S-Clarke

It happens when the recruitment dept. spent a little bit of TLC researching players personalities, rather than just their ability. We'll always sign good lads, who will integrate with our current good lads.

They just spent £16m on Luis, they also have 'Dave' who plays pretty well there. They don't need him, any attempt by them to keep him would just hold back his promising career.

According to our friend Monk, the intention is to get Toby and Ryan signed up ASAP.

Good first half of the season for us, 2nd half was so so. Few errors, few slips, few stupid decisions down by corner flags. and ultimately a demand to leave. 6 months of decent stuff, the rest was drivel.

Toby's positional sense is quite simply astonishing. He's there before the ball is even played half the time. Top, top level CB. Can see why he was at A.Madrid.

I must admit, it's very pleasing reading RAWK. A club who continue to feel that they are this mega force in world football, when in fact they are also rans. Their best chance was last season, and they won't get another for a long time, especially with transfer windows like the one they've just had. Whoops!

Southampton's haul of 22 points from the first 10 matches in a top flight season is the club's best ever. They had 20 in 1983-84, when they finished second.

It does my ****ing head in....stuck up stupid ****s.

There wasn't a great deal of attacking fluidity from us today at all, yet we still could (and should) have had a couple. Was probably one of our worst displays of the season as an attacking outfit, but one of our best as a defensive units.

The goals scored one isn't too shabby either! What a flaming team.

Ah, the good old complacency driven slip up could beckon if we're not careful... Tough game against the best of the promoted 3. Will need to be at our best.

A gritty performance, I thought in parts in the first half we were complete pants in terms of ball control - but luckily that was only a short phase, and we got to grips with it thereafter. Hull huffed and puffed, but similar to Stoke last weekend, never look like scoring and never tested forster. People will say it's because Hull were poor in attack, but as a defensive back 5 (I include Wanyama in that) we were unbeatable in that 2nd half. Diame v Wanyama was always going to be an interesting battle, and seeing how frustrated Diame was at the end said it all. Another battle won fair and square by Wanyama. Can't quite believe what I'm seeing really. I think we're a better outfit than last year tbh.

Can't find a decent stream anywhere today, just one of those days. back to Solent commentary I think. Old Skool.

I don't know these days to be honest.

That's such a generic thing to say really. Why is it always the opposing team have to have an off day for us to win? Could it just be that, maybe....just maybe, we make it very hard for them to get anything? and our excellent play and football gets us the results?

One of the main reasons has to be the recruitment programme. We obviously didn't want to sell so many this summer, but the club have done an amazing job pulling replacements over the line. In many cases, these are like for like replacements - and in the odd case, better replacements. I look at Liverpool (and Tottenham from last season) for an example of how not to recruit. It was slap dash, ill prepared and spare of the moment stuff. That may sound like a huge assumption, but it doesn't take a genius to look at players like Soldado, Lamella, Markovic...and think if there was a little more TLC in the recruitment process, they may have been able to get a better feel of their personality or how they'd adapt within their current group. It sounds a bit corny, but 'The Southampton Way' is what we follow. We have attributes and personal qualities we require in any player we bring in, and that's why as well as having excellent technical players, we always seem to have down to earth decent blokes on top of that. That gives you a great opportunity to build a team, the mentality and personality of the squad is important. (There may be the odd 1 or 2 that don't quite fall in that category, but I'd say the recruitment guys have done a damn fine job on the whole - and you'll get more success stories than duds by following our method) But all of that needs a manager in place to glue it together. What strikes me is that there is a clear idea, a clear plan on how we play and how we set up, and he was provided with a blank canvas to work with - the players have taken to it superbly and Koeman has put his idea's across better than any of us could have imagined. I think his support staff are also very, very strong and offer all sorts of qualities that we may not have had before. Sammy Lee seems like a happy guy, probably a little out of his depth as a manager, but I think he's a damn fine coach. At the end of the day, if you combine a well thought out and well researched recruitment policy with a grounded and talented coaching staff - then you've always got a chance. We may slip and slide at some points of the season, but the ground work has been done and IF (if being the key word here) we can keep this lot together and BUILD on it, then we may be on the cusp of something a bit special. But whatever happens in the future, I feel we're in pretty safe hands with the likes of Les and Paul Mitchell in the background.

A Hull fans thoughts on this weekends game:

You can never say never, keep a look on the sale windows and the criteria when it comes out - but I'd say it's very, very unlikely to make general sale.

Those stats are so damn impressive. At this moment in time, we're functioning like the perfect machine. Lots of shots, lots of goals, few shots against you, few goals against, lots of possession and passes. We're like the ultimate team, it's stuff you see on computer games!

Just like penalties were the best we could hope for last night, and that we were out once it went to 2-2? Your mindset is so transparent.

Outstanding tactical insight.

Tremendous tactical insight from our good friend Lawro. What a pundit.

Why drop Davis! Key, key player in everything we're doing right now.

Too true. I don't want to belittle our season too much last year, as we were excellent (and there's a long way to go this season!)....but, it was a times a bit too tippy tappy for the sake of it. Lack of pot shots from outside of the area being one. Don't think we scored many outside the box at all under MP. But Koeman seems to have released the shackles on the entire side. The midfield rotates, the front 3 interchange, the full backs bomb on....yet they all still press and get back into defensive positions without any problems, but it makes us so much more fluid to watch and so much more lethal up top. In my opinion, I think Pelle is an upgrade on Lambert. His mobility is one of the main reasons, and his relationship with Tadic is just beautiful. You'd have thought we'd bought them both from the same club...