benjii

He failed to track runners past him on a number of occasions in the second half. I also felt he had a very poor second half against Villa. I'm hoping Romeu can put in a great performance next weekend to remind Vic he isn't undroppable again.

You are so clueless. "i would be happy if Tadic never plays for Saints again".

Bound to be painful. Richardson is obnoxious and arrogant and Krueger is cringeworthy

Cheers pal. Has he been playing centre back or right back? I think he's better at centre back. You are certainly right about his attitude. He is an obvious leader and was captain of our U21s. Even if he doesn't make it at Saints he should have a good solid career.

Tadic is much more effective than Svensson ever was for us. I don't see the merits of any comparison. That Strachan team was built on an excellent GK, really dependable defenders and a striker in the form of his life. Although Svensson had moments of class I never really felt he took a hold of games the way he seemed to do for Sweden sometimes.

Van Dijk was generally ok, although they murdered us on set pieces in the first half. Apart from that, Villa were so gash I can't justify giving a centre back more than a six. Wanyama was very sloppy in the second half. Nothing to do with his effort but to do with poor touches and giving the ball away. Pelle battered them in the second half and was wrongly flagged offside when running in on goal in the first half. He played well and scored an excellent goal. As I explained, Gaston was the only player who contributed any real fluidity in the first half. So you're wrong I'm afraid. On reflection, I would upgrade Yoshida to an 8, which I think I meant to do originallly but the others stay the same.

Cat A prices to keep the kids out. Want a decent atmosphere for this. Last night was one of the worst atmospheres I've experienced at a Saints game.

In the first half whenever we played some decent football he was usually involved. He made some nice angles and created space with JWP. I also see JWP getting some stick. His final ball was poor but he got in some great positions "between the lines" but more often than not the pass to him wasn't seen or given quickly enough. For what it's worth, my ratings for the match would be: Stek - 8 - didn't have much to do but did it all perfectly. Yoshida - 7 - solid all game and took some responsibility on the ball. He's not Cedric in terms of forward running but he's a superb squad player. Caulker - 6 - pretty decent defensively but his passing is not very good. It's not just the long balls to Pelle but the weight and accuracy of easier passes often puts the recipient on the back foot. Van Dijk - 6 - Solid. Villa only really tested with the long ball to Gestede. Targett - 6 - A bit rought at the start but made some much better attacking contributions in the second half. Solid defensively. Wanyama - 5 - seemed half asleep at times in the second half. Romeu - 6 - good recovery work and kept the ball well. Bit slow spotting the forward pass on occasions. JWP - 5 - as noted, got in some great positions but wasn't in the game enough (not always his fault). Some sloppy passes in the final third. Juanmi - 6 - promising although I think he looks much better in central pockets rather than out wide. Gaston - 7 - prepared to take some responsibility on the ball and generally used it pretty well. Pelle - 8 - really bossed it in the second half and lovely goal. Davis - 8 - made a big impact with some good forward passes and energy. Tadic - 8 - genuine quality. When he's fit and on form he is a really excellent player. I thought we tried to play some decent stuff but were not clinical until Davis and Tadic came on. Fairly solid defensively although they looked capable of scoring from a set piece. Good enough to get past Villa (who are useless and going down, finally!) but we need to play a full-strength 11 in the next round.

The next five league games are a chance to build some real momentum and, along with the cup game, will go a long way to determining if this is going to be an exciting season or a boring one! Excepting City, we should be looking for 10-12 points from those.

I reckon Targett might come in and obviously Mane will need replacing but other than that, we should pick the best team we can. -------------------------Stek------------------------------- Cedric---------Fonte--Virgil--------------Targett -------------Wanyama----Clasie/JWP-------------- Gaston-------Juanmi/Davis-----------------Tadic -------------------------Pelle-----------------------------

Cracking jump for the assist header. Good lad. Should get a chance on Weds with Mane out and Long and Jay Rod seemingly injured.

Why on earth would you do that?

I would not leave my car anywhere in Liverpool. Hth.

From Paddy Power Twitter: "Lallana is the footballer equivalent of the lad who brings a girl on about a hundred dates before he even has the balls to kiss her." Spot on.

They are like a worse version of us in our first season up, except that Rodriguez, Lambert, Clyne and Lallana are injured for ages and they don't have anyone as good as Schneiderlin or Fonte. Yep, relegation. I actually think all three promoted teams might go down this year. Watford and Norwich are seriously lacking in quality. Newcastle have some good players and if they can get a bit of confidence they will stay up. Sunderland have appointed Fat Sam; I can't stand him and I hate his football but they might stay up now. Other than those two, I think only WBA or Villa are in with a "shout" of going down, with Villa being the more likely of the two to do so.

They banned Kinder Eggs? Yanky-doodle nannies. (ps. Kinder Eggs are available throughout the Sholing region).

I know what you're saying but if we had to win one and lose one of the next two I would rather beat Villa and reach the quarter finals of a cup. I would not bother starting Classie in either if the only motivation to do so is to provide a fitness exercise but if we must then I would rather do so in the Liverpool match.

Saints fan off the bench on 92 minutes to score a 94th minute equaliser! That's nice.

Indeed, and in fact Ralphie is not even on the board of the football club. The officers of Southampton Football Club Ltd are: Katharina Liebherr - Chairman Gareth Rogers - Chief Financial Officer Leslie Arnold Reed - Director Karenjit Dhaliwal - company secretary The holding company is called St Mary's Footbal Group Limited. The difference there is that Leslie is not on the board, so it's a swap of Ralph for Les: Ralph, Katharina, Gareth. I expect Ralph is barely involved in the football management which is evidenced by him not being on the football opco board. His role seems very much to be an advisor to Katharina and to take oversight of things like our international strategy and help Katharina steer the whole thing wherever she wants it to go. Let's not forget, she ended up in this position as an unfortunate result of circumstance. It's Les and Gareth who are the executive "doers" regarding business-as-usual. In terms of Ralph, I think there's clearly something that the Liebherrs like about him and if he's an important tie between the club and them then so be it. Personally, I find him irritating.

Surely the point of a ladies team is to expand the "fan base": to engage women; to engage their families; to take the club into schools without discrimination; to be a true community; to inspire; to be "mes que un club". It's not to draw huge crowds to ladies football. That won't happen. Because it's shiiiiiiiiiiite.

I might try a surprise in this one. We all know that if Clyne has a weakness it is probably defending aerially - ie. you can get at him "on the back post". I think, on that basis, it's as good a time as any to give Jay Rod a start on the left. Gives us an extra outlet and allows us to play a shield of Wanyama and Romeu but break quickly and powerfully. If Liverpool go for a Klopp-press approach then defending fairly deeply and breaking quickly could leave some big spaces for us to exploit. I don't want to drop Tadic but I noticed he was playing more of a central role for Serbia in the recent internationals so I would give him a go there. ------------------------------Stek------------------------------ Cedric----------Fonte--------------Virgil-------------Betrand -------------------Wanyama-----Romeu-------------------- Mane----------------------Tadic------------------Rodriguez ----------------------------Pelle----------------------------- Sub: Gazza, Yoshida, Martina, Davis, JWP, Juanmi, Long (or Classie if not fit)

The problem here was in the failure to arm the other child. If the father had two guns this wouldn't have happened. More guns is best.

If Gazza is deemed worse than Kelvin then we need to pick Isted or whoever the U18 keeper is because I'm sure he can kick the ball over the half way line vaguely accurately.

This. That was evidence that he's well and truly past it. We played poorly but still would have beaten them (they were direct and hard working but poor at the back) if we had a goalkeeper who could kick the ball to the right part of the pitch. That second kick was a kick out of hands FFS. No excuse at all for duffing it straight to their midfielder. Annoyingly, we had actually started to look fairly comfortable at that point. I can't believe Gazzaniga would do worse. Hopefully Stek is back next week

More likely to be Martina than Caulker / Targett I reckon.