Dr. Kucho

We should keep a eye out on Peter Bosz at Dortmund. If they decide to remove him, get him ASAP. Plays attacking and attractive, and will demand the best of the players. I was in the Puel out camp but regret that now. Claude wasn’t the most inspiring coach, but did get results.

I doubt that Pellegrino knows his best 11, or what tactics suit the players best. We can go on about the quality of players, however this is what we have and the manager has to mould them in to a team. Managers like Peter Bosz (now at Dortmund, last year Ajax) always has his teams play attacking football, Poch likes high pressing and Mourinho defensive play. We need a coach that likes to entertain and dares to take a risk now and then. A good set of coaches in the academy would help too.

Angry goal celebration from Boufal, but what an amazing goal!

This! The promotion seasons and first seasons in premier league were the best I've seen (been a fan since 2002).

Don't know where to start describing how great SRL was for us. I started supporting Saints back in 2003, so missed the Le Tiss years. From the last 14 years it's easy to pick my favorite Saints player. Special moments were his goals v Pompey and his first PL goal. Remember the commentator saying something in the line of: it didn't take long did it, a PL goal for Rickie Lambert. Amazing player and hope to see him back here in a coaching role.

Dutch football website Voetbalzone.nl are currently running a 7 part interview with Jos hooiveld about his career. Last week in part 5 Saints get mentioned for the first time, and this week he goes on about his time here. Hooiveld first states that when we got relegated to League 1 and he was playing in Sweden, we contacted him for the first time. As we had just been relegated and had to start with -10 points, he kindly declined the offer. When playing at Celtic, Hooiveld was told to play with the youth and asked for a transfer. Palace and Saints were both interested and he decided to join us in the Championship. When we loaned Hooiveld from Celtic we didnt negotiate an option to buy in the loan contract, a mistake that cost us around a million pounds. When Jos left Celtic, they wanted rid of him and would have let us have him for free. However once Hooiveld started playing well other clubs (Blackburn and Bolton are both mentioned in the interview) got interested, and we had pay the transfer free. Hooiveld states that at Saints he was earning double what he earnt at Celtic, and once we were promoted to the PL his salary went up massively. Jos goes on saying he scored 8 goals in his first season, 2 against West Ham and when he scored against Coventry, the commentator said: This goal seals promotion to the PL for Southampton. Hooiveld says he enjoyed playing in the Championship cos you could go head first into battles and says the Championship was his level. In the PL he struggled beating other players and found the games hard to play in. Hooiveld goes on saying he played quite a few games in his first season in the Premier League, but once Lovren came over from OL, he lost out and honestly says Lovren was the better player and formed a good partnership with Fonte. He does say he outplayed Fonte in the season before Lovren was signed. Once Lovren and Poch left and Koeman turned up, Jos was told by Koeman he wanted to keep him, but that another defender was going to be signed (Alderweireld). Koeman was well liked by the players as you could ask and say anything to him. The pre season under Koeman was a lot less tense then under Poch. The players kept wondering, when are we going to have to put the hard work in? When Alderweireld was signed, Hooiveld decided to ask for a loan and left for Norwich. A decision he still regrets today as Alderweireld was often injured meaning he would have played a fair few games. The interview goes on after that about his career after he left Saints. This was all that was said about his time here.

100% this. The best atmosphere at St Mary,s was our promotion season from the Championship. Must say it also helped with the fact we were going up and everyone was excited after years of misery at the club. Other suggestions like said in other posts would be to introduce safe standing, adults only stands, lower ticket prices and allow banners and flags at the matches. I think in years to come the PL would only be for the middle classes, upper classes and tourists, whilst more hardcore supporters would flock to the lower leagues. When people over here (the Netherlands) ask about English football I reckonmend them to go to the lower leagues instead of the PL.

City have now scored 15 goals in 1 week, don't they have Palace up next?

The Sun linking PSG midfielder Gregorz Krychowiak with West Brom. Thats a player I would like to see us sign.

What's happened to Clyne? Is he injured as I never see him selected.

Maybe we could try this to help the players find the goal. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1lastolwvno u

Have to agree with this. I get to see quite a bit of the Eredivisie and while Ziyech arguably is the best player in the league, physically he makes Boufal look like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his prime time. Ziyech would be bullied by the big players in the league. The player we should have gone for is Davey Klaassen. Great in bringing the ball from midfield into the box, and can score goals. Shame the dugout pioneers bought him.

A colleague of mine, who has played at a decent level in the Dutch amateur football league and knows his stuff about football, reckons Hoedt has the potential to be a better player then Van Dijk.

Just bumping an old thread, but Jos Hooiveld has done a interview for a Dutch football website. The interview is in Dutch but Jos does mention Saints a few times. The answer regarding Saints, Interviewer: Who was your best trainer? JH: Pochetinno Interviewer: What was your worst game? JH: Against WBA Interviewer: Who was the best player you played with? JH: Adam Lallana Interviewer: What do you regret the most? JH: Not staying at Southampton and playing under Ronald Koeman Interviewer: What is the best club you played for? JH: Celtic For the whole interview (all in Dutch): http://www.voetbalzone.nl/doc.asp?uid=311071

Just had a quick look and **** Advocaat says: There,s no point in selecting Virgil van Dijk, he hasnt played in pre-season and isnt training with the rest of the group at Southampton.

Might also need to do some 'whealing and dealing' old Arry..

Ajax lost to Olympique Nice in the 2nd round of qualifiers for the CL. Anyway I can see Sanchez leaving for Spain after this season.

Work permit could be difficult and it's very unlikely Ajax would want to sell him or listen to offers (unless it's silly money). Sanchez must be the biggest talent at CB in the world atm. He could play another season at Ajax and make the move to Barcelona (according to sources in Holland).

I think I know a club where he would fit in perfectly with that kind of behavior.

Today's line up for the Saints: in goal the Geordie, then the Portuguese, the miserable Dutch barstard, the Jap and the Londoner. In midfield: The Spaniard, the Dutch midget and the Skate that turned out alright. At the front we the Arab, the cheater and Serb that falls over a lot. COYR

If the club could sell Long and replace him with a better goal scorer I'm sure they would. Problem is you first need a buyer for Long and when you see the amount of what players like Lukaku go for, you know we would have to spend big.

He has been saying this for ages. Credit is for his persistence in trolling, has been doing this for years on here. First about Hoddle then it was the club with its surviving strategy in the prem. Waste of a life if you ask me spending all that time trolling on the internet, there's so much to do in life.

Sky do have by far the biggest budget of all teams. Riders like Landa, Thomas and Kwiatkowski would be the main rider at any of the other teams. I am hugely impressed with how professional Sky are and how they work on the smallest detail. Sky's team time trials are amazing, how well they ride and inch perfect. Sky must be by far the best place for a rider to develop his skills.

If McCarthy still is injured I would like to know what kind of injury he has. A hamstring injury cannot take that long, unless something has gone wrong in his recovery.

Can't help but feel a little underwhelmed with this years tour. Saw to few battle for the yellow jersey and Froome rode very conservative. Hope to see the return of the team time trial next year and more mountain stages. If Yates can work on his time trials he could be a contender for the podium next year. Just a few years ago David Millar was the only British rider, now we have contenders for the yellow and green jersey, with some talented riders coming through.