Rasiak-9-

Because thats what it all boils down to. If we really do sell Shaw, Lallana, Lambert, Lovren, Schneiderlin and another of Wanyama, Clyne or JRod. We will go down, unless we add to the squad with what should be a hefty transfer budget However! You'd like to think most of the money WILL be spent on new players. But how much of it? and on who?

Meh, whatever I guess, he has to make choices here and there and he's naturally going to be focused on the 23 players in the squad proper. France look like they've got a good, well-established chemistry and that their players all know each other well enough. It isn't the time to chuck new players in and try to fix what isn't broken. I think Morgan's inclusion in the ressies was just to give him the experience of training with the national team and to let him know that he's not completely gone under the radar; and that he will likely get his chance for the 2016 qualifying campaign and that tourney if he does well enough.

Do they have another warm-up friendly? I gather Deschamps gave a few players debuts tonight so Morgan may have to wait for his chance. France looked very good and a lot of their players who seemed very ordinary last season in the Premiership (Sissoko, Debuchy etc.) seemed like they were part of a well-drilled and well-organised team so I can understand if their manager doesn't want to change much. Their opposition tonight was very weak but there did seem to be a good chemistry in the French squad.

The French look very, very good tonight. Hard to understand why they made such heavy weather of qualifying.

This video gives one of the main 9/11 truthers the reaction they deserve. Brilliant stuff.

Mmm. If that is the 'worst case scenario' then the worst case scenario is, I'm afraid, pretty bad. Boruc, Clyne, Fonte and Davis are the only players I'd be confident in being able to perform well with enough regularity to keep our heads above water. Having said that, if we've got a solid transfer budget to add to that squad then I reckon we'll just about live.

Aston Villa, since Benteke has played for them, coinciding with our presence in the Premiership, have finished 15th in both their seasons. Below our (improving) finishes of 14th and 8th both times. We aren't as big a club as Villa but if we get the right manager in we could well get hold of Benteke with a solid bid, especially with the right manager.

It doesn't occur to you that that might be down to the lack of players to fulfill that option? Cork and Morgan have been too lightweight to play as a midfield pair and Wanyama/Morgan is too defensive. Plus Lallana needs to receive the ball high up the pitch and we ideally don't want to restrict him by playing in a 4-4-2 where he'll likely have to spend more energy tracking back. Add to that our chronic lack of strikers and we haven't had the chance to play a 4-4-2. Not properly at least. If Lambert ends up being dropped in addition to Lallana and Shaw leaving (not to mention having a new manager) we're likely to be playing a considerably different style next season and having a degree of flexibility in our formation would be very useful.

Ings would be a gamble after only one good season. Rhodes I'd be very disappointed with. The guys had every Premiership club under the sun looking at him for a long time now and literally not one of them has taken a chance on him and there is bound to be a very decent reason for that. I think we should go all out for Benteke and sign a young centre-forward that can realistically replace Lambert in the long term as well as play alongside Rodriguez and give us the option of a 4-4-2. We also need a replacement left-back and pacey left-winger. Could do worse than Routledge I suppose, as for the left-back I'm not sure. Possibly even need to buy a second striker in addition to Benteke (or Lukaku, if he is at all possible)

There's certainly nothing wrong with what the OP is saying or even being pessimistic about Saints in general. You're allowed to think or feel whatever and however you want about the team you support. The bizzare phenomenon however is posters who are incredibly pessimistic to the point of saying Saints are utterly incapable of ever finishing in the top four/top six and never ever will be, and then somehow still manage to complain about things as they are.

Lowest point: Losing 1-0 to Swindon in August 2009. Bottom of the league one a -10, that 1-0 defeat meant that we managed a single point from our opening three matches. Utterly awful game and delays on the trains back to London. Realised that we had to plough through two seasons of that. Oh and add to that our 2-1 defeat at Gillingham when we had nothing to play for. The Pompey equaliser was pretty gross, but I actually think the 2-3 against Man United hurt far more. High points? Pretty much everything else. Every look at the table to see that in every season we've done better than we expected. The praise our players have rightly earned and every time I see some ultra-foreign-named randomer on Facebook or w/e saying how great the football we play is and how amazing an academy we have. Goes to show that we CAN take our rep further and attract enough interest and investment to maintain our position as a top-half team and slowly crank things up to make a top six challenge and from then on? Who knows?

You ever got that friend who likes to nitpick whenever you use the term 'we' to refer to Southampton F.C, the team and their results and smugly tell you that the players are utterly removed from the fans, are a bunch of complete, arrogant dickheads and that they'd hate you if they met you? Well in the days of social media interaction as well as fans having the chance to briefly meet some of our players I rather like to indulge in the idea that for us at least, such an accusation isn't true. It certainly makes it easier and more enjoyable to support the successes of the boys on the pitch representing our city and club and makes the whole experience far more enjoyable for me for one. All of the above however would be well and truly blown the **** out by signing someone like John Terry. So no thank you.

Always a bit of a goofy one as he had a long, leggy, languid stride which often tends to give more of an impression of laziness than is fair compared to those short, stocky, bustling Tevez-type players. That, coupled with the fact that he had the arrogance to choose to be born in a nation of talented, footballing maestros like Brazil meant that he was realistically always going to be a target for stick when he didn't live up to an impossibly high standard your average dumb English fan was bound to set for him. Shame that no-one really was able to just simply see him for what he was, which was an average, but reasonably decent player in the lower leagues and one who actually boxed above his weight rather well in the handful of Premiership games he was called upon. Nevertheless, he made a telling contribution at times, in particular in the first half of our season in the Championship where we amassed a great many of the points that sealed our promotion, so no reason not to give him a good round of applause and a token stoppage-time substitute appearance. Best of luck for the future Guly x.

Yeah if you look closely the ball hits the post before bouncing off Rickie's back and into the net. Might not even have gone in had it been left alone.

Just goes to show that if you can churn out clean sheets, points can rack up incredibly quickly even if you aren't playing well. You almost have to remind yourself that we've beaten Everton and Swansea away considering how non-existent we've been as an attacking threat, and thats pretty much the point

Thank you kindly for the, sadly pessimistic advice. I'm seriously considering emigration; especially looking at my fellow young men who seem to be having a much better time of it in Australia and Canada. Oh and in case you were wondering? I wouldn't vote for UKIP and don't plan to, but I just can't help but wretch at the open hypocrisy and double-standards such as the one I've pointed out in my OP. I mean people literally come at you from all sides with ad-hominem attacks and character assassinations not even for expressing a pro-UKIP opinion, but simply for pointing these double-standards out. Its soul destroying.

Taking this to its logical extension you're saying anyone suffering injustice should put up and shut up because someone, somewhere is somehow worse off; and furthermore that we should never, ever question our press or our politicians. You are, by your own admission, a willing slave to the dictatorial political class that comprise your rulers and as such you have my deepest pity.

This has nothing to do with anything although incidentally I was well against the Iraq war. I was hoping I could just point out a blatant double-standard and provoke a discussion about politics in our own country.

- Muslims blow up cars, kidnap school children, fly planes into buildings. "You cannot judge an entire group of people based on the actions of a minority within that group!" - Random nutjob who supports UKIP comes out with a load of racist guff. "RAAAAGE!!! EVERYONE WHO SUPPORTS UKIP IS AN RACIST EVIL BIGOT!!!" I'm only, as I say, a young man, but how am I supposed to stay sane in a world of such blatant double-standards and hypocrisy?

Classic Glasgow Saint strawman and hypocrisy. When Saints were going through a bad patch you gleefully turned the attention towards '4 wins in 13,14,15,16,17 games' which you updated every week and completely disregarded the fact that 1) we had a massively wonky fixture list and 2) we were in 8th/9th position in the league. Now, with Newcastle you're telling everyone to do precisely the opposite and pay no mind to the fact that they relied on a huge purple patch at the start of the season, have been extremely lucky with late winners against Fulham, Villa and Palace and on form over the past 3-4 months now, look like relegation material. Which of the teams above us are we really better than? To what extent has Pochettino underachieved?

Psh. I'm afraid he doesn't do anywhere near enough going forward for me and doesn't really find that 'killer pass' often enough. Good player in a midfield three but I'm afraid the 'step up' we're looking to make is finding players who can do all of what Cork can and then some, chipping in with goals, assists and physical size to win headers etc. Again he's in the Clyne category of being a very good tackler and a very good footballer but the limitations he does have means that there is a massive, massive cap on how far he can go.

Psh. 3/10. Could do better. Oh re. Clyne I for one think he was excellent yesterday although I do rate Walker and Johnson above him, but only down to their physique and size. Clyne's as good a technical defender as both of them, just suffers because of his lack of height and strength. Bit like Neymar; who I genuinely think is actually more skillful in terms of dribbling and manipulating the ball than Ronaldo and Messi, but the fact that he's so so SO skinny means there's a massive cap on how good he can be.

We had less than nothing to do with Everton failing to make the top four. As soon as they dropped points at Palace it was all over as there is no way Arsenal will drop points and besides which, they're still very unlikely to take 3 points off City.

Well if you're only going to praise "game-defining" moments then you're invariably only going to dish out excessive praise to the strikers and attacking players and not give anywhere near enough credit to the defenders and players who aren't charged with scoring goals themselves but nevertheless make a massive contribution to the success of the team.

If we can get Clyne's up on Youtube I think there might be some debate here! His lack of size and height are literally the only things stopping him from being right up there with some of the best right-backs in the world.