HarvSFC

That win was dedicated to @Dorchester Saint. Going to be a tough ask for Everton to finish above us now. At least Alli got a good run out. Previously I compared Romeu to Wanyama and how much better Romeu is. But, that now feels disingenuous. He’s playing like Schneiderlin was, now. All over the pitch, wins tackles for fun, passes the ball silkily, he just needs to add the trademark cross field balls. Like I said last week, he’s elite, his best season here. MotM today. The other player who impressed me the most was the other experienced head in the team - Armstrong. Was playing like a man possessed in the first half, beating players like Lallana/Mane would, always looking to attack, playing good passes and was rewarded with a goal. Made up for last week’s performance against United. Looked a lot more on it today. Good performance overall and Long showed his experience at the end, even getting a rare goal! Both Everton and Newcastle are 5 points off 20th, what a dream that would be. @Lord Duckhunter’s favourites Lampard and Howe, while Hasenhuttl sits comfortably in 10th with the rest of the “cult”.

There’s also the chance of getting to the semi-final, being the only Premier League with Championship Barnsley, West Brom and Cardiff being the other semi-finalists. Would be laid on a plate for us. 🤷‍♂️

I enjoyed the JPT for a season, count me in for the Conference League.

Why hasn't the FA kept tabs on this? Has far more influence on a match than our little one minute breaks.

Yeah, Hooiveld was better suited to the Championship, while Fonte suited and adapted to the Premier League better. Good player and was exactly what we needed at the time of his signing.

The magic sponge/spray didn’t gain its title because it’s actually magic… This isn’t a revolutionary thing and I could write the same article about the other 19 Premier League clubs and feigning injuries. We see it every week as fans and always have done in the modern game. We’ve just been taken over… Surely there’s something more interesting to write about?

Dortmund are consistently within the top three of the Bundesliga despite being a stepping stone club. It is a less competitive league, but they’ve shown you can succeed even when selling your best players. It’s all about getting the replacements and the scouting right. That’s where clubs fail. If you have a supply chain of Lewandowski, Gotze, Hummels, Aubameyang, Dembele, Sancho and now Haaland, you won’t go wrong. Atalanta are following a similar pathway, breaking into Serie A’s top four and competing in the Champions League, despite having a 21,000 seater stadium and being a yo-yo club in the 2000s. Its no secret that our best period of recent years came when we had the brain of Paul Mitchell heading our recruitment. Replacing Lovren with an Alderweireld and then replacing Alderweireld with a Van Dijk was fine. It’s when you start replacing Van Dijk with a Hoedt/Vestergaard that the problems arise.

Schneiderlin had his best season following the summer he was told to stay and earnt his move the year later, Van Dijk had his worst half season the summer he was told to stay and was gone before the January window opened. Unfortunately in today's football, the latter is more often the case if you don't grant players their moves, they just stop playing. Look at Kane... JWP has more league goals than him this season. The key thing is not letting them all go at once. I know that we survived it before and even improved, but it's a risky strategy.

Does anybody know why we couldn't have played Newcastle this week?

I'm hoping that the takeover allows us to go back to the Southampton of seven years ago. Selling a Lallana and getting a Tadic, selling a Lambert and getting a Pelle, selling a Shaw and getting a Bertrand (following initial loan), selling a Lovren and getting a Alderweireld (loan fee + wages) and then Van Dijk a year later, selling a Chambers and getting a Long. AND THEN still having enough to bring in Forster, Gardos, Mane, Taider (ermmm), Elia and Djuricic. Under Gao, we simply couldn't do that and had to keep the books balanced at all times regarding transfer expenditure and income, e.g. a Targett sale gets you an Adams, but nothing more and needing to spread out the Ings and Vestergaard money from this summer, but not going over what came in. It's similar to the Leicester model, but also, they've shown this season, like we have, what one poor summer window can do to your club. Maybe Les Reed was right that they are trying to copy us. I think that's the difference that the takeover has brought in. We'll still be a selling club, but hopefully we can get rid of the net spend trophy.

Why else did we sign Ollie Lancashire?

Howe had 1 win in 10 before 22nd January. Including an embarrassing defeat against Cambridge. Everyone knows what changed between his appointment and the 22nd January and it wasn’t his tactics. His record could have been worse had Newcastle played their two scheduled fixtures, but they beat Everton after pushing the game back. Newcastle would’ve remained in the same position as Norwich, Watford and Burnley had they not spent the most amount of money in Europe. The homesick excuse was coming.

RIP Minsk. Given the nature of the fixture list at the beginning of the season, we had a difficult start, spawning some negativity. Your thread provided some context to the results and brought along some positivity and belief that the situation wasn't as bad as it appeared. Thank you, true Saint.

I love this team. For years, we've have mediocre, big ego players giving post-match interviews promising changes and nothing happening. These guys do it on the pitch. Romeu's my man of the match. He's elite, better than Wanyama was in that he isn't just an excellent ball winner, but can play with the ball too and contributes in us keeping the ball up the pitch, which is another element of defending. He's not getting the big move at 30, so it's now a question of how long he can keep this up for, like it was with Steven Davis, albeit a different player. I think that McCarthy is unfairly criticised on here, like Stephens is, who put in another good performance today, coming on at half time with some calling game over at his presence on the pitch. But, Forster was on another level today and pulled off some very good stops in midweek too. He's looking like the Forster before the big contract again, who would pull off important saves if the Alderweireld/Fonte/Schneiderlin/Wanyama wall in front of him was broken and contributed to our brilliant defensive record of that period. Adams is also coming on leaps and bounds now. Today's finish was one you'd have expected to come from Ings in previous years with Adams known more for his power shots. But he put it away clinically. The goals compliment his all round game, which has been excellent in recent weeks. Broja's on another level. Once he adds the goals to all the chances that he creates himself, he will be world class. Four points from Tottenham and Manchester United away, we'll take that. Maybe our top form is to come in the second half of this season. 🤷‍♂️

Saints scoring soon after an unfunny “game over” post is becoming a nice theme.

Forster’s back to pre-big contract Forster and I liked him.

Martinelli sent off for two fouls in one phase of play tonight, which I haven't seen since Chris Baird playing for Northern Ireland many years ago. West Ham know what they're doing by deflecting the Zouma story and bringing up the race card.

Outstanding. Only criticism would be that Hasenhuttl didn't walk up to Conte with his finger over his lips after the way that bloke with the embarrassing hair transplant acted after going 2-1 up. We outplayed the cheats, the referee and got the result the match deserved. JWP is a Van Dijk money player now, considering how much goals and assists are worth today. We should try those crosses more often, both were right on the money and we were right not to sell him for £50m to Aston f**king Villa in the summer. Perraud's found his feet now after looking a bit Cedricy early doors. Hit the bar again, similar to the one against Wolves. If he can keep those long range shots up and turn some into goals, that would be very handy. Stuart Armstrong is finding his form again, such an effective player. Him and Broja are just so direct and attack minded and its the perfect trait to have as a footballer, rather than turning and playing the safe pass, which are eventually easy to defend. The takeover has seemed to lift the club on all fronts without many changes, which is what we wanted. We've broken back back into the top 10 of the Premier League, which is pretty remarkable considering we've had a bottom three net spend for a good few years now. Up the Saints. This is why we support Southampton.

Send Chelsea that miss.

BIG - He loves the hitting the badge celebration too. He was part of Spurs’ academy as well.

The appointment of Dan Ashworth will mean Newcastle will start having a plan now, which is a shame. Everton are a bit more rotten behind the scenes, and don't have any footballing nous/plans there seemingly. Would be funny if they go down. Some wanted Lampard and Alli here, with both having question marks over their managerial and current playing ability, let Everton take the hit.

Plenty of time to get his replacement sorted, so no excuses really. The only question would be that Arsenal missed out on Guardiola and Klopp as they remained too loyal to Wenger in the latter years, ending up with Emery, which set them back a good few years. Do we wait out the two years knowing Hasenhuttl is going to leave, which would be the right thing to do, or should the ideal candidate come along, do we act, securing our long-term plans further as well as not risking missing out on someone who could take us further. Drawing another Brentford comparison, they had Thomas Frank on their coaching staff, behind Dean Smith and when the latter left, it was an easy transition and they were able to carry on with their progress. We obviously can't do that at the moment, as Watson, Davis, nor Fleming are managers, but it will be interesting to see if we look to replicate a similar pathway here with a coaching appointment in the future. Either way, as I said, no excuses on his replacement. We can't replace him with a defensive manager like Puel, as that's where the transition from Koeman to Puel broke down as they were two completely different managers. We can't go for the cheap option who sounds like Mauricio Pochettino, but doesn't have a clue about management. We can't go for the dinosaur/managerial merry go round brigade like Mark Hughes. And hopefully, when Howe gets relegated and sacked by Newcastle that takes him out of the running, as he will inevitably be linked. Ultimately, it will be a shame to see Hasenhuttl go. The players have never turned on him, nor stopped playing for him despite him having to get rid of the egos in the dressing room that were here and clearly being quite strong minded with his approach on how players should behave. The 9-0s were embarrassing, but relegation would have been far more costly for us. Its always exciting watching us, never dull, well maybe the second halves, but the first halves are electric. Livramento also credited Hasenhuttl for him choosing Southampton, so he was clearly doing something Potter wasn't at Brighton off the pitch, so it will be a shame to lose whatever that was as well. But, yeah, it's always going to happen in football these days. Does his family live over here, or are they still in Austria, as I know he went back in the most recent break? Additionally, I think we would all take retiring at 57. Earning millions, what a life. Surprised more don't do it. What motivates and gets Roy Hodgson down the training pitch every morning?

Broja and KWP have celebrated by slapping the badge recently too. Thankfully, KWP's + a positive post-match interview came quickly after somebody made up that he was unhappy on here to not be playing RB.

He has done very well to be fair. Used his contacts to make some smart loans at Swansea on their limited budget. Guehi, Gallagher, Woodman and Brewster when he was good among the names. Swansea’s “money”did run out in the summer, hence why they let one of their better players in Andre Ayew leave on a free and Jamal Lowe going to Bournemouth. He left over a month after the play-off defeat, so it does look more like it was his decision and now Swansea have gone from 4th to 16th. He’s doing similar at Forest. Panzo, Surridge and Davis, he’d have all known from the England setup and when he took over Forest they were in 22nd. They’re now 8th and he holds a 56.5% win record.

I only watched the last two Egypt matches in the tournament, but Salah was anonymous in both. Looked overall, and he only scored two goals in the tournament, despite playing the full 90 and then extra-time where required in each of Egypt's 7 games. Although, to be fair Egypt only managed four goals overall. So, I guess he did bag 50% of their goals.