Wes Tender

We were sublime today. There wasn't a poor performance from any of our players, several of whom could realistically have been worthy nominations for MOTM, depending on your point of view on what constitutes the important contribution to a team. Fraser made two great scores for example, which kept a clean sheet and things would not have been quite so comfortable had he let them in. And then we have the three midfield stalwarts of Cork, Davis and Schneiderlin that make the team tick by winning the balls and distributing them to form our attacks and also form a usually impenetrable barrier in front of our defence. The defence were generally solid throughout, with a good debut from Alderweireld, who exuded class alongside Fonte. Both Clyne and Bertrand were good getting forward, but quick to get back to defend and gave us the width to stretch the midfield and allow us the space to play our passing game. Tadic and Long were a thorn in their side out wide and were effective providers of balls into Pelle, who if he continues in this devastating form will be one of the players of the season. The two of them switched wings during the match, just to confuse their markers. When comparisons are made between him and Lambert, Lambert's overall game is mentioned, his ability to hold up play, his vision and passing ability, but Pelle patently has quite a few attributes of his own and clearly has a good footballing brain. His two goals make him my MOTM, but several others weren't far behind. A few weeks ago after the West Brom match, there was a thread asking where the goals would come from. Well, the answer is from all over the place. It's going to need one hell of a defence to keep out not only Pelle, but also Cork and Schneiderlin too and I suspect that Long and Tadic will soon be finding the back of the net too, let alone Rodriguez when he returns, and hopefully Mane. It is far too early to draw any concrete conclusions, but there is a suggestion that we have the perfect set-up at the moment; not only a mean defence, but a free-scoring attack too. Having taken control of the match with our two goal lead in the second half, credit to us for continuing to press at the start of the second half. One felt that we had an extra gear when we took our foot off the pedal and let them come into it a bit more, but we always carried the threat of hitting them on the break. We had a passage of possession where the Ole's rang out around the stadium late in the game, when we wound the clock down and frustrated them. But just as I was thinking that we couldn't be as good as Pochettino's team who had scored four against them here last season, up pops Schneiderlin in injury time to prove me wrong. All credit to Koeman so far for getting out team selections and tactics spot-on. I don't fear any team in the division based on how we have started so far.

So our chariman's delivery of a statement is deemed to be cringeworthy by some. So what? You poor souls, how can you bear to listen to him? If that's all we've got to worry about, you ought to realise how pathetic it makes you look when one looks at the bigger picture of where the club is currently. As for the "dream summer" quote, let's have it in context. He said that following the departure of the manager and several of the best players, if it turned out that the team subsequently ended up stronger, then that would be a dream summer, i.e., anybody who forecast that conclusion to events would have been considered a dreamer at the beginning of the summer.

I corrected it for you. I accept that you were one of the chief doom-mongers, but that doesn't qualify you to speak for the majority.

I thought that he handled the interview perfectly well. I don't disagree with anything he said and it is really typical of this forum that there will be those who when they cannot find something to criticise in what was said, will then choose to criticise the way that it was said. He and other board members had called for calmness and trust in the way that they handled a situation that was thrust upon them, largely unavoidably, and they have proven that they were deserving of that trust. Despite the dire prophecies of doom and gloom, relegation, an asset-stripping fire sale, opinions that there was no way that we could start the season with a team as strong as that which finished the last one, Ralph voices the opinion that we are arguably in the position of indeed having a stronger team/squad and few would disagree. I can understand that many who made these dire forecasts have egg all over their faces and therefore don't wish to have the good grace to credit the Chairman and the board for the good job that they have done in turning the situation right around. One would hope that if future events bring a similar situation, that these people will have the humility to accept that the board should be allowed time to address the situation before they go into rant mode. Krueger had the humility to admit that some mistakes had been made and that the board will learn from them. What a shame that some of our fans are probably so blinkered that they will not do the same.

This is very pertinent. As you say, in the event of a yes vote, Scotland becomes an independent country and any Scottish citizens living here should have to apply for a visa to stay. After a period of several years, they might be granted an Indefinite Leave to Remain Visa on payment of a considerable sum of money and having passed a "Life in England test" with such questions on English history demonstrating knowledge of such events as the battles of Flodden, Dunbar and Culloden for example. As the British passport would not be relevant, they would then have to take out English Citizenship in order to qualify for any form of state aid or access to the Health Service.

Italy has the top several best cities in the World Venice Florence Rome Sienna Bologna It is hard to match their architecture, history, culture, food, scenery and so on. Otherwise Vancouver and Hong Kong get honourable mentions Turin, etc

I agree. When it gets to the stage that statements made by the board are dissected for minutiae of interpretation and innuendo, then it is time to call time on it all. Let's just accept that things have turned out pretty well regardless and if some wish to believe that in their opinion the board handled the communication side of it badly, then they can hope that lessons have been learned for the next time.

From the running report on the match:- Looks as if we might have quite a player here.

He'll have been telling them what a great set-up and manager we have here and they'll all be telling their clubs that their heads are already at Southampton when the January window comes around.

There will probably be a gap of a year or so purely because the next crop are a bit behind the last lot who were Shaw, Chambers, Reed and Gallagher who were ready or nearly ready to step up. They in turn were a little behind Walcott, Bale and Oxlade-Chamberlain. On the face of it, when each of those stepped up into the first team, there were doubts at first as to whether they were ready and each in turn proved that not only were they ready, but that they were exceptional talents. It would be interesting to know from those who have spent time developing them, how the next crop stack up in comparison. I get the impression that there are several others nearly there and another lot coming through behind them who look good too. The academy set-up is self-sustaining, as the more successful it is in bringing through good young players and then playing them in the first team in the top flight, the more encouraged talented youngsters will be to come to our academy. All of them will hope to be the next Bale, Walcott, Shaw, etc. A shame if we have to sell them when they become good enough, but whereas all other clubs have the revenue streams from TV rights, we have the additional revenue from our academy products too and that gives us an edge over similar sized clubs. What is the pity is that the revenue that the top clubs generate from the worldwide shirt sales to their plastic fans goes into our coffers in return for the cream of our academy players.

This debate (if it can called that) about whether those players would have stayed had Cortese not left/had Pochettino not left, has been discussed thoroughly already and of course nobody knows whether there is any truth in that assertion. But the general consensus of the more realistic/less naive posters, is that they themselves certainly would go to a job doing the same work for three or more times the salary at a much more prestigious company, so why wouldn't footballers, who are notoriously fickle and easily led by their agents, who have a vested interest in their departures? Are we really to believe these players saying that through their love of the Chairman and manager and loyalty to the club, they were happy to have stayed, or was it just a great excuse to justify their leaving and deflect the opinions of the fans that they are just a greedy bunch of glory-seekers who care far more for themselves than us and Saints? Nobody blames them for it, as we would have done it ourselves, but don't let them think that we are that naive and gullible as to believe that they would have stayed just because of the Chairman and the manager. The next issue is whether they could have been forced to stay, as we were able to keep Schneiderlin, so the argument goes that we should have been able to keep the others. Lambert's leaving is justified on sentimental grounds, in that he had been a good servant of the club and we couldn't deny him his swan-song at his boyhood club in his home town. And anyway, we got back 4 times what we paid for him, which was good business for a 32 year old. As for the other players, Lallana, Lovren and Shaw all went for really quite astronomical fees and where is the level where one says that the amounts are such that they could not be refused and that they could all be replaced with players as good or better for half the money or less? Yes, had we wished to keep them, we could have held them to their contracts, had them go on strike, generally go about the dressing room like a bad smell and destroy the team spirit. As it turns out, we have rid ourselves of these three players who wanted to be elsewhere and replaced them with others who want to play for us and who are showing signs of being as good or better, so good riddance to those three. It would have been nice to have kept Chambers for another year and as he is still young, there was no hurry to have let him go. Whether there was anything in his contract, or whether it was just a case that he was second choice to Clyne and we felt that we would be able to get in somebody better, who knows? But in my opinion, Schneiderlin was the one player that would have been difficult to replace, even for the money that we were asking, but as nobody was prepared to stump up that amount anyway, why should we let him go on the cheap? He is integral to Koeman's plans and anyway a line needed to be drawn in the sand, just to signal that we weren't a soft touch if we didn't want to sell and we certainly did not need to from a financial perspective. Arguably we are stronger team and squad wise, with a big surplus of funds in our back account. If we achieve the sort of success we did last year or better, the activities of the Summer will be hailed as a masterstroke and the feeble-minded media-induced frenzy will very soon be forgotten - until the next drama that is turned into a crisis by them and the sheep within our fanbase who prefer to believe the media rather than our own board of directors.

The essence of what we did is not easily copied by other teams in that the best business we did involved the sale of Shaw, Chambers and Lallana, who were our academy products. Therefore they cost little beyond their development costs compared to the massive sums we received for them, largely because they were all very good and several top teams coveted them. Lambert was small fry in the profit earned for him and Lovren was just too good a deal to turn down, considering that we sold him for nearly three times what he cost us. To replicate what we did requires teams to invest serious money into their academies, which is a long term plan and most teams only think in terms of short term fixes. Otherwise, it requires them to be very adept at unearthing rough diamonds and then having the nerve to sell them and gamble on turning the profits over again when the natural instinct is to keep them, unless the top teams make eye-wateringly high offers for them. For us, because we have one of the best academies even when compared to anywhere in the World, that initial investment has been made long ago and we have recently invested further. When all is said and done, the £30 million spent recently on it can be recouped by the sale of just one good product of the academy as an extreme example. £30 million could also be viewed in terms of investment in the infrastructure of the stadium too, to increase capacity if needed. Certainly the way that we have operated these past few seasons since the Liebherrs took us over makes us one of the stand-out examples of how to run a football club efficiently and effectively, and maybe some other similar sized clubs will seek to emulate what we have done. But I doubt whether there will be more than one or two.

As the article says, it is still early days, but really could we have dreamed that the manager and the new players could have made a better impression? I'm particularly pleased that we do seem to have unearthed an absolute gem with Tadic, as we were reliably informed by the forum experts that Lallana couldn't possibly be replaced by somebody better at half the price, as he was in the PL Team of the Year, don't you know? But the biggest satisfaction comes from reading about the tactical awareness that Koeman has demonstrated so far. As effective as Pochettino's tactics of the high-pressing game were, every team knew what to expect when they played us and some were finding ways to counteract it effectively. One suspects that Koeman will set out a team and a plan to gain the best advantage from two or three formations and choose the most effective players to put those tactics into effect. What will really be interesting, is watching what happens when Koeman's new Saints faces Pochettino's team. I can't see Spurs' high-pressing getting the better of our midfield and if they commit players high up the pitch, we have some devastating pace in our team now to hit them on the break, even without Rodriguez, who was the player that gave us the pace last season.

You credit those who hurled their puerile insults at Katherina or the board with far too much integrity and honour if you believe that they might be capable of having a conscience, let alone a guilty one. The least we can expect of them is that in the near future they will be a bit sheepish about having been made to look foolish, but I don't hold out much hope that they will have learned any lessons in humility when any similar situation arises in the future, unless they mature and grow up in the meantime.

Surely the record shouldn't stand, as it was wind assisted.

The Fox article somehow managed not to mention that we had acquired the Koeman brothers to replace Pochetino, not that it would have occurred to them that that might be factor to be weighed up in the balance of how we have done during the Summer transfer dealings. Credit to the board for that appointment. But for a refreshingly different viewpoint to theirs, this makes interesting reading:- http://www.cityam.com/1409680422/crisis-what-crisis-southampton-are-premier-leagues-biggest-transfer-window-earners Now, you might conclude that we have reached our current situation more by accident than by design, but it is eminently possible that the ridiculous amounts of money paid for those players who left, led the board to anticipate the sort of outcome that is portrayed by this article. Although some like you feel that those players might not have been adequately replaced, many are happy that they have been, leaving about £30 million or so spare to either strengthen further in January, or to settle expenditure on the Academy rebuilding. One might even argue that on the basis of this article, that in terms of sustainability financially, we are the best run club in the PL and most of our fans are confident that we also have a squad and manager capable of getting us at least half way up the table if not further.

Frank, I'm a bit disappointed in you, as you normally have the ability to make balanced and reasonable judgements on most matters. But here you are trying to draw a parallel between football fans' behaviour at a match and believing that it is therefore the same on an internet forum, because they are the same people. The fans' behaviour at a match is a tribal ritual thing and emotions are stoked by incidents as they occur, in the heat of the moment. That is quite a bit different from a single person's reactions to a situation when the more sensible ones have the time to give some thought to their opinions before posting them on here, isn't it? As for the childish/adult aspects, calling people names as some did with the board members and our owner, was puerile and largely indefensible and comments from posters calling for them to grow up and act like adults is well-deserved in their case. OK, we get it that in your opinion we are not as good a team as we were when we had Lambert, Lallana, Lovren and Shaw. Many disagree, believing that they have been adequately replaced, some perhaps not as good, but others better. But the depth of squad is almost certainly better and many believe Koeman to be a better manager than Pochettino. We will have to wait and see who is right. But the thread is about judging the board on the basis of where we are on September 1st and most are happy that the board have done a fine job in getting us to where we now are, regardless of some niggles which may or may not be justified along the way.

Have a look at the titles you have mentioned and then tell me if you notice anything particular about them. Soccer Special, Soccer Stars, Soccer Saturday on Sky? They are all alliterative. Now wrack your brains and try and come up with something sexy to go with football. Fabulous or fantasy maybe, but nothing particularly appropriate. Maybe if the matches were on Friday, Football Friday perhaps. The Yanks call it Soccer so as to distinguish it from their own football and the name has gained more credence from that than the archaic connection with Association Football.

Agreed. Alpine has been quite reasonable this summer and he certainly had a basis for his opinions that we were short of cover at CB and that Ramirez had been a disappointment generally since he arrived. Both are sorted and so he is content with how things have turned out and has said so. But as you say, Saint Richmond has been a prize idiot throughout and he has gone very quiet of late. Perhaps returned to his village, who were missing him.

It's an American television channel, what do they know about football if they have to call it soccer? Maybe they haven't had time to process the impact of the signings on 1st September yet. Maybe it hasn't registered that despite losing our influential manager, that we appointed an even more influential manager as his replacement. Their opinions on other teams at the top of the European game show them up for the ignorant Yanks that they are. They probably couldn't even place Madrid or Milan on a map of Europe, so why would they know much about their football teams?

7th, above Spurs. We could have been 7th or even 6th last season had we not had the injuries to Boruc and Wanyama and latterly Rodriguez. We now have some quite decent cover in more depth than last season, particularly in defence and more options in attack, especially when Rodriguez returns. I think that tactically Koeman is better than Pochettino too, and will set up a team better to counter the opposition than he did. It would be nice to think that we will receive praise from the pundits for the exciting attacking and passing football that we will play, hopefully as displayed against Liverpool and West Ham, rather than that against West Brom. I don't see any team overwhelming us particularly, because we have a solid midfield in front of a decent defence and goalkeeper. It has been strange the transition from when we last in the PL to the past couple of seasons. Before, there was trepidation when we played the top teams, but last season we could potentially beat any team on the day and I feel the same way now, despite losing those players. We are now an unknown quantity to many teams and we could surprise a lot of them.

Whoops! I was going to say that there are two naturals for him. Mane, Mane, Mane (Abba) and Mane (that's what I want) by the Beatles

A very well written summary, as was Saintbletch's. Both very good posts putting across the perspectives from two different viewpoints.

Why dismantle the team? Do you really believe that the board chose to do that of their own volition, rather than having events thrust upon them? Of course in a fairy tale world, we would keep all of our best players and fine-tune the team by strengthening in the areas that were weak. I'm disappointed in you, Frank, for inferring that the board somehow chose to go down the route of dismantling the team and that you don't accept that if those players chose to leave for massive increases in their earnings at the glory clubs that we could have prevented them going, or that we should have resisted the hugely inflated fees we got for them and had disgruntled players who wanted to be elsewhere. If it all happens again next year, one hopes that the majority of sensible fans will expect that it is a possibility and have more trust in the manager and the board to deal with the situation effectively, as indeed they have done this season.