positivepete

Yes. We are two points behind last season using the corresponding fixtures method, whereas this time last season we were a number of points ahead of the previous system. Hope that is clear! No cause for panic yet.

Make it a sticky Steve, we need to do better than this to support a truly incredible challenge, from a legend of the club.

Interesting article, including an analysis of players values. BTW Monaco made a bigger profit than we did. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/competitions/premier-league/11076666/David-Luiz-Luke-Shaw-Eliaquim-Mangala-Dejan-Lovren-why-are-defenders-becoming-more-expensive.html

Cheers Jos. Good to see the warm tribute from the club. Another ex Saint who will always get a good welcome from the fans should he play against us again.

I saw two games at the World Cup and I saw Shaw, Lallana, and Gaston. Glad I could not get tickets for the France game that Morgan played in!

I would guess that his pass completion averages 85% or so, so that with his general positional play and ball recovery stats I expect that he is the sort of player that Keoman would want in his squad.

On my way back. Only one team in it really. I took my three grandchildren to their first away game today. I had to explain that thousands of Saints fans have never seen their team come back from a goal down to win away!

Thanks VectisSaint, my main point was not to be too critical too early. I am sure you, like me, get fed up with being told X superior team had a collective off day against little ol Saints, when we all know the simple truth is that we did not let the other team play well or we simply outplayed them. For me it was the same today, the Baggies came with a plan to stop us playing, and it worked, it does not mean our players are all Shiite just that the other team did a job on us. It is easier to stop a team playing than to outplay a team, the Baggies stopped us playing.

Dare not read all the thread, but for those at the match having a go at Pelle, just tell me who in the previous two matches against the Baggies at home got any change from Olsson? He always seems to be a rock, not just against us. Was also impressed with Mulumbu also had a superb game for them. They are a difficult team to play against and they executed their game plan well. Sometimes you have to give the other side credit, even if their tactics are not ones we like. We have a decent side, we will play better than this against more open sides, but all teams struggle to beat teams who come happy for a point.

Our bus is the envy of the league so I was told by a couple of Match of the Day bods I met recently. And yes Welbeck is a good player, he would do well here.

Great post, well pointed out. With all the TV money around now, a fund to get the required number of coaches trained and qualified would be money well spent and would actually be a PR coup for the Premier League, although probably the truth is that the PL rely on clubs bringing in foreign players so that they can sell the overseas TV rights. With Wembley to pay for the FA would not put the money up, although it is their responsibility.

We should go in with regular bids for Townsend, a million less each time just to p..s them off and waste their time like they kept wasting our time with stupid bids.

At least we got our crisis in early during the transfer window

Agreed. Bet Gaston is glad he is on our side now ....

If we continue to play a diamond midfield with just Vic as the holding player rather than the combination we played last season it will potentially be more difficult for him. Morgan and Vic were immense when they played in tandem.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/crystal-palace/11034484/Tony-Pulis-leaves-Crystal-Palace-after-dispute-over-transfer-funds.html What that and the Echo story let us hope that these 500 odd posts were wasted then. Who said don't trust what is written in the Mail this summer? !

Shame we can't get his mate, the number 21, he was outstanding.

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2014/aug/14/manchester-united-marcos-rojo-legal-row Rojo deal getting messy for Man U

http://vimeo.com/55279662 This video was on the Redsio Southampton FC blog. If you are interested in how clubs go about finding players then this will help http://www.sigames.com/news/14353/Football+Manager+gets+real Not sure if this means MLG will lose his job?

Thanks, good reading. Look forward to the one on Portsmouth!

http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2014/aug/13/jose-mourinho-louis-van-gaal-barcelona-shaped-seven-top-coaches Good to see Southampton linked with such good company

Has he signed yet?

Could be used in a 4 4 2 with Tadic at the top of a diamond midfield. Or on the left as J Rod does, Rickie used to pull out to the left and J Rod would make the run from deep into the space created by Lambert. Pelle may take the Rickie role. Pelle tended to stay more central in the two games I have seen so far though.

An expensive replacement for J Rod if that is the case. Certainly the plan is to have J Rod facing the goal and attacking the defence from deep with Pelle playing with his back to goal bringing others into play. Isgrove is not ready for this role yet as shown against Bayer, it worked against Brighton, but we are not playing Brighton every week. He is certainly a niggly player, responsible for our only sendings off in the past two seasons. As said before, we are getting a long way down our list of targets if we are going for Long.

In the last 10 seasons 45 points would have got you anywhere between 11th (last season) and 14th. I am sure most people would feel comfortable with that.