Lighthouse

Yoshi is probably a bit jet lagged and wont have been 100% in training. No idea on Guly and Punch. Must be injured I'd have thought.

Must be having a sh*t.

Shaw starts, Clyne misses out Boruc, Chambers, Fonte, Lovren, Shaw, Wanyama, Schneiderlin, Ward-Prowse, Lallana ©, Rodriguez, Lambert.

If all you care about is the table you might be quite disappointed but I enjoyed beating the likes of Man City, Liverpool and Chelsea last year. I'm not sure what else you really want from football. We had a chance of winning the lower leagues but losing at places like Tranmere, Walsall and Rochdale was pretty crap IMO.

I'll give it a go. There are usually a couple of teams who get it spectacularly wrong on day 1, so I'm going with. Liverpool vs Stoke = 3-0 Arsenal vs Villa = 3-2 Norwich vs Everton = 0-1 Sunderland vs Fulham = 0-2 West Brom vs Saints = 2-2 West Ham vs Dragons = 3-1 Swansea vs Man U = 1-2 Palace vs Spurs = 0-4 Chelsea vs Hull = 3-0 City vs Newcastle = 4-1

I vaguely remember a story, I think it was from the French revolution when they were lopping the heads off the aristocracy, where a few blokes were getting the guillotine. Apparently one of them held a grudge against the previous guy who had been executed and when his head fell into the basket he bit the other guy on the nose.

I think Hasselbaink and Fowler at Cardiff a few years ago might have given them a run for their money.

It's probably the first Premier League campaign in my lifetime when I haven't been worried about relegation going into the start. Never say never but I can't see the squad we have going down. Pretty excited overall.

No but I wasn't distracted by a full time job running a football team either. I'm sure Poch is improving, he just isn't quite there yet.

After 8 months of doing French at school I could barely order a coffee with milk and a croc monsieur. I doubt Poch has achieved fluency in a similar period of time.

I wonder if journalists get bored of asking the same bland, generic questions all the time. "How much are you looking forward to the new season?"

Haven't seen them online for less than about £65 with printing. Wouldn't mind one either, for about half the price.

I fear Rickie will have to score 3 times as many goals as Carroll to get his seat on the plane. Don't forget Carroll once cost £35m and used to play for Liverpool and is therefore automatically better.

Lovren's international team mate Ivan Strinic looked a decent LB at the Euros last summer, caused a lot of problems for Italy and Ireland. Haven't seen any more of him than that, think he plays for Dnipro.

I was watching him on Facebook earlier, then he started saying some random stuff about Newport county, then he uploaded some pictures doing some weird pervy stuff with a hamster... I kind of stopped watching after that. Hope this helps.

Was working until about midnight and didn't see the score until then. Couldn't believe my eyes at first, I'd hoped Lambert would at least get a decent run out and dreamed that he might score. To come on and score the winner with his first ever touch for England, that's just a fairy tale. Nobody deserves an England cap and goal more than Rickie, a true professional, a nice bloke and a top player. Come on Rickie, now you've got to earn that plane ticket to Brazil. Incidentally, who was the last Saints player to score for England? Did Crouch manage it before we sold him? Not Bridge, Beattie or Le Tiss sadly. I'm beginning to wonder if it's happened in my lifetime.

It's easier to score in 70 minutes than 20.

What is your West Indian cricket name? Take the surname of the US president when you were born and the name of the town you grew up in. I am Reagan Lincoln

Nasty. Get well soon Rudi.

Boo boys being players who aren't actually booed but who are often criticised for their obvious faults? Perhaps your last sentence should read, 'no actual boos whatsoever, so little time.' Interesting how if someone has a negative opinion of a player it's an opinion, however if a large number of people happen to share that opinion, the player then becomes a boo boy.

Good point. Probably Lovren and Jos in at the back in that case.

I don't think Wanyama will play in the hole. I'd take a guess at Boruc Clyne - Yoshi - Lovren - Fox Wanyama - Morgan JRod - Guly - Lallana Lambert

1. Overall we finished about where I expected. We knew there was enough quality in the squad to keep us up, especially after some decent additions last summer. Unfortunately we started the season poorly and a tough set of opening fixtures left us with an uphill battle for the rest of the year. Once we sorted our defence out, after some early season nightmares, we looked a decent midtable team and could have finished top half given a few better results in the last 6 games. 2. Improvement and to be solidly in the top half. A venture into Europe isn't beyond question although getting in amongst the likes of Spurs and Liverpool will be a pretty tall order. 3. Both Saints and West Brom (well Clarke at least) could suffer a bit from second season syndrome. Lukaku isn't there this year and he ripped us apart at St Mary's so I think he will be missed. I would say somewhere around midtable again. I don't think The Baggies are likely to have any trouble with relegation they are comfortably better than quite a few teams down the bottom. 4. We would have liked more than 2 players in so far but most fans are sensible enough to know that big deals take time. We have made some ambitious moves so far and 2 of them seem to have paid off in Wanyama and Lovren. Wanyama especially has impressed me and will add some considerable strength and skill to our midfield. 5. We are all expecting another striker in at some point as Lambert and Rodriguez are the only 2 who look up to Premier League quality. Many fans would like another LB, Shaw got a nasty looking knee injury in a friendly and looks likely to miss the start of the season. The backup, Fox, looks less than convincing to me. Apart from that we look a decent squad. 6. Both games in 2007/8 we pretty special. Early in the season at St Marys we went 2-0 up with Rudi Skacel scoring an absolute thunderbolt from well outside the area. Koren got 2 to bring the scores level, then we went and won it 2 minutes after Koren's equaliser. The 1-1 draw at the Hawthorns was the penultimate game of the season. Lallana scored his first goal for Saints and the point helped keep us up. We nearly won it but you got a fairly late equaliser. I'd imagine you will remember that as the point that got you promoted back to the Premier League. 7. Both performances last year were just terrible. WBA were excellent in both too, I'll give you credit for that but Saints didn't turn up for either. 8. We were sh*te. 9. I'll say 2-2. Saints score first and last.

The first goal we conceded was pretty messy on a few accounts. It looked like Chambers wasn't tracking his man after the rebound from the initial cross and allowed him to get a second cross in unchallenged. From that Shaw was caught ball watching and I think Morgan either got a call to leave or decided he couldn't get a decent boot on it without risking an o.g. Second goal was pretty much Chambers' fault really. I don't want to be harsh on a young player but he needs to be much tighter on his man with those. Lambert's scuffle looks like a bit of handbags to me. Think a booking each was fair but it's odd to see Lambert lose his rag like that, he's normally very level headed. Maybe the stress of a new-born kid and a lack of sleep got to him. Who knows. That kind of thing hasn't done Rooney's England career any harm so we shouldn't worry too much. Third goal highlights exactly why Fox and Davis are inadequate. On it's own I could forgive this kind of thing but they were both mistakes we've seen repeatedly from those two in the past. Fox being left behind by his man and Davis getting beaten near post.