the wedge

No.

We're goin to get tonked

@officialsaints: Saints team: K. Davis, Clyne, Fonte ©, Yoshida, Shaw, Schneiderlin, Cork, S. Davis, Puncheon, Ramírez, Lambert. #saintsfc

Simon Peach is not a Mirror journo. He is a Press Association journalist covering London and the south coast. He has great ties with the club and I'd trust his information infinitely more than anyone on here. Apart from VMan.

Left ground on crutches and in a leg brace. As a precaution.

K. Davis, Clyne, Fonte, Yoshida, Shaw, Puncheon, Cork, Schneiderlin, Lallana ©, Lambert, Rodriguez.

Steve Basham.

That's it for me. Irregardless of how strong our team was tonight on paper, it was the opportunity for the likes of De Ridder, Jos, Lee, Chaplow, Mayuka and Guly to prove that they've the balls to step up for the first XI. They didn't. The academy lads proved they had more guile and passion than these other players tonight. Tonight was a chance for momentum, confidence and a good win 6 days before our next game. I can take a defeat in the CO Cup. Elland Road on a wet Tuesday night isn't easy. But the manner of performances recently, the fact that it's taken us a game and a half to muster a shot on goal, increasingly bizarre/resigned press conferences all suggest to me that something needs changing. And for me that's 44 ****ing 2 or Nigel out. The club should also refund every fan who travelled up tonight. To compete so abjectly is a disgrace to the shirt. Why enter the competition at all?

****ing awful.

Doesn't sound a particularly great game or start from us. Hopefully we can grind out something here. Maybe like last season!

Oh Jesus Christ that was absolutely suicidally comically ridiculous. It's like Laurel and Hardy are our centre halves.

For what it's worth, I think our defending has improved since the goal went in... Not much, but it's a start. Offside trap seems to be working well...

Bale header wide there. Marked by Jay Rodriguez. One of the world's most potent attacking threats marked in the penalty area by a centre forward. Logic.

Saints 1-5 Spurs.

Abysmal defending. Jesus Christ we're a soft touch at the back.

Spot on, with the addition of Lallana needing to stay on his bloody feet.

Guly for a hattrick! Must. Remain. Positive... Somehow...

If we don't win this then we don't deserve to stay in the Premier League.

Our passing is so off the mark again today. Confidence we had built up is rapidly fading away, but we've got to keep fighting here. For NA's sake as much as anyone else's.

Awful awful goal. Everything we do, apart from one or two of our best players, is one pace behind every team we've played so far. We're struggling to adjust to the pace of the league here. Which is half our problem I think.

Clyne has the confidence and ability to get forward, and put in countless brilliant tackles today. Fox doesn't get forward, his distribution was way off and was positionally static throughout. I really liked Fox in the NPC, but honestly feel he's off the pace in the prem.

Shocking first half. Rickie isolated and ineffective. Morgan weirdly off the pace. Got unlucky with the first goal. Second half better. Ramirez was excellent and most of the play went through him. Surprisingly impressed with JayRod too, much sharper than Rickie. Fonte has improved, Fox was hopeless throughout. Yoshi also promising. Liked Theo and Alex applauding us at the end. Arsenal's fans are appallingly boring.

Seconded. We'd be silly not to give it a thought.

Photo from the club photographer on twitter of the squad training. SDR is in the background. Maybe he's not off just yet?

I thought he did OK last night. I did worry about his positioning for their free kick which hit the bar early on, he was badly caught out. A little jittery perhaps overall. Short range passing was good. He was pulling out some dramatically exciting saves in the warm up though.