SaintBobby

Rosler....

Expand the stadium? ;-)

Voted for Rank Xerox. Sadly, it's going to be mainly red (again).

Lambert will be in the 23. No doubt at all.

In reality - I don't think that's in the hands of the club. We discovered that with both Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and with Dean Richards. If the player tells the club "I want to leave. I'm no longer very happy here and would like to play elsewhere" and the club believes they can get £35m for them (whilst perhaps only valuing them at £15m), why not sell? You could just punish the player - e.g. insist Luke Shaw spends the next three years playing for and training with the U-21s - but I'm not sure that's often the smartest move.

After yesterday's match, Ralph Krueger came to say a few words in the Channon suite and took a few questions. I didn't take a contemporaneous note, so this is from memory about 16 hours later. Q: Will we keep hold of our best players this summer? A: That's our intention. We want to keep together - and improve - the "product" you saw out there on the field today and we are confident we can do so. Of course, you can't make absolute promises in sports. It would be easy for me to list our best players and promise you now that none of them will ever leave. I would get a big cheer and a round of applause. But I would rather come back here in six months time and look you in the eye, having achieved something rather than just promised something. You should all watch Les Reed's statement at the press conference. Les Reed has a great footballing brain and he set out our strategy very well. He works very closely with Mauricio on a day-to-day basis. Q: If we keep the manager, we will keep our best players - give him a new contract please, for 100 years if necessary. Oh, and we'd like our stripes back. A: That sounded more like a comment than a question. We're working hard on all of these things. (NB: it sounded rather more optimistic in person...RK was nodding his head when the questioner was praising MP). Q: When you came in, you said two key priorities were development of the academy and the stadium. How are things progressing there? A: The improvements in the training facilities should be completed this summer. Wherever I go, anywhere in the world and meet people from any sport, we get real respect for the academy. But we don't just want to have the best academy in England, we want to have the best academy in the world. I think we are in a great position to attract the very best young players to "Southampton Saints" - not just because of the reputation of the academy but because everyone knows we aren't scared of putting young players onto the field. As far as the stadium is concerned, we are quite happy with the way it is at the moment and the atmosphere etc but that's not to say we aren't looking at ways to improve things here. Q: Where do you see Southampton in the greater scheme of things? Consistently mid-table, top eight, to six, higher? A: I'm in sport to win things. I used to just hate losing, but now I love winning - and the feeling we all have today. I want to keep improving our position in the "standings", that's what we're all committed to doing. If you're not in sport to win things, what's the point? So, I want to see the Saints continue to rise up the standings. It needs patience, you can't necessarily achieve everything at once. But that's what we are determined to do. He also mentioned how much Katharina is enjoying now being at the centre of things, as her father was and that she sent her best wishes to all the fans, but that she preferred to take a behind the scenes role rather than being the centre of attention.

It does seem to me that this season is about as good as it gets without a major shift in the balance of power. Understandably, most people on a Saints forum focus on how much more we'd have to do to have a fair shout of top 4 or top 6 or whatever. But I don't rule out one of the teams above us having an existential collapse at some point (e.g. Chelsea are pretty screwed if Abramovich quits and/or has his financial assets frozen). Also, I'm not as worried about us selling players as some others. It doesn't seem there is going to be a firesale, so even if we sold the entire squad for, say, £200m, we could build a totally new team from scratch and get back to arguments about how long it should take them to "gel".

"Our biggest home win in the top flight since 1996."...sorry...major typing fail.

Ouiggest home win in the top flight since 1996. Sweet.

High priority: Centre-back to do same for Fonte; striker to replace Osvaldo. Nice to have but not as crucial: Pacey winger; cover (or replacement) for Shaw; goalkeeper to challenge Boruc in starting line-up. Some (not very original) suggestions: Steven Caulker, Lukaku (in my dreams), Hernandez, Ings, Rhodes, Zaha, Redmond. No real strong feeling on keeper.

Kind of agree that there should be a limit on starting threads. Maybe no more than 3 in a single day and no more than 6 or 7 in a single week. I'm not sure pleas to ignore certain posters really aid the site...if the forum starts to require people to skip vast swathes of irritating, banal material, it kind of loses something.

The last ten minutes were value for money. Norwich awful. I rate Snodgrass, but he was rubbish. J Rod was awesome. Seemed odd to me that we were getting pressed in our own third - nearly made a cock up a few times in the first half.

I guess that one of the problems is "having moved to the next level" (again!), we are now in a sort of safe, but rather boring, no-man's land. We are several steps ahead of those in the relegation scrap, but a very measurable way behind those with serious Champions League aspirations. I'm not persuaded that we will be able to take the next leap forward and become a top 4 or 6 team, but the upside is that we probably have enough in the tank to avoid a major threat of relegation for a fair few years. Not taking the cups at all seriosuly this year still grates though...

Good to see him come good. Maybe he will cut it. Disappointing that we have spent c.£47m on massive signings (Osvaldo, Ramirez, Wanyama and even Lovren) who haven't delivered anything like the outlay. In fairness, Lovren looks great - but as a whole our "high end" transfers haven't been worth it. On the upside - depsite today's disappointing result - we look very good without them!

It's a shame how the Cup has fallen in affections. Credit to the 800+ who went. I thought about it, then decided "nah, I'll watch it in the pub". We took more to Hull in the league, right?

We weren't very big at all between c1910 and c1966. Middle sized clubs could win a lot of stuff in those c56 years. Sadly, us getting biggish (c.1981?) and us rising from the grave, coincided with other bigger teams getting massive. That = we don't get silverware.

One thing I do agree with MLG on... If Lambert had scored a hatrick, then I'm sure Rob Lee's wife would have asked him to get a pint of milk and insist he slept on the sofa. Hard to argue with, really.

He's a fair minded bloke, not just because he talked about how good Saints were. Really hope Hull stay up. Think they will, and that's good news for that part of the world. Premiership support.

Only 1 point needed for safety. Just watched the game on Sky match choice, we were v v v good. Massive hat tip to the travelling fans - loud, clear and awesome. Tip top stuff.

1st half was awful. 2nd was amazing. Cork was superb.

He's speaking under embargo. Whatever he has told the newspaper journalists can not be made public until 11pm. Presume it is either a signing or Osvaldo's departure. Or both.

Southampton FC @SouthamptonFC Mauricio Pochettino is now speaking under embargo to the written press. Read more on saintsfc.co.uk at 11pm GMT. #saintsfc

Not too upset by that. If we win, we'll be the 3rd or 4th best team left in the competition.

Brighton at SMS, no question.

They are clearly spectacularly different people, with wildly different backgrounds, styles, careers, professional approaches, personalities, ambitions etc. Redknapp is basically felt to be a shoot-from-the-hip, provide comment off the cuff, chit chatty sort of manager with a "geezer" personality having spent his whole career in football (and as a media personality). Cortese is a pretty inscrutable, somewhat understated, rather controlling Swiss banker. I don't think it's too much of a leap to suggest that they may well handle their interactions with the British media rather differently.