John B

Southampton were the first club to be relegated from Div 1 to finish third from bottom This happen in 1974 when three clubs were relegated

I agree not only both results Went out to lunch for the first time with my three week old grandson and had a beer with my brother for the first time for ages

Why do we continue to play Chris Wood? Great win though

Probably true but all down to Pardew who I felt was a great judge of a footballer Puncheon Fonte and Lambert were his choices I believe

Mane and VVD came here to play under decent managers and progress to higher things we were a better club in those days with better players and able to get into Europe We were unable to recruit decent players after they and others left I can only think of PEH and Ings as being really good signings in recent years and they have moved on. Only Carillo who I think was the worst signing in the last 60 was complete rubbish the others were just not PL players We are where are like we have been since being promoted to the top flight in 1966 in relegation fights sometimes pushing for Europe an occasional cup run but mostly finishing in the bottom half of the table . This no doubt will continue to happen especially as no one special seems to come up from the Academy but I am proud of our record with limited resources and friends and relatives who support QPR Ipswich Portsmouth Fulham and Bolton think we are doing well And so we are compared to them and other similar sized clubs like Birmingham Middleborough Sheff Wed Sunderland Nottm Forest Derby and Coventry

£20m to £30 m players are unlikely to want to come here in the first place And those we have had want to leave like PEH Ings and Vestigard

Have we got any easy games coming up?

More than the price we paid for Adams Armstrong and Ings probably

The shot was at a reasonable height so easier to save than the Greenwood shot which came through players legs Both chances should have been taken but Armstrong is not as good as Greenwood at the moment I think our miss was a bigger error tnan that of McArhty's as most would have expected Greenwood to score

Any genuine rumours of his replacement

It is not a defence mechanism it is the strategy of the club which most support It may not be the right one to you but it has proved to be successful compared to many previous PL sides which have been relegated in recent years

Must be a reasonable chance he will be on his way sooner or later

Excellent summary thank you Probably what I expected we can only realistically move forward with new owners and there is always a risk that we may regress significantly I feel we need to address how the Academy is not producing PL type players but the addition of the Chelsea youngsters address my point slightly. I am pretty confident that this season number 60 since I first watched the Saints play will be OK and I will try to get my grandson born last week interested in the club and keep him out of the clutches of his Chelsea loving Auntie

All that matters to me is that he is not in a PL squad which is relegated in the next four years Not sure about this signing at the moment as I have never seen him play but the recent two Chelsea signings are great especially the Albanian guy from Slough Never heard of anybody coming from Slough before except a poster's daughter used to work there and still live nearby however they do have an outstanding MP

Broja said he is "excited" to be joining another Premier League club. "Southampton have a good history and they play in the best league in the world," he said. "So it's amazing for a young player to experience it, be in and around a Premier League team, and learn and develop from the older players, the staff and everyone here. It's a very good opportunity.

Especially as we are apparently nailed on for relegation

Of course it is the fans fault with unrealistic expectations our squad is easily a lower PL Standard one

Surely it shows ambition which according to most is sadly lacking at the club Perhaps you are right it is Pie in the Sky just like ambition

Ok fair point you may not be fully ruminated but you are pretty close.

I think it may be showing the signs of rumination like many other posters A lot of people sit at home, dwell on the negative and find themselves getting deeper and deeper in their depression. Psychologists call this style of repetitive negative thoughts "rumination."

I do not know where we will finish but we have some decent players and we will not go down

We had so many really top International strikers playing for us in the Bates and McMenemy years that some will be overlooked but of course Boyer was a top striker I remember going to Wimbledon in a FA Cup match and him scoring the winner. In those days we did not whinge much about who came to the club we used to just enjoy the football and support the team and the players

Not forgetting Ron Davies Peter Osgood was really good in the 60s at Chelsea one of my favorite players he was never the same after he broke his leg For younger posters he joined Saints in 1974 when we doing pretty well but the team did not win for dozen or so games after he arrived and we got relegated although we did win the last game at Everton without Terry Paine who never played for the club again We were the first team to finish third from bottom to be relegated from Div 1

I think you are slightly negative we did OK last season until the horrific run of injuries to key players and the congested fixture list culminated in our Semi Final at Wembley Our ambition over the last fifty years has been to be as competitive as possible in the top flight and I think that has been achieved as we are a well established member of the PL but not one of the top ten on a regular basis As a fan over those years I have of course had ups and downs but the ups including being at the top of the PL only for a short time last season have been worthwhile The only way for a team to regularly successful is to be in a large city with a large fanbase and a billionaire owner I have two friends one a Man City supporter and the other a Chelsea one who never believe that thirty years that they would be supporting major clubs in europe. I am fairly confident that we will be OK this season as we have some decent players who should improve to be top class players in the next couple of years Losing Ings is not the end of the world as we have £28m to invest I hate to think what I would be feeling if I had been born in Portsmouth instead of Southampton especially as Pompey we one of the top clubs in my early childhood

Terry Paine and Peter Shilton