Wes Tender

What a pity that the party in coalition with the Tories is the bearded sandal-wearing woolly-minded Lib Dems, whose worst instincts are luckily tempered by the Tories.

Is it a nice run? Half of those teams are above them in the table currently. As the hoary old chestnut goes, the table doesn't lie.

Forster produced a couple of good saves, one of which was tremendous. But otherwise, he was largely a spectator. Regarding whether Reed deserved MOTM, there are certainly good reasons for him to be a decent shout for it. Wasn't he outstanding? I thought that considering that he was there to fill Wanyama and Schneiderlin's boots, the job that he did at stifling Everton's midfield together with Davis meant that the two of them bossed the midfield. One couldn't do that without the other. They both broke up play, closed down the midfield so that Everton could not settle into any sort of rythm. He and Davis were the foundations on which the wide players and strikers could launch their attacks. Davis has produced reliable performances virtually every game, but the fact that Reed was thrown in at the deep end and produced such a mature performance against such quality opposition is the reason why his contribution can reasonably be assessed as MOTM.

Looking at both team sheets before the kick-off, it appeared as if we could get a tonking. Our midfield had been decimated with the absences of Wanyama, Schneiderlin and Cork and on paper at least, Everton have some real quality in their team. But Reed's opportunity of a first full start excited me, as everything I've seen of him up to now suggested that he would not be overawed by the occasion and by the final whistle, I had him as MOTM. Reed is really Davis MK2 in many ways, temperamentally as well as appearance wise and both of them with James Ward-Prowse helped win the midfield battles, closing down the Everton players, denying them the space that they needed to be effective. Koeman got it bang-on tactically today, the three CBs solid throughout, allowing Clyne and Bertrand to get forward out wide and the two up front caused Everton all sorts of problems, Pelle the big man muscling the defence with great arial ability and hold-up play and Long the outlet for the ball over the top or into the channels with pace that was hard for Everton to handle. Despite the referee doing his utmost to give Everton an advantage, we were without doubt the better team and could have had more than three goals, with chances to score right up to the final whistle. On several occasons when we have a win like this, the key is perhaps that several players feature highly in the MOTM poll, pointing to a real team effort. Although we might not have individual players to match those in the glory clubs, it is possible to match them as a cohesive unit when so many play their part. It really was difficult to look back at the match and point a finger at anybody as a weak link. I look forward to watching Match of the Day to see what the pundits make of Long's penalty claim, which if allowed, would surely have seen Jagielka red-carded.

As I understand it, Mitchell headed up a team of several people who looked at every player everywhere and identified those who fitted a particular profile that suited us. So naturally he knows who we are interested in, but conversely we know who Spurs will be interested in based on current research. Spurs as a team will have both different positional needs to ours and different opinions about the sort of player personality and background to ours. Because of the managerial input, Spurs will be favouring Latin players particularly Spanish/Argentinian, whereas we will favour Dutch/Northern European players. Koeman gives us the edge over Van Dijk and Mitchell's previous involvement means very little.

Man United’s Ashley Young has revealed his delight at his team-mates use of the ball against Southampton and found time to praise the fans who travelled to the south coast. Read more at http://www.squawka.com/news/we-looked-dangerous-with-that-move-ashley-young-comments-on-man-uniteds-new-attacking-style/243223#bVXFHfoVf8rWgqBW.99 This would be the use of the ball that resulted in United having the fewest shots on goal of any United team since the last Ice Age then? As for the fans that he praises, then credit indeed to those who made a round trip of over 420 miles, but he must be bloody naive not to realise that quite a large number of their crowd live within an hour of the ground. Anyway Ashley Young was in Clyne's pocket the entire match, so what does he know about anything?

Thanks for posting that. We ought to have drawn at least, as the penalty for Shearer was farcical and Charlton had a stonewall penalty denied him. Interesting to be reminded that refereeing was ever sh*te.

I hadn't realised the Asian community had been here that long.

There are various grades of reasoning errors in your post. I agree with number one entirely and they are the worst grade of plastic fan, worthy of the most withering contempt. Those who never go to home games might have a perfectly reasonable excuse and the further the distance away from Southampton, or the greater the financial hardship, the more validity applies to the excuse. Those who go to the occasional game and wish to wangle tickets to a Cup Final, will invariably find themselves way down the priority list when the tickets go on sale, won't they? The Chapel stand thing is just plain ridiculous, especially when considering that the family section is there, where the next generation of fans is being indoctrinated into the faith. The leaving before the final whistle is dependent on circumstances before judgement is made. The family in front of me had to leave the United match to catch the ferry back to the Isle of Wight. But if anybody chooses to leave early, for whatever reason, that is up to them. Plasticity hardly enters into it, especially when those leaving are long-standing ST holders or travel regularly from distant destinations.

I don't recall anybody particularly singing "where were you when we were sh*t?" "Where were you when you were sh*t?" yes, particularly concerning the likes of Manchester City, who similarly to us had a tumble down the divisions before they rose again. And having the wealthiest owners in British football, they have attracted more than their fair share of plastics, although to be fair to them, like us they did keep a decent hardcore of fans through thick and thin.

Did we manage to insert a sell-on clause into the sale contracts of those players?

1/3rd to a 1/2? A few hundred, maybe. But I certainly didn't see 10,000/12,000 people streaming towards the exits.

You don't come under the definition of what a plastic fan is in my opinion. You moved away from this area, but still follow the team, despite the distance. As far as I'm concerned, being a plastic fan means that you support a team for no other reason than than they have been consistently successful over a sustained period of time. So if somebody claims to be a Man Utd, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and latterly Man City fan, and they have absolutely no connections with those cities, then they qualify as plastics.

They don't have to come from Southampton though, do they? Reasonable radius and we're the nearest team (even in the top division), work here, gone to Uni here, close family here, all fair enough reasons to support us. Those would also be acceptable reasons for supporting any of the glory teams too. But as we aren't a glory team, it is pretty hard to accuse anybody who supports us of being a plastic anyway, so the hypocrisy charge doesn't quite work. At the United match, there was some adult male tw*t sat in the Chapel wearing a Chelsea jacket. What was that all about? Are we his first team and Chelsea his second? Or is it the other way about? Or was he just a bit thick and didn't realise that it was a bloody stupid thing to do?

Fellaini is also a cheating bastard, as well as a thug. There is only one other player as big as Fellaini, who goes down as easily as him under the slightest contact and his name is Andy Carroll. The two of them are an absolute disgrace. Mane also goes down too easily like Owen did, but at least they have the excuse when tackled by big defenders that they are slightly built. When Fellaini or Carroll fall down when tackled by the likes of Clyne, Davis or Cork, it just looks farcical.

Neville was certainly correct in his opinion that United were absolutely dire. Where he was arguably wrong was in his estimation that we lacked confidence. There might have been an element of that, but the main reason that we appeared to be not at our best, was because we were missing our key defender, our key midfielder and his main supporting midfielder. I'm confident that had we had Alderweireld, Schneiderlin and Cork available, we could have torn them apart and probably denied them the two goals we gifted them too.

Did he say it in a thick Dorset dialect?

Had a sense of humour bypass then? About time you changed your avator, isn't it? "Everything must go" is so last Summer.

Really? Then why are their coaches outside the ground from such diverse suburbs of Manchester as Milton Keynes, Taunton, Haywards Heath, Margate, etc? Give Manchester City their due; all of their away coaches came from Manchester proper or near enough, when they were here the other week.

And now M'Lud, I call Hypochondriac to give his incontrovertible evidence that Nathaniel Clyne, a professional footballer at Southampton Football Club is leaving for Manchester United Football Club. The Beak: You have firm evidence I understand, Mr Hypochondriac? Pray, do tell the Court what form this evidence takes. Hypochondriac: My evidence is based on the fact that other former colleagues of Mr Clyne have also left for the so-called bigger Clubs, players such as Lallana, Lambert, Shaw, Lovren and Chambers. Therefore it follows evidentially that Clyne will also leave. The Beak: That is not admissable as evidence, Mr Hypochonriac and it throws into question your intelligence if you perceive it to be. It is merely speculation based on rumours borne out of precedent. Neither is the fact that he has not yet signed a renewed contract 18 months before the expiration of his current contract indicative of any particular conclusion to his career at Southampton Football Club. Case dismissed.

What available evidence? I don't see any evidence that is credible at all. Has he indicated that he wishes to leave? There might be rumours and speculation, but as usual, you are entirely happy to accept that they constitute evidence.

The background between the two managers is a godsend to the media, especially as it also involves the biggest club in British football. The feud between Van Gaal and Koeman might have died down over the years, but it suits the media to give the embers a good raking to add spice to the fixture tonight. This is also naturally the reason for the match being moved to tonight for Sky, who would like nothing better than for the two managers to get hot under the collar with each other and in the best case scenario for them, come to blows. What they don't want is a low score bore-draw, a conciliatory handshake and mutual appreciation in the post-match interviews. So some of our players could have gone to Manchester United? What a revelation that they could have gone there, to arguably the top glory club in the World, where they would earn themselves several times more dosh than here. In reality, this is just Van Gaal's alternative version of how much bigger his house in the Algarve is than Koeman's. Effectively it is his little bit of pre-match psychology, he could have had any of our players, but they weren't good enough for them. It really would be great if we could stuff them and their control-freak knob of a manager, but I suspect that crucial injuries to our key midfield players will have hampered our chances.

His contract is running down and his agent says that his player would like to remain at Besiktas. So naturally all these clubs from around Europe are interested in helping the agent to convince Besiktas that they ought to renew the contract of this much in demand commodity.

I agree totally. I had a great view of it looking down from the Chapel/Kingsland corner and he had plenty of time to come out and clear it before Aguera could have reached it. Everybody around me asked why isn't he coming out, and fearing the worst of a one against one with a player of Aguero's standing. So, he made a good save, but there was no need for it to have even got to that stage.