would say we are in with a shout of catching City for 2nd.

Reading was not a failure for Adkins. You do realize they had not a penny to spend after failed takeovers and promises made to him were not honored? Adkins was too honorable a guy to make a big deal of it but he was dealt a bad hand. They have not improved since he left. Top guy and very good manager who deserves a good club that is stable.

Harrison Reed looks like a top, top player in the making. Yet another gem. So tonight we had 3 U21 Academy lads starting (Targett, Reed, JWP) and not looking bad at all. Very comfortable and potential banana skin avoided. This is some team.

Think a lot less points will be needed this season, maybe as low as 65/66. If you look at last season, after 23 games Chelsea were 3rd with 50 points: no team will be close to 50 points and 3rd this season. Likewise, after 23 games last season we had 32 points so we are already 7 points better off with 2 games in hand. Not sure we will ever have a better chance of CL football and the way we play, why not? It's in our hands with Spurs, Liverpool, West Ham all to play at home.

Immense stuff. This team is not like Saints of previous years: Koeman has instilled belief and steel into the side. 15 goals conceded all season: incredible stuff. This team just needs to keep it going until the end of season with no more major blips and there is every chance we could finish top 4. Incredible stuff and Koeman is an inspiring manager. This club really is well run from top to bottom.

He has actually been pretty good I think - not a starter as it stands, but he puts himself about, makes room and space for others and has some pace. Good squad player - of course we overpaid, same way Liverpool overpaid for all our players. He is not a winger (neither is Mane) and I think playing both out of position (Mane looks a different player through the middle) has not made look them strong.

Pretty poor from Saints: Dave Merrington, I think, had it spot on that we don't threaten enough when Pelle is the lone front man. Look how good Saints have been with Mane off Pelle: we'll miss him for sure. We just don't create enough with just Pelle up front - and not convinced Long is the answer to anything, despite how hard he works. Really hope we try and get another proven striker in during the window.

Certain that Ron is saying this tongue in cheek to get on smarmy Brenda's nerves and as payback for what happened in the summer!

He did and Cork will be a good squad player if he signs a new contract.

He brings other players into the game so well......he is missing a good number of chances but defenders must hate playing against him as he holds the ball so well and wins so much in the air. Hopefully he will rediscover his goal scoring touch at Old Trafford. So much more than just a goal scorer and it has made a world of difference having Mane playing off him.

Really good watch.....Koeman comes across fantastic and we are in really safe hands with him for sure. Saints marketing has sure improved beyond all recognition and anyone who supports Saints should have a warm and fuzzy glow after watching this. Hopefully we will keep picking up more and more neutrals as fans because this is one hell of a story. If we can improve our "global brand" then that can only help us in the long term. Kruger came across very well and you can sense the positivity and feelgood factor around the club and everyone striving for success. Great to see MLT at the start too, waxing lyrical about "our club".

Calling K Billy or Guan: any truth in this? Would be an immense coup if true......truly a fantastic player.

Very early days for the lad, but boy does he look a great prospect. He chases and harries in midfield and provides a real energy to the team. Could be some player for us. Good to see that the conveyor belt continues to churn out talent, with Hesketh, McCarthy, Taggert, Reed and Gape all making debuts in the Prem this season.

The guy appears to be a genius. His tactics are a masterpiece and they way he got the team to recover from the big blip was sensational. He has us playing wonderful football, his substitutions are well thought out and is just a genius! The next 2 League games will tell us a lot about the team and expectations for the rest of the season. We truly must be considered candidates for top 4 now. Obviously it is only 1/2 a season but he already rates (for me) right up there with Lawrie.

so proud of Saints. Cannot believe the job that our Ron has done: he has turned us into real European candidates. The way the whole team has responded to the blip has been amazing: as bad as Mane was on the wing, he has been sensational playing off Pelle. Some very tough games coming up but we know Saints will battle as a unit and will be competitive. This is unbelievable.......noone in their right mind would have predicted this in the summer! Now for a Chelsea win!

Outstanding defensive performance. Targett looks one hell of a prospect.....didn't put a foot wrong all game. Still concerned that Tadic is misfiring (despite a lovely through ball for the goal), but we are back to looking a very good team again and seem to have recovered well from our dip in form. Incredibly we are almost safe from relegation before the end of 2014!

Fair play to RK......he changed it up and the system worked. Would have liked reed to have played against su. Truly plays like Scholes

To win, we need to score. And we are not creating chances - 1 attempt against Sheffield was utterly, utterly pathetic and since the last international break we have only be creating a couple of real chances a game. Maybe Everton will gift us OGs again!

Despite trying to be optimistic, it feels like the wheels have well and truly come off and really don't know where next point, let alone win, is coming from. We have been absolutely appalling for a number of weeks and reckon you could count on the fingers of 1 hand how many real chances we have created in the last 5 or 6 games. We have been sussed out......Mane and Mayuka are not footballers. It is a joke how often they play. We create absolutely nothing and Tadic is a shadow of the player at the start of the season. It is time for Koeman, and the team, to step up to the plate and stop this rot. If the players he is picking week in week out (long, Mane looking at you specifically) are not performing bring in the youngsters cos they sure as hell can do no worse. Surely Seager has to be a better option than Mayuka from the bench? A truly exciting season has evaporated into what could well become a long, hard struggle all season.

Wow, we have really become s**t. 1 point in 15 now cos we will never score. We ahve stopped creating and even when chances come they are fluffed. Really, really poor and just not good enough. Koeman really has to show what he is made of now. If Tadic had not been so good at the start of the season you would question why he (and Mane) ever play. Simply not good enough.

As superb as Saints were for the first part of the season we have been terrible recently. Tadic has been just awful, no service to Pelle and Mane appears to Mayuka in disguise. Really need to change it up......we are going backwards as a team.

Sadly, on the evidence of the last 4 games, we will not be challenging for a top 4 position. Shame, as this year seems to be the year a non-traditional top 4 team has a shot at it. If we finish top 8 we will have done well......we are quite clearly not as good as we all hoped we were and teams have wised up how to play us by shutting Tadic down who has been anonymous recently. Less said about Mane the better! Still believe a sense of perspective is required: in the summer if you had said where we would be I think people would have called for us to be sectioned. Not the end of the world but we must break out of this slump soon or we run the danger of being like WBA a couple of years back. Really need to put the chances away....something we are bad at right now (and creating chances).

and 3 - Tadic has been so poor and his set pieces are just horrible

what a bunch of crying babies on here.....boo hoo hoo we lose to Man City. Batman/Jamie/Dell days says oh we played two bad games in a row. Man City have been far the better side (and they beat Bayern at Bayern in mid-week) and these things happen From the same pussies who said we were relegation certs before a ball was kicked. 26 points after 13 games is incredible. We were always going to have a dodgy spell and it looks like that time is now. Both Tadic and Pelle are looking poor but it how we bounce back from this over the next few games that will count.