Cabrone

Really looking forward to this one, hope it's a good tear up. Fans need to play their part and make a lot of noise, shouldn't be difficult as if you can't get up for this game then there's something wrong with you. 3-2 to Saints and the Chelsea gap reduced back down to 4 points.

Dropped a division to join us too, a very underrated player who seems to step up to a new level every time he is asked to. Fonte should be as big a legend as Ricky IMO.

City are beatable if you cut off Aguero's supply. The rest of them are nothing special. Bayern mugged themselves tonight, City were down and out before Bayern tossed the game away, a game that didn't mean anything to them anyway. Schneiderlin\Wanyama\Cork + our defence will not be giving them the kind of freebies Bayern did tonight.

Quite fancy our chances in this one, infact I fancy our chances against all the big boys at SMS - bar Chelsea. Citeh aren't all that, they have their weaknesses and we can exploit them. If we can make sure that Aguero doesn't get any service they will have lost a huge amount of threat.

2 points dropped. Villa really aren't up to much and we should have figured a way to get the win TBH. Let's hope they've got the lethargy out of their system. Bigger picture though is 2 points clear on 2nd place and a very tasty set of fixtures to come. Citeh on Sunday - bring it on.

A dull, cold Monday night at Villa park, 1-0 down at half time. Time to see what we are made of Villa (a) is 3 points for a team with top 4 aspirations.

If we get champs league we'd have a queue of quality players wanting to come here. I also think just about all our players would stay. If Toby left I'm sure the club could replace him with someone as good though I'd personally love him to stay. Top 4 is a very long way off yet though.

I counted 6 current or ex Saints on display for England last night, more than half the team at the end. That's pretty amazing. Scotland are a Strachan team, work hard and make life difficult but they just don't have the players. I'd keep that England lineup, looked pretty decent to me.

Koeman's Saints 2-1. Would be a very good game.

Seems to be the way with a lot of posters on this bb, players are great when they are here but as soon as they leave they become crap or pantomime villains. Maybe as you get older and have seen so many players come and go you are a bit more balanced about it but the hypocrisy is pretty strong on here. Adam Lallana was and still is an excellent player who was pivotal to our rise from league 1 to the prem and left for a fat fee that was then used to buy the possibly even better Tadic. Best of luck to him, no hard feelings - the club and fans have had good service from him. Wonder if Dusan and Graziano will get the same reappraisal of their abilities the day they leave (and there's every chance they will if one of the big boys come sniffing)? Players come, players go. That's life I'm afraid.

He's served his porridge and as far as the rules go he can play. Getting into arguments about what he did are stepping into an unsolvable moral maze. The system says that he's OK to play so he's OK to play. Change the system if you don't like it. Whether clubs want to employ him is their affair though, if fans feel strongly enough fan power may have an effect - we'll have to see.

Why would the media be 'worried'? All they care about is selling copy and SFC currently makes an interesting story - endless opportunities for articles. If anything I wish we weren't so reported about, to operate under the radar. Bigging up our players could be destabilising. Why do so many on here give a monkey's what the media say? I really couldn't give a toss, reality is our current performances and 2nd place, the rest is vapid nonsense. The fans of the other clubs will still read their reports so I'd imagine the media are quite enjoying the added flavour that our assault on the top is adding.

The only way I could see him coming back as a member of SFC would be in some kind of coaching role with a bit of playing, like KD. As a player his time with us has finished. Still a legend though and always welcome back by everyone.

If we get top 4 we'll get have loads banging on our door to join up. Getting into the top 4 is moving into a new world where we become the ones who pick and choose. However if we don't get there then I can see a rerun of last summer, finishing just outside top 4 is a dangerous place to finish, you are noticed but have no european football to offer. However as long as we avoid too many injuries I think we can get top 4, especially being as the usual suspects are stumbling. If we can get a solid return from our Dec\Jan games and they keep on bumbling along then we'll be in a brilliant position. It's doable.

Bored.....are you kidding. I have too many memories like being laughed at by Watford fans during a wet, midweek cup game, dismal capitulation at Pompey, losing 3-0 in the cold rain at Blackburn, having our asses handed to us at Everton, humiliatingly turned over at Tranmere and Bristol Rovers (SRL had a good one for them that day), more dreary away defeats than I care to remember and plenty of home ones too. Sounds like you've been following Saints as long as I have. We've paid our dues, it's time for some long overdue fun. Enjoy it.

The phrase banana skin keeps on popping up in my mind. They'll park the bus then build a brick wall around it complete with barbed wire and sentry posts. Nugent will be miles up the pitch on his own, a real 10-0-1 formation. If they do there is always the danger that if we can't break them down fairly early frustration sets in, the defence get bored, Fraser nods off and Nugent wriggles through with his one chance of the game. Hopefully they'll come and play but my money's on the bus strategy, 0-0 would be a great result for them. Either a 1 or 2 - 0 win to us or they'll do a smash and grab 1-0.

Quality player, can see a lot of the big boys coming in for him at the end of the season. I hope we can get European football next season otherwise it may be another rebuild with a big pile of cash.

If we are still very much in contention for a top 4 then it's going to be a big call. If Artur doesn't come back then GK backup is definitely required then after that the position I'd probably look at strengthening is playmaker. If we lost Tadic we don't really have another similar option and the team would really suffer. Hopefully JRod would be back to give Pelle some competition and the midfield\defence looks pretty good with Yoshi as backup. 1 or 2 quality signings at most could just push us over the line but a long way to go yet.

Not a player but George Burley never seemed to really give a toss about us. It was his managerial stint where we really lurched downhill and spent beyond our means. Wasn't he more interested in the pub than the team?

Let's get a couple of wins from the next 2 to really set us up for those tasty Dec\Jan fixtures. Really looking forward to it - the game against Chelsea could be a humdinger. Bring it on.

Great result, like Stoke Hull are another outfit that will take points off teams around us. Not a bad team and an astute manager. Good to see big Vic on the scoresheet, gritty wins tell you more about the character of a team than 8-0 romps and the fact that the goals are being shared around is a sign of a strong team.

If we play like we did in the first 45 against Stoke then a win is doable. Hull are a decent enough team though so a draw wouldn't be a bad result. Don't think we'll lose.

Great win, Stoke are a tough test and we've beaten them home and away. Love good gritty wins, much better test of character than 8-0 romps. This is shaping up to be a exceptional team. Can we finally get some silverware (paint pot excluded) this season? If we get lucky with injuries we must be closer to it than at any time in the last 30 years.

Good fit for the team, whilst you need the likes of Tadic to supply the creativity you also need the likes of Long to do the leg work and he's one of the hardest working strikers around. A real pain in the arse for any opposition. He may never be prolific but if he allows others to be then he's doing his job. Thought he was a good signing on the day he came and still stick by that.

Spurs, one of the most badly run clubs in the EPL. I've said it before but they have a catchment area that should see them getting Man Utd levels of support (better than Arsenal yet they can't even get their ground situation soerted out) and regular champs league football yet they screw it up time and time again. Poch is finding out exactly what a lot of us predicted, namely that Spurs are a poisoned chalice. They may look bright and shiny on the surface but underneath it's rotten. Bale papered over the cracks but now he's gone they are looking more and more like a midtable outfit. That club will never get to where they really should be until they change their DNA. They need to tear down the 'instant gratification pay loads and buy the flashiest players' strategy to something more like SFC, invest in youth, pay big for critical players and develop the club as a resilient unit where positions can be replaced without damaging the whole club (exactly as Cortese said when Adkins went). I'm glad I'm not a Spurs fan, with the prices they have to pay and the size of their support the frustration must be immense.