John B

We have not had a really good performance this season but I feel that is mostly down to the players who are constantly making errors and wasting chances

You don't seem to be a loyal supporter at all You just seem to want to be a supporter of team that performs well all the time. Of course I don't want the team to be relegated and it probably wont be but three teams will be and one day it well be SFC. I have been following SFC for nearly sixty years and in that time only Everton and Arsenal have played exclusively in the top division so all the others have been relegated that's football. Football is a team game and it is unlikely that a team's bad form is down to one individual. I don't think Pellegrino was a good choice but most managers have good and bad periods that's football

Saw this article on the Internet which makes sense to me Theresa May is a prime minister who faces an enormous challenge to recast Britain’s relationship with Europe in the wake of the EU referendum vote. But the Brexit statement she gave to the House of Commons on Monday was based not on reality but on unreality. The picture of Britain and Europe that she painted for MPs following last week’s EU summit does not and will not exist. Mrs May’s Brexit Britain is a fantasy island. The underlying fantasy is that Mrs May is the master of Britain’s fate in these negotiations. This is not true. It was the European Union, united, clear and principled in its approach, that shaped the first phase of Brexit talks, which came to an end last week in Brussels. It will be the same in phase two, which will begin shortly. The final deal about the future trade terms on which the UK leaves the EU will not be settled by March 2019. All that will be settled before that is what the EU in April called “an overall understanding on the framework for a future relationship”. As the EU then went on to say, any free trade agreement must “encompass safeguards against unfair competitive advantages through, inter alia, tax, social, environmental and regulatory measures and practices”. Mrs May probably gets this by now. But a significant minority of her cabinet and her party either doesn’t get it or is recklessly determined not to have it. That is particularly true of the part of the Conservative party that sees Brexit as a deregulatory opportunity, for whom “taking back control” means scrapping as many business costs – taxes, regulations, pension obligations, workplace rights and employment protections – as possible. Reports at the weekend suggested that Michael Gove is leading a cabinet push for the UK to abandon the terms of the EU working time directive – which among other things ensures a maximum 48-hour working week. This is the opposite kind of Britain to the one for which large numbers of working-class leavers voted in 2016. They wanted more security, as they saw it, not less. They did not vote for the freedom to work more hours for less pay and fewer rights. But this deregulated country is the one the Brexiter right is determined to give them. A second fantasy is Mrs May’s insistence that the two-year transitional period that she is seeking is an “implementation” period. This is a trick. In order to calm leavers, Mrs May pretends the framework will be agreed before March 2019 and implemented after Brexit between 2019 and 2021. This is not true either. The negotiation to produce a real trade deal will take place after March 2019, not before. There will be nothing to implement in 2019. That is why there were reports at the weekend that Mrs May is being pressed to stay on until 2021 to prevent trade talks being ruined. But by then the UK will have left the EU and a general election will be upon us. There is no way whatever that this can be the “smooth and orderly” Brexit that Mrs May claims to be overseeing. The third great fantasy is in many respects the most dangerous of them all. This was embodied in last week’s European council decision on phase one. As Mrs May put it on Monday, Britain is committed to uphold the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, to maintain the common travel area with Ireland and, crucially, to avoid a hard border in Ireland. But these goals – all massively desirable – are not compatible with the UK’s departure from the single market and customs union, to which Mrs May remains committed. Any future regulatory divergence between the UK and the EU – between the UK and Ireland – can only create a dangerous situation on the Northern Ireland border with the republic. It is hard to know which is worse: that Mrs May knows this and does not mind such an outcome, or that she knows it and is pretending to parliament and the public that it is not a problem. Either way, this is the politics of impossibilism and of circle-squaring. Either way, British politics is crying out for truth not fantasy on Brexit. But Mrs May will not and cannot provide it.

Personally I don't think it will happen but who knows Portsmouth may get promoted but at the moment despite the team not gelling I don't think Saints will get relegated. I think we have no really outstanding players who can turn a game most are pretty good but not excellent also we do seem to blame Forster a lot but not defenders who continually foul in dangerous positions.

In my lifetime of 72 years we have been relegated four times and promoted five times that's football some team has to relegated but losing to Chelsea hardly means it is going to happen every December it is always the same we play pladly

Chelsea deserved to be in the lead don't they as they are the better team Whats wrong with that

I totally agree that the concerns of the people that voted for Brexit should be addressed but most could have been addressed by the UK government if it had not been obsessed by Austerity scapegoating the poor the vulnerable and migrants. It appears Brexit is going to make most people poorer less healthy and less safe but the most wealthy richer

Never thought Puel had any luck when he managed us as so many chances were missed and a number of flukey goals were scored against us But things have changed

Still there are so many people who have no idea what brexit is really about. Many leave voters have been conned and used, behind it there is a right wing capitalist international elite who have engineered us into leaving so that they can install a low wage, low level of public services, low tax for the rich elite and big business, economy into the UK. Similar to Asian countries but many people who voted to leave have not yet realised this. Look up the book co authored by the Tory MP Pritti Patel 'Britannia Unchained' look at the reviews this is one from Amazon:- 'I have worked around the globe and I read this book with mounting. disquiet , amongst all the rhetoric about "hardwork and self reliance" was a core of the worst sort of libertarian the one that only wants Liberty for their own at the expense of their fellow citizens, this book has a recipe for an economy more redolent of a third world dictatorship or the eponymous "banana republic" Than the United Kingdom. It is at best economically illiterate and at worst fascistic in its outlook with very little to say that is positive and gives a very bleak picture of the life they would offer in Britain under their demagogic regime. This is one more:- 'The only good thing about this book is that it exposes to the British working class and the left-wing brexiter (Lexiter) the confidence trick that is Brexit. The true motivation of the elite Brexiter (Kwarteng, Raab, Patel, Gove, Fox, Leadsome) is to deregulate the economy. They believe in absolute dog eat dog capitalism with practically no protection for the worker or the consumer, or, for that matter, the environment. If you know nothing of economics and know nothing of the drawbacks of trying to run complex systems from simplistic models, you might get taken in by this book. Hence the health warning: This book does not contain any useful information on how to run countries in the 21st century'.

It was a really good in swinging free kick

A year on and Brexit is an even bigger pile of ****e than I thought and is going to cost us at least £50b . Remind me what great things are we getting with Brexit not £350m for the NHS but aggro in Ireland and ridicule from most parts of the world

I think Puel is much better than Pellegrino

At the moment I think Austin is a really good Championship Striker but at the moment is not a really good PL striker because PL defenders are so good

I agree but of course City are due for a bad game sometime hope it is on Wednesday

Pretty disgraceful post Dark Munster I feel the post is open to legal action as you have no idea what Black's responsibilities are and how he is performing against them and you are slandering him Comments bases on gut feelings are usually incorrect Other people think otherwise http://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/15645115.Eric_Black_starts_work_with_Scotland/

What evidence is there that Markhus was going spunk billions of his money to get to the Champions League? I have never found any evidence that he was a billionaire with money to burn

For success the club needs good and exciting players most of these would not want to come to Southampton so the only way is to get in decent players and hope they develop into stars but over the last few years only a few have done so.

It started going wrong when deluded fans believed the hype that we were on our way to be a Champions League Team which was as likely as you starting to **** gold bars. I have been supporting the Saints for nearly sixty years and during that time we have had a few fine teams and played well but mostly we have been average and sometimes downright poor and that no doubt is the way it is going to stay. The only way it can change is if somebody wants to regularly invest huge amounts of money or the club invests in a clairvoyant to oversee transfers . It would be nice to be a top club winning regularly but we are not it is very difficult to replace top attacking players who want to come to SFC so please stop blaming everybody and get behind the team because in the long run it does not help as can be seen by the decision to blame Puel for last season when in my opinion the fact that the forwards kept missing chances and Forster was not reliable were the major reasons for our poor form at the end of the season. I don't think Pellegrino is a good manager and I think we should have sold VVD and perhaps spent the money on an attacker but in general most of our signings have been OK but nothing special but the real problem is we are not developing top class players from our Academy over the last twenty years Cheer Up we are not as bad as we were when we went down in 2005 although we did have a better goalie then

Most people were being small minded and just did not want VVD not to go to Liverpool without VVD the defence was OK last season but the attack was poor so it would have seemed sensible to me to have sold him but it is only my opinion

I totally agree with you but the club has made three really wrong decisions As you say there was no point in getting rid of Puel without a top class replacement and it will be interesting to see how he does at Leicester. Secondly VVD should have been sold and the money invested in a couple of really good attacking players it is not as though we did not need more attacking players last season. Thirdly something should have been done about the goal keeping situation as Forster has been pretty poor for some time and has cost many points recently

Ever thought that Burnley maybe a decent defensive side and it is difficult to score against them. Rather like us actually

We are top 10 side with top 10 players and a top 10 manager whilst loads of fans live in a fantasy world

Because we have better players and have no cup competitions to play in and only 11 players are allowed on the pitch at the same time Also shows we have a pretty strong squad.

If results go our way we could be 7th and best of the rest tomorrow

I think we did it was in 1978 I was at the game first time I had seen Hoddle play both teams made little effort to score as a draw made certain both teams went up but if we won we would go up as Champions and Brighton would go up too. If we lost Bolton Spurs and Saints would go up.