HarvSFC

Record Championship signing is £15m, Ruben Neves, who was the Porto first team captain, a Champions League player and Portugal international and had Jorge Mendes puppeteering.

Horseman sacked by Forest Green Rovers, replaced by Troy Deeney.

Unfortunately, Birmingham don't have a defence or a goalkeeper. (Ruddy has one cap for England, amazingly)

Good game this, Birmingham had a few chances before their goal.

We aren't getting any better than Ings in January in the Championship. A six month loan sounds good to me. Last time he was here he was hungry to get back into the England setup and prove himself after his Liverpool career was destroyed by injuries. He has probably lost that now, but he'd be better than another January striker gamble. Not many clubs will sell a goal scorer in January and not many goal scorers will make moves to a Championship club in January. If we get to the Premier League in the summer then we can reassess and hopefully have more options to fill the void upfront.

Seems to be leaving: https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/23995177.southampton-coach-andreas-georgson-set-leave-club/

I miss the one touch, one twos, quick tempo we were playing against Cardiff, which their defence couldn't deal with. We've reverted back to the slow, laborious, predictable play.

When Calderwood was appointed, we had one of the worst goals against tally in the league with 24 goals conceded in the opening 14 games. At one point we had the worst. Since his appointment we’ve conceded twice in five, keeping three clean sheets. Three of our four clean sheets this season. I know we don’t ever truly know how good a coach is, but can’t be a coincidence given his reputation.

Watched the highlights and saw the Hoedt we all know for the Hull goal.

Best we’ve played this season. For a lot of this season our passing has lowered the tempo to walking football, becoming slow and ponderous. Today, for the first 30 minutes especially the tempo was excellent. Nobody was admiring their passes, as soon as they released the ball, they were on the move, creating some lovely one twos to get around the Cardiff defence. Manning, who I was critical of before the match had his best game for us. Perhaps the Swansea links were motivation. But, then even Mara looked good when he came on. Shame to still be so far away from the automatics on this run, needs to be near perfect every week.

Got to feel for Bree. Hopefully Manning’s learned not to give his winger the freedom of the city, how to play simple passes and put in a dangerous set piece over the last few days, although I doubt it. Really need a motivated Adams to turn up today too.

Remember when Ryan Manning said he had interest from the Premier League… Yeah, nah.

We've tried to be smart and its backfired. Story of last season. Fortunately, Downes and THB look like very good signings, albeit loans.

Bazunu man of the match, didn't think I'd be saying that. The first half is lost without him. Other than that, still pretty boring wins and still feels like we're winning because we have a better eleven and players capable of what KWP produced today, rather than putting the opposition to the sword with our play.

I wanted VAR to come in, in order to stop the big mistakes like Doucoure scoring with his hand, or Gabbiadini having a perfectly fine goal ruled out in a cup final. However, it looks to get too involved. The two above examples were big, but really they were the only two incidents where we were really hard done by off the top of my head, so not really groundbreaking. These days, VAR looks for reasons to disallow a goal, the whole enjoyment of the sport and will get involved during moments where nobodies really appealing for a decision to be made. The refereeing standards in this country are just really poor. It’s a job for the boys setup where if you make a mistake you go to the Championship and then back to the Premier League a week later. The amount of money in the English game, refereeing standards have seemingly always been left behind.

A repeated criticism this season for Martin is that he doesn't always need to make 5 subs. Good teams coped perfectly well before lockdown football with three subs for years and the reason why friendlies often descend into drab affairs is due to the amount of changes leaving the 11 on the pitch disjointed. Yes, we were poor before the equaliser, but the triple sub just made us worse. On that topic, there are on occasion players who are better at coming off the bench than they are starting. Fraser is one of those and despite his good form in recent weeks he shouldn't have started today. Really disappointing to drop points considering how easy the first half was for us. Positive is that we're still unbeaten, but feels like we need 6 points from the two home games this week now.

Rotherham did to Leeds exactly what they did to us. Must practice it.

Imagine getting to an FA Cup semi-final and the three other teams remaining are three from the Championship in Barnsley, West Brom and Cardiff. They just about beat United in the sixth round with Rio Ferdinand in goal. We never got such luck in our cup runs.

His scoring record definitely catches the eye and my heart says he deserves a squad role in our team at the moment. However, my head then reminds me that there are plenty of players who have scored for fun at the younger level and then struggled to make it as a professional. Most recently, Ryan Seager. Sekou Mara also dropped down to the Under-21s once and banged in four goals, giving us a better insight into the levels they play at each week. Agreed, that I don't think Reading was the right move, though. A club in a state off the pitch with a manager who doesn't really value attacking football, or attacking players.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/67490620 13 Premier League clubs voted against it, but Newcastle are about to loan in some very good players to get around FFP.

Aribo and Mara have a lethargic playing style that isn't really suited to English football, it's better in Europe where players get more time on the ball. Pretty poor from the recruitment team when they were signed for a manager that likes his attacking players to press from the top. The two had question marks hanging over their heads in the summer given they showed moments of quality last season and you could forgive some for being poorly managed last season, while Mara himself is still young and moved to a new country. However, neither have really answered those questions in a better team who are lacking a bit of a killer instinct at the moment and neither Aribo nor Mara have shown anything to say they can provide it. Two luxury players who are being carried in the squad at the moment and blocking Amo-Ameyaw in the matchday squads. If we don't sell them in January then they'll surely be sold next summer given the intention to move forward.

Went to Wembley tonight, had hoped to see Bellingham live before he pulled out. Fairly boring game and poor atmosphere. Bring back the Saints.

Yoshida was quite lightweight and occasionally beaten in the air in the Premier League. Probably rank him alongside Stephens. A sometimes dependable third choice centre-back who also had the occasional mistake up his locker.

There’s a chance Sulemana goes to the AFCON in January isn’t there? Could miss him for a fairly important part of the season. For SAA, we should offload Aribo, Mara and Adams in January. Think they’re probably all ahead of him in the pecking order at the moment due to what they’re costing the club in wages. Wouldn’t sit well to have their big wages doing nothing every Saturday. Offloading the three who had offers in the summer, but still had question marks of whether they could do it in a lower league, to which they’ve answered (they can’t, barring Adams who stopped playing as September started). Then that creates the space for SAA to sit on the bench on a Saturday and potentially get minutes should we hold a comfortable lead.

Should probably look to offload Aribo and Mara in January and get SAA back in the first team match squads, as he could start to look elsewhere and given his talent and age he won't be short of suitors. Perfect to give him minutes if we're winning comfortably.