Lighthouse

Tempted to stick with the same line up although part of me would like to see Wanyama away from home. A draw here puts us up into 8th place until Newcastle play Spurs on Wednesday. I think I'd take that, not an easy place to go and the weather will probably still be sh*te.

Long cost over £7m and had scored 3 goals for West Brom this season Zaha has done absolutely f**k all since joining Utd and has looked sh*te every time I've seen him recently. Boriello has played 4 games for Milan this season. Ince has only ever done it in the Championship and apparently cost over £1m for a 4 month loan However you have apparently watched a large number of Borussia Monchengladbach and Olympiakos games this season so I will bow to your superior knowledge on De Jong and Mitroglou.

Maybe if we wanted Grant Holt, Josef Jobo and Marvin Emnes on loan we could have got them. I'd like to think we don't.

No we didn't. We do our homework on our transfer targets; watch them play, send out scouts, prepare dossiers, analyse videos etc. We probably spend weeks or months tracking players. We've probably looked at hundreds that never even made the public attention. Clearly none of the targets we've scouted were available at the right price. Panic buying players at the end of the January transfer window is how you end up spending £35m on Andy Carroll. This isn't Football Manager. You don't just search for a player with good stats and click 'place bid'.

Don't really give a f**k about history if we're playing decent football and winning games. I'll always remember this as the brightest and most promising young Saints team I've ever seen. 10 years ago much worse teams than this one (e.g. Charlton) were battling for a Champions League place. It's only because the standard of the top 8 is so high that we aren't in contention for Europe. I'd rather watch this than watch West Ham or Stoke making the cup final. I don't get people saying they'd happily finish 17th if it means winning the cup. To finish 17th you have to be sh*te in A LOT of games. We were 30 minutes away from finishing 17th in 2005. I wouldn't watch another year of that sh*t for a day out at Wembley.

It's strange, we are apparently pathological with our preparations to an extent Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery would be proud with. We've laid out an entire pitch at Staplewood with the same grass seed they have at the Emirates and when we do away games we take our own mattresses and vacuum the radiators. Despite all this stuff our game plan for this game seems to be hoof it ling at Ryan f**king Shawcross. It's the same plan which worked so well against Samba and QPR last year. I don't know, the players just didn't look like they wanted it at times. The ball would run back to Boruc and you would see 6 or 7 players casually strolling forward out of the penalty area, rather than busting a gut to stretch them on the break. If ever there was a game to keep it on the deck and play short, direct passes surely it was today. Stoke were well worth the point. Normally when we go 1 goal up at home to a poor team, they have to come at us and it works to our advantage as we hit them with pace and numbers on the counter. Today though we just sat back, let them come at us and didn't bother with any 50/50s or 2nd tackles. That early goal should have spurred us on and tired them out chasing the game away from home but it just didn't pan out that way. Thought Clyne had a very poor game and I don't remember Shaw taking his man on properly until the 82nd minute. I think we missed Wanyama at times in the middle and the front 4 were pretty quiet most of the game. P.S. Crouch is a kn*b. Surely the FA will look at that kick he had at Fonte in front of the Northam.

I think we threw away a 2-0 lead against Brentford in 2005, then won the replay. Can't remember any since then.

Was it Fulham a couple of years ago who were going to qualify through the fair play league but didn't fancy it, so they kicked the crap out of the other team on the last day of the season.

4 away wins already is pretty good for us. In 04/05 we didn't get our 4th win home AND away until early March and won 1 away game all season.

As much as I rate Lovren, we've actually not lost a game since he has been injured. Before that we also picked up a win at Cardiff without him. I think the only loss this season when he was missing was at the Emirates. I think it shows how we aren't actually 'desperate' for another CB and our priorities in summer should lie elsewhere.

I've played football and badminton since I was at primary school and still enjoy both (getting on for about 20 years now). Done some other stuff I got bored of though. Used to run for about half an hour a day but only to maintain fitness and in the end decided to join a gym instead. Have also gotten into paintballing over the last year and I'm playing in my first 3 man tournament next weekend. Bricking it a little bit because all the other teams are bordering on professional marksmen and we're going to get murdered. Still, it's all part of the fun I guess.

It wont be easy but their form over the last 6 away games is lost 5 and a 0-0 draw at Hull. They don't travel well and if we play to our potential we should beat them. We were definitely the better team up at the Britannia and if Begovic had left his shooting boots at home we'd have won fairly comfortably IMO.

I think the perceived improvement in Carroll's reputation is down to the fact that we've had to watch Jozy Altidore 3 times this season. Compared to him Carroll looks like Baggio.

Carroll can't have any complaints about Flores making a meal of it anyway. My overriding memory of last years abysmal game at Upton Park is of Carroll rolling around on the floor clutching his face every time Hooiveld breathed in his general direction.

So you would have bet everything you own on it?

Should both be banned for those ponytails.

Right now I would say: Fulham - Have just been awful in both games against us. I can't really say anything good about them, they will just have to pray their new signings change something. Bottom for a reason. Cardiff - Inexperienced manager in OGS and they just aren't that good. Norwich - Don't see enough goals in them to stay up. I think Sunderland, Swansea and West Ham have a couple of decent players and will be okay eventually. West Brom and Stoke will go close but should be okay IMO.

Is anyone else's screen resolution completely messed up. Mine seems to be zoomed in a lot and I'm missing half the picture. Only seems to be on BBC1 so not just my TV.

But Cleverly plays for Man Utd, surely he must be better?

It's fairly obvious that the right player was not available at the right price. Don't forget we haven't sold Osvaldo and we probably received very little in the way of up front loan fees. As such, we probably don't have another £15m lying around spare we can chuck at another centre forward. Clearly those running the club have decided it's better to make do with what we've got, rather than paying the asking price for any strikers who we have probably been looking at. This isn't Championship Manager.

Where have you got that from? Sky are reporting about £15m, which I would say is about right.

Well, she's definitely heading South.

No, it's just some bloke. Twitter is just the 21st century equivalent of, "a guy in a pub reckons..." I'd say it's fairly obvious Osvaldo is off.

Anatoli Todorov, he would sort out our striker issues.

Players who lack match practice are going to make errors, that's why Yoshi made a poor error against Villa. It's no different so Gallagher's 'horrendous' error against Arsenal, when he missed a chance to put us 2-0 up from 5 yards out. You can't expect players to instantly come into a team and be consistent. When Maya played last season he was our best CB IMO. He is definitely good enough for where we are and if the rumours are to be believe he wants out for first team action. That's the problem, you can't have 4 Lovrens in the squad because 2 of them will know they are far too good to sit on Southampton's bench and become unsettled. We're one Lambert injury away from being forced to play Gallagher every week.