Cabrone

Personally he'd be my 1st name on the sheet, a real general and potentially a big star in the prem. Wasn't his fault he (like all the players) had to labor under a total idiot of a manager last season. Now we've got a competent guy at the helm I expect big things from Mario and I don't think he'll disappoint. Just hope the club can keep hold of him. A reenergised Romeu + Lemina is a tasty central mid pairing to me.

Last time around we had this. This time round his head might just blow off.

The ones that stand out for me.... 83-84. Just started watching Saints on a regular basis and was spoilt rotten by a top class team who rarely dropped points at home. Steve Moran was my hero at the time. Possibly the best Saints team of all time, awesome defence and razor sharp forwards. Next would be 89-90 which was top entertainment, goals all over the place plus the odd tonking too but it was never ever boring. With the benfit of hindsight Nicholl was a great manager much maligned at the time. He understood that fans wanted entertainment and delivered it. Definitely my kind of football - Tiss\Shearer\Rod were box office. Next would be 11-12 in the champ, winning is fun, doesn't matter what league and with Nige in the hot seat and Ricky up front that season was brilliant. The whole club was so positive and going places, a great time to be a fan. Finally 02-03 was good fun too, Strach got the team playing really effective football, BT was banging them in and Killer\Niemi were giants at the back. The cup final was the icing on the cake even if I thought we were a bit flat on the day.

England have ground any passion out of me, they regularly stink out tournaments and never seem to want to really go for it. They bore everyone to death most of the time. I'm not being 'cool', it's a view garnered over 30 years watching them. MLT was far too exciting for those boring sods and was discarded despite being one of the most talented players England have ever had at their disposal. In my heart I still support them and could get enthused pretty quickly but I could count on my fingers the amount of times they have genuinely got my pulse racing over the last 30 years, I'm actually looking forward to seeing the minnows go for it, there's going to be some great games in there and chances are most of them will feature the 'lesser' sides. I love how the Iceland's of this world show so much fight and passion, England take note you dullards.

Ex Saint 2 - Ex Saints 1 Was that 5 or 6 ex Saints out of 22 players? That's quite a feat TBH,shame we couldn't have kept them.

At the time we all thought this was a pretty crucial 73rd min substitution...... To this day still the loudest I've heard SMS.

Worst Saints manager in my time and probably in premiership history. On top of everything already mentioned he worried about winning. Now I've seen some poor managers at Saints but I've never ever known a manager that fretted about winning, wanting to win is what the job is, or was until we got Pellegrino. However even more blame needs to be laid at Reed's feet, he appointed him and kept him until it was almost too late. Not taking anything away from Sparky who did a top job and turned us around in the nick of time but let's be honest - we got lucky with Swansea's nose dive and the board got a massive let off. https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2017/jun/24/mauricio-pellegrino-complete-coach-southampton-manager

Safe but damn we were lucky, Swansea decided to nose dive at just the right time, their 5 straight losses saved us. Get Sparky in and let's get back to mid table safety.

Didn't we wind 5-4 at Norwich in one of the 90s escapes and Tiss scored from a corner or something like that? That was a great escape, this was a great FUBAR.

1) Sign up Hughes 2) Get rid of Reed, possibly Kruger too 3) Keep Gabbi if atall possible 4) Sign up a new CH 5) Lose Forster and replace - too expensive if not no 1 6) Lose Redmond and replace - hasn't worked for me 7) Lose Boufal and replace - hasn't worked for me Bring in some leaders, the team is too quiet and anonymous. Need some steel in.

I'd like him to stay, he's a talented player who showed what he could do when he first arrived. I feel we have hardly seen anything of his real potential. Unfortunately he's been badly managed, even more so than the others, a real shame as as competent manager would have picked him a lot more and IMO we wouldn't have been in the situation we were in.

Phew. Take a bow McCarthy, my player of the season. Take a slap in the chops Reed and bugger off. Take a course on how to think positively Pellegrino you '1 up front' nutter. Take a brown envelope Pep, you can have a 1-0 and your hundred points and we stay up. Take a sympathetic pat on the shoulders Baggies, tremendous effort but not quite enough. Take a bonus Sparky, well earned. Proper management at last. Finally take a bow every Saints fan that has endured this season, it's been a tough one but we're still here. By christ we left it late but we got there......

Feels to me like that playoff game at Derby 11 years ago, this is pretty much a playoff final for us. Time for Charlie to step up to the plate and do the business like Rasiak did that night. Swansea are there for the taking.

I think we'll draw against Swansea and lose to Citeh but I'm not at all convinced that a relaxed Stoke won't beat a nervous Swansea on the last day, there really isn't much difference between them. Also no-one is talking about West Brom but look at what results they have been getting since resigning themselves to 'relegation', beating Newcastle and Man U away + Spurs at home. Their last game is at an 'on the beach' Palace, compared to Man U it's definitely winnable. If we draw with Swansea then they are in with a real chance of staying up. WBA pulling off one of the greatest escapes ever and us + Swansea going down is not a crazy scenario anymore.

Can't see us getting anything from citeh so this is the last real game of the season. I want to see the team give everything, no slacking anywhere. If we go down we go down fighting.

Doesn't matter how we do it, 3 points is all that matters now. Still alive going into the next game and hopefully with a little confidence too. The great escape lives on for another day.

Hope they can keep Hughes, sounds like we've finally got a manager that is doing things correctly. Wouldn't have fancied Boufal's chances against Sparky even if he was giving him a good 25 year age gap.

I'm surprised they sacked him, I really thought he was going to be here till the bitter end. Either way it was far too late. Despite all the cranial discharge pumped out on here just about every poster realised he was to winning games what Dani Osvaldo was to model professionalism long before the club did anything. Les Reed, what a total balloon head.

Can the ceremony and ask the players to have a whip round for any staff who lose their jobs at the end of the season.

I can only see either a Bournemouth win or a draw. Neither good enough now. Hats off to Eddie Howe, he's done an amazing job there and they do play some good stuff. Us on the other hand.....

Well done to ALL fans that went, atmosphere was a bit flat where I was but what can you expect? At the moment this team is giving next to nothing to cheer. I thought it was a good turnout all things considered.

Odd comments on here, I can only assume our supporters have been subjected to dross football for so long they have developed some kind of Stockholm syndrome. Truth was we were fairly comfortably seen off by a half-assed Chelsea team who never got out of 2nd gear because they didn't have to. Forward movement was sloth like, the Chelsea defence had all the time in the world to organise when we got the ball. Finishing was poor (what little of it we saw). Defence was brittle and midfield was for the first 60-70 mins pretty much overrun. Full backs were useless to the point that we may have well played 3 CBs and stuck another man in midfield. I think the soporific football has seeped through to the fans as the atmosphere was as lacklustre as I've ever experienced, certainly not a patch on say the 03 final. I don't blame them TBH, what the hell is there to cheer about? I think a Bournemouth team on a good run will beat us (they actually attack at pace unlike our statues) and all but send us down. I just hope relegation will be a rejuvenation because this is one seriously clapped out team, worse than the class of 04/05. A chainsaw needs to be applied and a complete rebuild undertaken. Puel and Pellegrino have wrecked them. Also last but not least I hope Reed is removed, he's the architect of all this and needs to face the music. He believed he could turn water into wine and pushed his luck further and further. Well this season the luck ran out. Goodbye and good riddance.

I'm sure Klopp is on the phone as we speak. Starting bid £50M.

No-one expects us to win so lets give it a real go and see where that takes us. The last thing I want is a defensive whimpering defeat. Give us something to cheer about for once!

It's over, last night was the do or die moment. We play like a relegated team and Sparky's body language last night indicated that even he realises the game is up. Making up 4/5 points over 4 games would be a big task even if we were in good form. Not going to happen. Gutted.