Millbrook Saint

Of course he's on a wind up, it doesn't change the fact that the fans of the teams I mentioned wouldn't stand for seeing a constant stream of players and managers leaving the club and the money not being reinvested like we do, they may or may not be successful but the point is they are not as willing as our fans to just accept 'their place'. Whilst the fans are willing to accept this, the perception of the club from the outside will always be that we're an unambitious club just trying to stay up each year. As for the atmosphere, it's been pretty bad most of this season, we have one real song, the others are just regurgitated from other clubs, must be difficult making up new songs for players when all the good ones leave. Would be great if some clever fookers could make some songs to sing about Southampton instead of players

Sorry, skate or not he is partly right, the club appear to lack ambition, we get a decent manager and he leaves, we get decent players and they leave. The fans are too accepting of their place in the football hierarchy and this makes it easy for the board to neither invest or not sell players. You would never hear West Ham or Everton fans accepting the year on year loss of key personnel like our fans do. He is however talking out of his arse with regards Inter Milan, I thought the atmosphere was pretty good.

I'm pretty much falling towards the Puel out side to be honest, I hate the weekly rotation and I hate the boring, predictable, sideways football, I'm just not really convinced if he knows how to impose a team onto another and I think he may be too stubborn to change, or even take on board what the players and fans are saying or want. That said I do feel he has been let down by a lack of investment by the board, why are we not being associated with young up and coming lower league players, other teams seem to be doing this. He may have realised that the strikers and our attacking play isn't good enough and just being pragmatic, ie if we can't score then make sure we don't lose. Not what I want to see though. As I said I'm only happy with mid table if it's a transition season, I fully expect the club to be more pro-active in the transfer market, this and next transfer window. We worked so hard to get to where we were last season and it's frustrating to let it all go We all know players come and go, especially top players, just seems we've taken our eye off the ball a little this year by letting Mane, Wanyama and Pele go with no adequate replacements.

I'd expect 10th or above to be honest, I'm disappointed with the lack of entertainment and attacking threat, as we're always told it's an entertainment business and gone are the days where clubs were run for the fans, well you better start entertaining if that's the case. Slightly annoyed that we didn't replace our attacking options, I think there was a balls up when Rodriguez scored that goal just before he was due out on loan in that the club thought he was back and didn't have to spend out..... oops I'm hoping Puel can turn it round but I'm losing faith quickly, don't like this rotation and I'm sure the senior players don't either, surely he should be sitting down and airing any grievances out with a few trusted players. Not convinced if Puel knows how to break a team down, he seems to just want to keep the ball and rely on an individual bit of skill instead of having a way or pressuring the other team and asserting ourselves onto them, I'm hopeful he can change but I'm not sure it's in his makeup. I know our strategy is to groom players for the big clubs, and it is good to see some of these players at our club, but this does get tiresome losing decent players all the time, at the same time I know they wouldn't come here if this wasn't the case. We just need to realise that £10m players we were buying like Mane and Wanyama are now £20m players. I do feel that the club and fans are too willing to 'know our place' in the football hierarchy. You don't see Everton fans just accepting their fate, they are pretty much where we should be, or at least close to, but it almost seems everyone is just resigned to being what we are. If the fans accept this then the board doesn't feel under any pressure to grow the club, or become more ambitious. In short if this is a transition season and the board have every intention of spending some money and improving the team for next season and if Puel becomes more adventurous in his attacking play then I'm happy, if this season is a taste of things to come then I'm pretty disappointed to say the least.

Don't be silly he needs resting for the AFCON

Think Hojberg's problem has more to do with Puel, one minute he's in the team, next he's out, if he does get more than one game in a row the players around him are different each game, how can he be expected to pick up any consistency when he never plays consistently or the players around him always change. The next problem he probably has is that his instinct tells him to get forward support the attackers, whilst his manager's telling him don't get forward, stay in position ready for the other teams counter should it happen (which it invariably does as our attackers have no support so the ball is taken from them rather easily), meaning he's in limbo between 2 minds which ends up making him look ****e when he clearly isn't.

Thing is we're winning, the team has a bit of a buzz about them and the manager takes our most exciting player off with nearly 3rd of the game to go, would have been perfect time to build some confidence but no our manager decides it's time to interrupt the flow, I'd be ****ed too

Think Yoshida got shoved just before making the challenge which is why he fell over and looked like a penalty

Personally I think this was more through having the players we had, Mane was amazing to watch, then throw in Pelle who could score some great goals along with Long who had the season of his life, probably helped by the confidence of having those players around him. Think it's no coincidence that when these players were out of the side or off form we looked awful at times

Yep

I'm kind of hoping that as long as Rodriguez keeps getting into the box and close to those chances he'll soon slot one away, I'd be more worried if he got no where near the ball and was left flapping 5 yards away as the ball is crossed, just one off his ass will hopefully get him going. Problem is with so few striking options it really puts the pressure on him, he needs game time to get back his sharpness but with no one else scoring we need him to step up.

Trouble is we keep lobbing balls into the box and there's no one there, if we're going to play like that then surely you need a target man, Benteke would have been the answer. Martina never seems to take his man on, just gets it onto his right foot and lobs it in, Cedric when he plays at least has pace and tries to beat his man before crossing. I hope he was injured today and not dropped because the last few games he's been excellent. Hopefully the board do something about our striking options in the transfer window, hopefully when we get that sorted Puel will be able to get the rest of the team firing

Were we not cash rich then after selling Mane for £35m and Pelle for £15m. We bought Hojberg and Boufal for what £10m and £15m. That means we still had roughly £25m just from player sales, that's without TV revenue, gate receipts etc.

I'm sure Benteke would have come to us had we gone in for him, whether you think he's worth that or not is a different matter, looking at our attack now he would be exactly what we need

Has been pretty obvious from the start we needed another striker, not sure how many goals we've scored from open play, where we create the chance and score, but most of our goals seem to be from a game of ping pong in the box with the ball eventually finding the net. We lost Mane and Pelle, maybe Redmond is supposed to replace Mane, those are big shoes to fill I'm afraid, though I do rate Redmond, personally I think we should have gone in for Benteke, the chances we create he'd have got a few, JRod should be gone, sorry but that's life, if he'd stayed fit he would have angled for a move when the argie left and would be gone by now anyway so sod loyalty. Austin could be swapped out with Benteke, let them fight it out to find their form. Berahino is another, I know his attitude at WBA stinks but maybe he needs a move away, surely he knows he's on his last chance now. I'm sure there were other strikers available. Fact of the matter is most people were a little surprised we didn't sign another striker, we had the money, we had the pull with Europe but we squandered it by trying to be too clever, unfortunately most of the teams above us have pushed on, whilst we've regressed, unfortunately in football if you don't invest you go backwards, especially when you lose your star goal scorers

Or maybe we should concentrate on singing songs about Southampton, instead of players who will disappear in a year or 2.

Agreed, so it's pointless saying we'll reinvest in a centre back with the fee made, we may invest part of the fee in a new centre back but they won't be of the same quality..... yet... hopefully. The club have done well doing this and long may it continue. What will most likely happen is we'll buy an up and coming player, he'll take a season or 2 to get up to speed as our strikers are scoring for fun but the defence becomes a bit leakey as we all lament 'if only we still had vvd we'd be top of the league'. Then the scoring strikers get sold as our shiny new defender starts to strut his stuff..... and so it all continues, feeding the big clubs as we never progress, but it is fun to watch. Just imagine though if we'd invested all the Mane money in a striker, with the chances our players are getting we may well be higher up the league and all but knocked Inter out of the Europa. I would have loved to have seen someone like Benteke here, I reckon he would get a hatful in our system. Makes me sick seeing the scousers near the top of the table with our players, add in the ones we sold to spurs and utd, what a team we'd have.

Except we don't reinvest the whole, or even most of the fee as proved this summer

Makes you wonder who's next on the Telegraph's list, they've been drip feeding different people all week, started with Allardyce to whet everyones appetite, then slowly moving up the food chain, with Championship assitants, then a well known manager, then a premier league assistant, wonder what the Saturday and Sunday papers will bring, can imagine there are going to be some pretty big, household names about to come out.

People may laugh at these guys but I got the impression they were pretty nasty blokes, similar to the russians at the Euros, Eastern Europeans seem to take pride in their violence and are pretty tough to boot. They all seemed to have the respect/fear of the Sparta fans. Whilst we probably have a few nutters I would imagine that if there wasn't a barrier between us and them some of the lads in the Itchen would have come a cropper last night

That sounds all well and good but all that would end up happening is any player we had would be angling for a move to one of the teams in the UberLeague, the money would all be gone so we wouldn't be able to even try and offer them better wages. So all that would happen is the money would be taken away from teams like us and given to teams like Barcelona, Bayern etc

I would imagine if there's any truth to this that the hush hush meetings were done somewhere else, at some point though they are going to see what they may be buying

This is exactly the truth, the premier league like nothing better than seeing a player from a top team spin away from the goal after scoring as this makes the customers in Asia excited. It doesn't matter if the integrity of the game is ruined, it's all about making the product appealing to the foreign supporters so more money is raked in, unfortunately we have to accept this as we're happy to take the money as well. Until this stops then the refs will always be under pressure to ensure the top teams get the results required by the league to sell the product abroad

You missed my point, my point is buying a recognised player excites fans, could easily have used benteke, bony, remy etc

and we sold our best fcking players which helped us get there, to be replaced with potential, let's hope the potential is good enough. Surely they could have managed one player that is proven to excite us. I bet Bournemouth fans are buzzing over Wilshere arriving, should fill a few more seats in their stadium.