Lallana's Left Peg

The balance is a bit off with the personnel, but I don't like how easy it is to go through the middle against us. Not good considering this lot are Championship standard at best.

The game is dire. But I suppose that's ok considering the score. Tadic struggles when he is shunted out wide in a flatter midfield. And despite what anyone says, it is a flatter midfield when we put Mane central right up near Pelle.

Caulker is all over the place. He better shape up if he is to get minutes this season.

I don't remember Caulker being this slow. Moves like he is wearing wellies.

Looks like a bit of a kit clash on TV.

Erwin Koeman confirms it is Martina on the right, Yoshida on the left.

That defence

He's a good player. Quite aggressive in the tackle, physically imposing - wants to compete. A little slow getting out and creating a high line at times. More Lovren than Alderweireld from what I have seen of him.

Great player but Arsenal isn't the club to be at if you have physical issues.

Unless the rules have changed this season, I think they need to be registered by midday on the Friday.

It's as simple as this - ensure we get the job done against Vitesse and then start looking at how the other fixtures went. It's about 50:50 as to whether or not we'll be seeded, and if we aren't seeded there is about a 25% chance we'll draw a team against which we won't be favourites in the tie.

VVD starts for Celtic - game kicks off in 10mins and is shown on BT Sport Europe.

But then what about wages and other operating costs? As has been mentioned, our owner wrote off tens of millions of debt on the journey. We have spent lots of money to get the club where it is today. We talk a lot about self-sustaining these days, but the journey saw us spend lots of money we didn't generate through normal revenue.

Will they be serving quiche at the village fete? Maybe a nice lemon drizzle cake?

Not sure what anything we did pre-takeover has to do with anything as that 'net profit' clearly didn't exist in terms of cash and was used elsewhere to run the club as we went into administration. In the first season of the takeover we spent well over £2m on transfers and goodness knows how much on wages - that doesn't really happen in League 1? Then in the Championship we paid Jack Cork and Tadanari Lee 20k a week, spent a few million on Sharp, and signed Hooiveld as well. We spent money and had a big wage bill too. Our promotion was not an 'against all odds' happening. We invested wisely of course, but that doesn't hide that we still invested well. Oxlade-Chamberlain sale helped, but Bournemouth will argue the funds they got for Grabban and from the Lallana sale supported their spending (to the point they passed FFP). I'm just saying that both teams spent a lot of money to get to the Premier League.

They'll be fun going forward and will beat some top teams but their defence isn't very good and not sure it is good enough to carry them to any better than last season.

We did, but they also sold Grabban and got money from the Lallana deal - maybe £7m in total.

Both clubs spent more than people think in order to get to the Premier League. Bournemouth staying up would be equal to us qualifying for Europe. Lets see.

Updated OP with the Jordan Turnbull loan.

I know their comments are realistic, but they do sound very defeatist. Not the sort of thing fans want to hear in public.

Talent affords you endless chances in football. There is no moral compass in the game!

PA reported that his total cost to Saints was £25m. If you were to presume ~£13m of that was his transfer fee, he costs Saints (net of income for loan fees etc.) around a further £12m for wages and his severance agreement. An absolute disaster in retrospect.

Will be a couple of years before we get another breakthrough, or at least players of the calibre of the last 3 years or so. Slattery is the one though.