Whitey Grandad

Not even close. For the one in the second half he tried to force himself between two defenders and then fell over.

Whilst I was sitting there bored stiff this afternoon I was thinking of all the other things that I could have been doing instead. I've got a yogurt in the fridge that's reached its sell-by date. I could have had that

... there are still some paper towels left at the end of the game. (What's your version?)

I paid a lot of money for my tickets and I want to see him play at SMS.

That was an away game, but I was there too. This was worse, at least we had the pitch to blame.

You are joking, right? That was the worst Saints game that I have ever witnessed, although there was one Wednesday night at the Dell against West Ham that came close.

Ta for that. Bale & Walcott have worked out at less than that because of the early payment settlements,so we are looking at about £23m to £24m. The next question is how much does the academy cost to run? Then there are the secondary effects, e.g. does trying to develop these youngsters by playing them in the first team have a detrimental effect on the playing performances in the league? Would it be better to form a settled first team from a variety of sources?

A bad salesman always wants to reduce his prices. What they should be doing is giving better value for the money.

Needs a rest after half a dozen games? There's another 40-odd to go! I will say this for him, though. He never hides if anything goes wrong and is always looking for the ball.

That seems a lot. Care to elaborate?

You're sharp :smt058

All very noble sentiments providing: a) we survive in the short term b) the team will improve in the long term. Maybe this is as good as they get.......?

Yes, every time we changed managers we brought in another lot of average players.

Addicted to pleasantry. No chance of that here, then.

I bet they would have closed the corners there too.

Yes, something doesn't add up, does it? If our income last year was £14m then we could sell all the players and play schoolboys but we would still be losing bucketloads. From what I understand, our spending pattern is fundamentally different from most other clubs in the same division. How expensive is the academy? We keep getting told that the club is skint, but the big questions is 'where does all the money go?'

This has been discussed before. The balance of spending at this club has been completely wrong. Less than half the spending was on players' and coaching staff so where on earth did the other £18m (insert your figure here £....) go?

I have paid big money for my two season tickets and for that I expect to see players like Skacel, not a bunch of understudies.

They've all been saying that to Lowe for years but he doesn't believe it.

I agree. It's not his fault that he is not a full-back and neither is Surman. The blame must lie with the management for not addressing the problem over the summer.

You've been reading Epictetus: 'Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants'

At one point in the first half I did notice Wotton call him back when he got dragged forward a bit too far. Full-back is a specialist position and you can't just stick a midfielder in there and expect him to do the same job.

What, 27 years?

I think that's part of the problem. The management didn't thinkit would be a big issue either.

We can't afford to indulge him if it continues to cost us goals. It's not so much that he was exposed, more a matter of being caught out of position ball-watching instead of staying goal-side of his man.