max_saints

boruc looking to make amends for last week! hoping he keeps it up in the second half!

boruc has been top class all season but not even the happy clappers can excuse him for that. very selfish of him when everyone's working so hard and he just gifts arsenal the goal because of his arrogance/madness/??? Other than that, we were right in it but just did not managed to convert our possession into chances. I think our chances of nicking a point went down drastically after lallana went off (anyone knows what happened here? injury?) wanyama made up for his error in the last game with a beast of a performance in the middle, thought jrod was very good as well with his direct running. big improvement from 6-1? move on and focus on chelsea hopefully with shaw and lovren back. this period is going to be a test of our top 6 credentials. btw wheres gaston??

http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/news/news/2013-14/nov/john-scales-barclays-premier-league-team-of-the-season-so-far.html http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/news/news/2013-14/nov/iain-dowie-barclays-premier-league-team-of-the-season-so-far.html saints quite well represented

Hodgson was evasive when pressed on his possible team for the game at Wembley on Friday, but he did confirm that the in-form Southampton duo of Adam Lallana and Jay Rodriguez would feature. "I have spoken to the Southampton boys [Lallana and Rodriguez] and let them know that they will be involved," added the England boss, who confirmed their Southampton colleague Rickie Lambert has joined Steven Gerrard and Kyle Walker on the absentee list after picking up a 'minor' injury in training. Involved can mean anything from starting the game to a cameo 3 minute sub appearance at the end, hope he means the former. On other news, gutted that it seems Rickie would not play a part this international break :/

wanyama.... boruc quite clearly gave him the shout that he had a man on yet he chose not to listen. cost us the clean sheet :/

so so so pleased for all three! esp. jrod who snuck in when everyone least expected it. instead of feeling disappointed, clyne should look at this as further inspiration to continue working hard and perform week in week out. who knows, we might have rickie, adam, jrod, shaw and clyne all on the flight to Brazil.

Clyne has got to be the best RB in the league atm

It's alright, I was just posting in reply to the OP to share my own story. I won't get in your way of your Saints for Southampton people only mentality, have a nice day (:

I understand english fans might view me as plastic/glory hunter whatever but before you come to that hasty conclusion, you have to understand some background. My country has a population less than that of just London itself and to then have to accommodate an entire league of 12 teams within this small country itself, you have to understand that most of the teams play a very very low standard of football. Attendances average 1200 every week during a good season and after the season ends, teams shift their entire squad of players around so that you get a completely new squad of players at the start of a new season, its no wonder the teams are so pathetic because they can't get any consistency at all. Fans find it hard to follow their team season after season when they see their top scorers leave every other season and do not have an idol to worship. Even the champions see their coaches move to a lower team, something that I still do not understand about the league. Because the country is so small, there really is no clear distinction of a 'home town', home town is really just the entire country itself to most of us. Also, because of the lack of human resource, the government is extremely competitive in terms of its economy and has no time for sports so the set up of the league is really unprofessional and at times amateurish. And there you go, a background to the football scene in my country and to why I chose to follow the Saints (welcome or unwelcome) because following the local team is akin to you guys following your local pub teams. (tbf which plastic fan chooses to support Saints especially in the last few years???)

so the general consensus is someone like me 7000 miles away with no relations to the city itself should have no business supporting the team?

as i've mentioned before, i'm a true blue born and bred Singaporean proudly supporting my team 7000 miles away. I think the reason why most in my country and surrounding Asian countries support the big teams is because they are the only teams getting media coverage around here. knowledge of teams outside the big 5 or 6 are minimal amongst most of the so called 'football fans'. unfortunately, there are people who still mix me up as that Sunderland supporter because of the stripes. I think the toughest period for me supporting the Saints had to be the drop down the divisions to league 1, back then the only way I could follow the team was through the Internet and dodgy highlights on random sites. it really tested me in the sense that I was wondering to myself why bother when I barely saw the team in action and I wasn't related to Southampton in any way. I'm glad I got that silly idea out of my head though as I don't think I would be as happy supporting one of the big teams as I would be supporting our club. It still is hard supporting the Saints though, as the OP has mentioned supporters like us in faraway lands don't really feel like we belong, and the only connection we can get with fellow fans is through forums like this one (and it can get unbearable at times viewing the forums with all the trolling). but its well worth it when I get to rub it in the face of my mates when we achieve the odd result against the big teams (quite often in recent times though and I'm not complaining!) ultimately the dream is still to celebrate a late rickie winner against united with the fans at St marys sometime soon

actually do not mind an uneventful window, our squad looks very settled and happy. however if Ramirez starts to moan and demand a move then hopefully we can use his money to get in a good replacement. other than that, if any experienced keeper don't mind coming in to back up boruc... given or friedel perhaps? if not, hang on to our players, achieve a good top 8 finish, then we'll further strengthen next summer

wanyama-davis-morgan vs fellaini-cleverly-carrick winner takes all?

although very unlikely, I like the thought we could go top if we beat united while arsenal and Chelsea fail to win. however realistically speaking, would be happy with a point away to united

yeah would be more interested in a post match kind of thing, as people would want to concentrate on the match itself during.

the same one who had a moan about preparing for relegation only for us to cement our place in the premier league a few minutes later.

A solid option off the bench, especially when we have a slender lead and we need someone to steady things when the opposing team look like scoring soon. However, I do not see him in our starting line up unfortunately IMO

I don't see any benefits for the club in selling rickie. The amount that we get for him will not be enough to get another striker who can fill his boots. And its not like our squad is currently overflowing with strikers. Unless we're talking about 8-10 million (which I highly doubt anyone would pay for someone his age) then there really is no point in selling.

on paper we really should be winning this game, at home and against newly promoted opposition. but then again, we only seem to step up and perform against the big teams and struggle to find the motivation to beat teams we should be beating. i would go for the same team that played pool and a conservative 1-0 win with osvaldo's first goal for us.

And, as the bond with his fans continues grows, Dejan’s message is quite clear: keeping giving me your support, and you won’t be left disappointed. This was from his recent interview on the OS! solid player at the back, so cool under pressure, so passionate about the club just a few months in, really growing into a fans favourite!

HCDAJFU on the wings

LOL a face palm emoticon can't even explain how I feel about the new low this forum has gone to. sigh

agreed.

schneiderlin was our best player today (that overhead kick lol!) however lucky to escape a red for his tackle on diame. the rest were okay, and not as terrible as what most on this forum would have you believe. okay there might have been some below average performances from wanyama, jrod and lallana but they weren't terrible. much better than before, as I could see we were creating chances, just not able to get past motm jussi. osvaldo has to score his chance in the first half though! overall, it was a good performance but for the lack of goals which i believe we will soon find at the next game at anfield

boruc allowed san marino to score their first goal of the campaign while davis' northern ireland gave luxembourg only their 4th ever victory in a world cup qualifier.