The Kraken

Saints should have cashed in on the £3M we were offered from Crystal Palace in the summer. Massive mistake.

MLT was on talksport yesterday speaking about it.

Just realised that's not the point you were making! Whoops. I don't mind Yoshida but I think we need better.

He ma be able to play there but he can't do it very well. I still shudder at the memories of his performance at left back against West Ham. Marginally better at right back, but a full back he absolutely is not.

Kraken's top 5 eateries in the local Southampton area: 1) Kohinoor, Portswood (Indian). 2) Zen, Below Bar (Japanese). 3) The Rockstone, Beavois Valley (pub grub). 4) Coriander Lounge, Below Bar (Indian). 5) Mexigo, London Road (fast Mexican nosh). Granted, you'll find better fine dining in some other places. Fogo Gaucho is also good as previous reviews say.

Banana skin averted, another chance for the team to play together, but perhaps another example of how far we've got to go to get anywhere near last season's fluidity. Damn goo see a strong line-up, and great to see Pelle get the reward he deserved. It will be a long road but this was a decent step (albeit against very limited opposition).

Because it did its job and made the correct decision. To prove your point, can you outline how GLT made today's decision worse? I'll help you out. You can't. You've just got this one wrong. GLT is a good thing. Technology or otherwise for different mistakes is something completely different.

So how did GLT get in the way of the" correct" result being given. What flaw was actually exposed in what the technology can do?

Great work on laughing at your own joke.

What a hit. Great goal.

What a hit. Great goal.

Yep, agree with this. We don't have our high intensity style of last season.

Yep, agree with this. We don't have our high intensity style of last season.

Talksport just reported the deal at £2M. No idea where they got that figure from but good business if true.

How do you work that out? The club tweeted about 14K tickets sold beforehand, and the total attendance was 17K or so. Hardly a huge proportional extra.

As it was on various occasions last season, especially with no Lambert. Another striker is very much a priority.

Exeter 1 Portsmyth 0, Tom Nichols 27.

Pretty much sums it up IMO. Trying to shoehorn him into the England side as a holding midfielder just didn't work against decent opposition. He got away with it at Liverpool because of their attacking ability, but the Chelsea c*ck up and Palace 3-3 highlighted deficiencies when it came to the crunch.

One of the tragedies of mondboard lore is that the Ted Bates Statue thread never made it over from the old site. Genuine laugh out loud moments on every page, an absolute classic.

The Ted Bates statue fiasco is testament to what happens when you gather a bunch of well meaning simpletons towards a common cause. Also I think the advent of the internet has given fans a voice, it's a medium that wasn't available when SISA came about, and forming a fans group was the only way to get that sort of mass opinion across.

In terms of age, he's not "that" young. He's only a couple of months younger than Luke Shaw. That said, Shaw was a phenomenon. If Targett can be at least a decent second choice this season it will be an achievement. Any more a massive bonus.

The irony of droning on about a lack of class and dignity by submitting a hate-fuelled expletive-laden rant about a chap you've never even met. Top work.

Yes, I'm sure you're right that we'll sign zero other new players by the time the seaso kicks off. It will definitely be none. Speculating otherwise is silly. You're 100% right of course (as ever). Thanks for putting me right. I was only hoping we'd sign some players, but now you've said that we haven't, things are much clearer.

The U21s just got thrashed 5-1 by Carlisle. Perhaps a small indication of the level of quality. Not averse to a short term loan in the slightest (as long as we have enough cover at the club to make up for it). In any case, the club know what they're doing when it comes to youth development, so we'll of course defer to their better judgement, whatever the final outcome.

Yep, agree with this. If (as seems very likely) Osvaldo is off, then we need to bring it at least 2 new strikers. Sam Gallagher is young and tried hard, but at the back end of last season he showed that he's not ready yet for regular Premier League football. No shame in that at all, at such an age. Mayuka might come back but he can't really be seen as a genuine starting option. Pelle isn't ideal due to his age, but we definitely need a first choice striker to come straight in and hit the ground running and he loks the most likely target. Can Ings do that too? I'm not convinced either way, I simply don't know enough about him. There's also the possibility we may face a change in formation to a 3-5-2, as Koeman has done it before. So if he does go for that, we'd need far more than the Lambert-Gallagher available combo we had last year. Although, such a formation would probably allow JRod to play in a forward role again when he returns. Even so, we'd probably need to have 3-4 genuine starting forwards vying for the places to make it work over a season. Pre-season will be very interesting. First to see our clutch of new players, and second to see how they line up. If we do go for the 3-5-2 option which Holland have re-invented then I think that could be very interesting indeed (although we would need to improve the centre back options).