vectraman

Correct. We don't fill it for 60% of games now. Why expand it at huge costs for very little gain?

Translated as - Bloke doing his job is trying to get the best deal possible for his client. Unfortunately the football business 2016...

I'm sure the cement works are where they are eg by the river, as it is easy to get ships alongside to unload bulk raw materials and transport finished products. Difficult to get ships up the M27.......!

Not really. Romeu in my opinion is a better defensive midfielder option than Clasie. He really needs to kick on this season - hopefully a full preseason will help and he'll hit the ground running from the start. As he currently stands, I wouldn't be bothered if someone offered £12 million and he was allowed to leave. Romeu could fill his shoes, and we could spend the cash on a decent attacking mid like gylfi siggurdsson! Clasie, as far as I can remember, never did anything game changing, is small, which if your Messi doesn't matter, but as a tough tackling enforcer does, and had little presence about him. Hopefully this season he'll prove me wrong and become the player Saints hoped he would be.

Welcome to Southampton Claude, good luck with the adventure! I'm looking forward to seeing if our new recruits have a more Gallic influence from now on - the end of the Dutch inspired era? The next few weeks should be exciting with (hopefully!) some new signings coming our way, but no more player departures. Another exciting season to come

The problem lies firmly with the loathsome FA. All they want as England manager is an insipid yes man. Do as he's told, don't make waves blah blah. Hence Harry Redknapp would have been the popular choice, but he didn't fit the FA model for manager, so Hodgson got it. Don't expect an exciting new manager appointment, it'll be another yes man ☹️ Nothing will change, same old faces will be in, the new manager won't have the balls to drop the Rooney's etc (or won't be allowed - poor for the huge Nike deal you see). It's all about money, even with National team. Nike are welcome to sponsor England, I won't be buying their insipid design, overpriced tat anyway. Poke it, just like England can poke it if they think I want to travel to London to watch World Cup qualifiers. No thanks!

If the next number is less than 6 then it will be tres magnifique! Although realistically unlikely!

Just extending Pelle's contract would be far better for Saints than selling him and buying in some unknown unproven player, wouldn't it? No risks involved to keep a 15 goal a season striker, no brainer to me! I don't care if his performances are increasing his value, there is no point in selling him, he gives us options up front. He may have is crap games, even crap months, but when he is good he is very good. Put him up front with long and play two up front. Works for Italy......!

Pretty spot on. The difference when Bertrand came back from injury and replaced Targett was huge. Bertrand pacy and position ally very aware. Targett slow and unaware. Can learn awareness, can't get pace. Everton showed what pace would do to him when they smashed us at home . His move to left midfield was okay, good crosser of the ball, didn't do too badly. But not as good as Tadic in that position either. This for me is the issue with some obsessive fans about promoting youth - it only works if you are improving the team by doing it, and from what I have seen, none of our youth currently would improve any position in our first team.

Me too. Some crappy win an iPhone ad keeps popping up. I'm already on one!

Now we know why Kane was taking all the set pieces!

Henderson for Rooney is a bit barmy. Not a Rooney fan but has been our best player in both games. I bet Henderson won't be.... Other changes are fine, Bertrand is our best left back, Clyne solid (but Walker shades him), Vardy and Sturridge better than Sterling (not difficult) and Kane. 2-0 win for England. I hope!

I predict a total forum meltdown, But the board have got things pretty much right the last two meltdown pre seasons! Mark

I thought yesterday's game was pretty much as I imagined it would be! Sunderland set themselves up to be 'difficult' to break down, I'm sure they would have taken a point before the game started. Saints always seem to struggle to break teams down who want to play in this way. A game of few chances, and bar a 5 minute period in the second half where both teams went end to end with each other, a game of limited excitement. A bit like the Stoke game earlier in the season... We didn't play badly, just played with little threat. I guess you could say Sunderland defended solidly... Some earlier posts berated Martina as being not PL quality, I really don't know what game they were watching? He certainly (IMO) put in a solid display, got down the right channel well, and looked okay. A definite 6.5/10 performance, certainly not awful. Romeu was busy and effective, Davis & Clasie also. The game had 0-0 written all over it at half time, it was a bit of a dull affair. Neither team created much, and to be honest, neither team looked like they would. Our crossing I felt was of poor quality in general, too close to the keeper with corners, or hit too long (Bertrand had a couple of really poor ones in the second half). Generally the wing play wasn't incisive, always had an extra pass in there, which allowed Sunderland to pack the box out. Quick break and Saints are not normally used in the same sentence.... Mane a couple of times wanted the ball played long for him, but no, we always would go sideways, and continue are laboured attacking. He wants the ball played over the top so he can use his pace to get behind the defence. He can't do much if we don't give him the ball. Sometimes I wish we would go direct, cut out the faffing about playing it from one side at the back to the other, and get forward more quickly. We clearly are missing Long, he adds a dimension to our attack that Pelles style doesn't - pace. Different types of forward, we didn't help Pelle yesterday at all, he had little support, which makes him look poor, Mane plays too far away from him. We are not a bad side, we need to realise that no premier league team is going to be a walkover, and you've got to really WANT a win. Our hunger seems lacking in that direction at the moment. Other teams at the bottom and top need the points, we are in that horrible 'comfortable' zone where there are no must wins games. It looks to be showing as well, we seem to be struggling to get really motivated....

It is easy to be successful when you are spending somebody else's money, not so easy when you have to live within a budget. It is irrelevant of course. We are now, not 2 years ago. Confucius say:- He who keeps looking backwards cannot see where they are going..... Mark

You have reminded me of the point I meant to make but forgot! We have become (other than against Arsenal) a one half team. We can only seem to string one decent half together - usually the first. Man U, Leicester, Bournemouth, Norwich, West Ham great first halves, disappointing second halves. Why? We just don't seem fit enough. Certainly not as fit as under Pochettino's management spell. We are nowhere near fit enough IMHO. Watch Bournemouth play - they go flat out the whole match. We don't. Why?......

We played fantastically against Arsenal using the good old 4-4-2 which RK seems to hate. So we resort to 4-5-1 again and struggle..... Why do we keep f...ing about with the formation, when something works? Long with Mane playing off of him. Tadic on the left, davis right, and select 3 from 4 of our undynamic defensive non goal scoring midfielders. JWP/Clasie/Vw/Romeu with a grand total of 1 goal between them this season. It is the way to go against poor sides like Norwich. We are so bloody defensive minded away from home. That comes from the manager? We should be going for teams like Norwich, they were crap at St Mary's, and we treated them with too much respect. We always treat teams away with too much respect. We have become negative and unadventurous this season (Arsenal/Chelsea games excepted). We struggle to convert chances. We knew that last year and the year before. Our chances to goals ratio is pants. I thought signing Juanmi in the summer was a step in the right direction - the guy has never started a Prem game for us. Why sign him if he doesn't play? January is the wrong time for signing players. Who is going to sell a decent striker half way through the season? At best they will be overpriced...The summer is the time for transfer business, so new signings get chance to have a pre-season with their new team, and a chance to gel. The club that bit very wrong if we are crying out for a striker now.... People keep saying Charlie Austin. He was injured again yesterday and didn't make the squad. He is injured a lot this season. He has said he won't leave in January because he is up for a huge move in the summer on a free. We wouldn't stump up the wages the would he would want anyway - as I believe RK said - he is too expensive. Also, if he is such a dead cert sure fire success, why did no one sign him in the summer.....? So where do you find a 12 goal striker in January that a team will sell? Over to the experts here....and hopefully at the club! I don't think we will be relegated. I believe we will finish mid-table. We just need the manager to know his chosen starting 11 and stick with it, and not keep tinkering every game. Bring in the youngsters people keep saying on here - you'd like to think that the coaching staff who see these players every day in training know best here. Hence they are not in the first 11, or even the squad usually. If the team are struggling the last thing a young player needs is to be thrown in with the weight of expectation on their shoulders. Targett got a run earlier in the season, and we all saw that he is not a patch on Bertrand, and were all very relieved when RB got back from injury. The line up today was just so negative and slow, against Arsenal we were the opposite! Formation is the difference, players are the same. Be positive RK, go after teams, don't sit back and respect them. Norwich and many of the others are not to be feared! Go for it. COYR! Mark

No, not on the cheap. But equally, he won't cost £25 million either. At least it is a realistic possibility, not out of the question territory.... I hate him when he plays for Swansea- normally I sign he is annoyingly useful against us!

We could do a lot worse than Jonjo Shelvey. Tough tackling, can pass a decent long pass and scores a few. Also proven premier league player and wouldn't cost a huge amount. Better than some we have bought!

Pelle, like all players, has his good games and his bad games. The problem I feel is our obsession with not playing 442. Have someone play off him (Mane), so he has a strike partner to bring into play, lay it off to, flick it on to etc. Mane's pace would see him through defences onto flick ons easily. We just don't seem to want to try it. When it doesn't go right for him his head goes down, he becomes peripheral in the game, but we seem to struggle to have a plan 'B' when this happens (which it is regularly now). Against Stoke, their two centre backs bullied Pelle out of the game - because he was double tagged, and Stoke knew we would just keep going as we were. When was the last time Pelle came off and we played Long and Mane as a front pair? Try something different. We have become predictable, constantly trying to get the ball out wide, crossing it in to (usually) nobody but a defender, normally the first one! It doesn't always work, so try something different. Surely that concept is not too difficult to grasp is it? We have too many sluggish defensive midfielders, and too little ability to place a killer pass. Tadic and Mane are it as far as creativity goes. Romeu/Wanyama/JWP/Davis/Clasie how many goals between them this season? 5 if we are lucky? Not enough goals, and not enough assists either. Leaves too much pressure on the rest of the side to make up the shortfall in quality. Lack of pace doesn't help either. Mane aside, we have little. When was the last fast counter attack we had? All too slow and formulaic. A pacey attacking midfielder would be a great addition, just to liven things up a bit. My thoughts anyway!

The only player in the whole side to emerge with any credit was Stekelenburg. He made a couple of good saves and did nothing wrong. The rest were, unfortunately complete crap. Boring is not a word I'd normally associate with Saints, but I will today. Never created anything, never looked like creating anything, poor crossing, poor passing, just one of those games. Give Stoke credit, they played well, worked hard as a team, and stopped us finding space in behind them. Always more likely that they would get a second than we would equalize. Most disappointing thing was our subs did nothing. Me, like everybody else was desperate to see Mane, and he was .....poor, just like everyone else. Don't see the point of Clasie for JWP, like for like, and unlike some, I thought Clasie was nothing special either. Our midfield is severely lacking creativity. Tadic couldn't cross the road today, and found a Stoke player every time. Other than him, we had no creation at all. Poor today. That's it really. Pelle was bullied and harried and didn't look up for it. You know Stoke will do this, it isn't a surprise is it? They wasted time at every opportunity, but hey ho, if you are winning, why wouldn't you? Makes me laugh when our fans howl with derision at their antics, it may not be pretty, but it gets results - that is what it is about! Having read RK's after match comments, if he thought the first half was poor, but the second was better then he was at a different game to me! I know he stands up for his team, but both halves were terrible. We all know we are better than this. I think Stoke and ourselves will both finish very close together - top half, but not top six.

This one is working for my

Tim Flowers?

Bart probably produced the worst 45 minutes i've ever seen a Saints keeper produce. It looked like a fat bloke out of the crowd was asked to play a half in goal. Gillet worked hard and looked busy.

Rebel - Poke is on loan at Torquay - he played for them in their play off semi against Histon the other evening. Looks like Kelvin is generating interest:- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-1176941/Leeds-Leicester-target-Championship-return-Saints-shot-stopper-Davis.html Leeds and Leicester apparently interested unfortunately.