Tommy Mulgrew

I was at secondary school with Martin Chivers. He was as thick as two planks (or so we thought at the time) and stayed on at school essentially just to play footie. He used to be out on the hockey field while the rest of us were at lessons and he used to practice shooting from the halfway line into the (small) hockey goals; impressive stuff. We had an excellent 1st football team. He was in it at CF, as you might expect, but when playing 6-a-side competitions he was in the second six, not the first. Others were better than him at the time, especially a young lad called Weaver - I think his first name was Brian. But Martin went on to train with SFC whereas others did not. Certainly the best Old Tauntonian if not the best Sotonian. Chivers was a typical big lump of a CF, not afraid to rough up opposition defenders, and was lethal with head and feet. Weaver was a skilled IF (no. 10) and created lots of chances for others as well as himself; most of his goals were well placed in the corners of the goal. He was small and stocky with a low centre of gravity and difficult to get off the ball. I have no idea what BW did after he left school. I was gutted when Chivers left us for Spuds but we did pretty well for CFs both before him and after him. TWTDs

Interested in Zeka, apparently. Free agent. 28 and compared to Romeu. WBA and Palace also interested. Yet another midfielder. I wonder if he has played as a goalkeeper! The Real EFL and Charlie Smith on Football Fancast.

Interested in Zeka, apparently. Free agent. 28 and compared to Romeu. WBA and Palace also interested. Yet another midfielder. I wonder if he has played as a goalkeeper!

I have not seen this mentioned on here yet but I might be wrong: Oriel finally got two yellow cards in the same match last season for Girona and was sent off. Shame, an excellent record broken.

Unlikely to return: option to buy any time in season for <€10m.

Alcarz here for 15m euros. Medical tomorrow.

OR had a headed “goal” disallowed and later hit the bar in today’s away win at elche; Gazza in goal again. Carillo seems to have left elche. How we miss him - OR, that is.

AB-K: may the force be with you while you are a Saint. And may the Source be with us for a few more seasons.

Never mind ML and GB, get in van Domselaar!

Bedders hit for 6 by Belgium tonight. Poland playing like Saints, it would seem.

If Palarse can do it, so can we! Can’t wait for Citeh to go two games in a row without scoring. We can but hope.

Streamsgate tv , select the right game, the last stream, dazn Canada, is working well.

Try streamsgatetv, woksaintly. It always works for me.

I don’t remember seeing this on here before but sorry if I’m wrong: since the beginning of January, Gaston now plays for AC Monza in Italy’s second division, Serie B I think. Monza is in 6th place atm and Gaston is pretty much the lowest-rated midfielder in the team. No goals or assists yet (sounds familiar?) but he has played only a few part-games so far. Keeping in Italy, Maya did his hammy a few weeks ago setting up a goal for Gabbi and the latter has now lost his goal-scoring streak. Sampdoria have what I consider to be two good keepers; the No 1 is mid 20s and rated at over 80, well above any of ours - he could be worth a look. Mind you, JWP only gets 56 or 57 so the ratings are questionable. KWP is our only player to get as much as 80, so at least that one is right.

Tim Sparv article in the Mail; he’s calling on England players, and others, to protest about Qatar’s human rights record. Good lad.

Gabbiadini scores again for Sampdoria, Yoshida with the assist. He keeps up his consecutive game record. As soon as Maya is substituted, Samp concede and go on to lose 2:1. Samp’s goalie looks the business: ask the old boys to put in a word for us and get him in!

Outstanding bravery to deliberately put his forehead in the way of a thunderous volley towards the end of the second half; for a minute or two, I thought he might not get up again. A bit of an extreme move to give his teammates a much-needed breather.

Antonio was onside for his goal because Forster pushed him away from near the goal, where he was offside, not because Bednarek was asleep.

Manolo and Maya shining for Sampdoria; Ramirez left before the start of this season. Gabbiadini’s goal today against Roma (Mourinho, Smalling and Abraham) was his fifth in his last five games - one in each; he last did that for Napoli and Saints. Colley is a commanding cb and even makes Maya look slow but he is 29. More promising for Saints perhaps are Falcone, 26 I think, (gk) and Askildsen (amf), 20. Sampdoria play a reasonably high pressing game and Gabbi copes with it remarkably well and can even last the full 90+minutes after a game last weekend; he could have done the same here! Some interesting games in Italy; I’d recommend it for anyone remotely interested.

Why has VAR not suggested the ref should look at a replay? And give a red card?

15th; phew.

To the tune of O sole mio (just one cornetto): O Saint Lyanco, born in Brazil, defender supreme from Italy; a killer gorilla is he: O Saint Lyanco, f’kin hates Pompey! Song sorted (well, sort of).

1:0 to Saints, with Shane getting his 50th PL goal before getting shipped out on loan again. (Pretty sure I read somewhere that he was on 49; he deserves the kudos of a half century for effort alone and for being by all accounts a decent bloke.)

Samuel Umtiti - not wanted by Koeman at Barca, 27, French international and keen to play with our other French players. OK I made the last one up. And, like Toby, unlikely to want to come to a relegation scrap here.

As others have said, a comfortable victory but we were worryingly ineffective in two ways: (i) gifting two or three free kicks near our penalty area and being exposed by WBA runners behind the defensive line into the space in front of Macca - we could easily have shipped two goals - and (ii) so often preferring to pass backward, both in open play and from free kicks, thus giving WBA ample time to reform their shape. We should really have scored more than two against one of the weakest teams in the EPL. But a win is a win. Romeu and KWP were outstanding. And Macca's distribution was much improved. JWP's comment about Rom's goal was a gem. Pleasingly, nobody had a really bad game. Bring on Chelsea and Everton.