Wes Tender

Still bickering about those substitutions, eh? To my mind, he didn't get the substitutions wrong, the distinction is that they didn't work. Adkins wasn't on the pitch himself to implement the tactics and the players let him down by not getting the ball forward and being pressed too deep. I don't think that there was much that was flawed in the reasoning behind the changes, as on numerous occasions very able managers have introduced fresh legs into a match later on as an effective tactic. Some say that it should have been done in stages, but that is debateable and it wasn't as if much time remained anyway and there might equally have been debate as to why the introductions had not been made earlier. I also don't accept necessarily that Lambert, Lallana and Puncheon were our best players at that stage of the game when they were tired. And as I pointed out before, I just love the irony of Puncheon being classified as one of our best players when he was potentially hounded out of the club by all those who considered him a waste of space only weeks before. OK, he had a good game on Sunday and I hope that he continues to show promise. The fact remains that for the majority of the match, we were better than Man Utd. If SAF's tactics eventually won the match for them, he has had rather longer to perfect them than Adkins. Adkins will learn and fast, I'm sure of that.

I don't think so. Del Piero is 38 and Cortese is 44. Or do you mean that Cortese idolised Del Piero when del Piero was a little boy? That sounds a little perverted.

As you say, as a media and marketing event, this would be massive. Likewise, I agree that this would be on a par with us signing Beckham, not maybe on the national stage, but certainly on the international stage. There is only a handful of players whose names are known almost universally and he is right up there. I wasn't going to buy one of the new Liverpool strip shirts, but I'd buy one with his name on it. There is potential that in a fantasy world scenario, he comes to us and scores many glorious goals, raises our profile massively and that this inspirational signing goes into the annals of Saints folklore. Equally, he might get crocked after a few matches, ending his career. Is it worth the gamble? You bet it is!

Alps, I would have been perfectly content with a hypothetical debate based on the assumption that we had X £s to spend on improving our team, where should it be spent and on whom? But here the assumption has been made, without any concrete evidence, that monies spent on Ramirez have deprived us of cash to invest in defenders. Furthermore, as has been pointed out by others too, the blame does not rest solely on Adkins' shoulders. But if the OP had been along the lines of your more sensible suggestion, then personally I would want our defensive shortcomings to be addressed, but I'm really impressed at the show of ambition that brings a player of Ramirez's quality to our team. I think that we would have been pretty well there, had the Buttner deal gone through and he wouldn't have broken the bank.

I think that you'll find that many of those who have replied to your OP, have done so to argue exactly the point made by Minsk; that the whole basis for it is flawed, unless you can furnish evidence that monies spent on Ramirez were at the expense of expenditure on defenders. So in the absence of any evidence to support your argument, I'll assume that you have none. And on that basis, you are unable to answer Minsk's requests in his 5th point. By all means, send him a PM and admit that you can't provide him with answers to his questions, so you don't have to admit it on here.

As far as I am aware, he has retired from his core business, which was Lymington Precision Engineering

Sticking to my prediction of finishing tenth. Nothing I've seen so far to change my mind. We'll beat both Manc clubs on the return fixtures.

How come Lambert is not featured in the race for the golden boot. I thought that he also had two goals, or did I dream it?

And Minsk very politely asked you to respond to the points he raised in his 5th item on the list, which for some reason you have declined to do. Would I guess correctly that you cannot answer? If so, Minsk has fairly conclusively demolished the entire basis for your post, which is that the money spent on Ramirez meant that it was not available to be spent elsewhere on the team. Unless you can furnish any sort of evidence relating to what had been budgeted by the club towards the signing of new players, there is no point in the thread, is there?

To a certain extent, some of the cries from the crowd are justified under certain circumstances. For example, when Kelvin or a defender runs the risk of being closed down and possibly losing the ball in a vital area of the pitch, then Dave Merrington is right; there is a right time to pass the ball out from the back and a wrong time. Sometimes it is the right thing to do to get rid. Equally, the shouts of "shoot" are sometimes rightly an encouragement to pull the trigger when a clear shooting chance has presented itself. Or sometimes it is ironic and humourous. When the ball is played sideways or backwards, that is fine when we are ahead and it is gratifying that it frustrates the hell out of the opposition that they can't get the ball and the clock is winding down. But it can be equally frustrating to our fans when we are chasing the match and short of time to get something out of a game and the players seem to lack urgency and get the ball within striking distance. Southampton have historically played an attractive and entertaining passing game and this has become known as the Southampton way. We play good football under Adkins and not only has it been good entertainment, but it has been effective too. The new players recently introduced seem to be capable of carrying on that style of play and are young and hungry, so with luck they will be with us for many years and grow to be synonymous with the Southampton way and make us proud of them and the club. We already have gained a fantastic reputation for producing an impressive crop of young players through our academy and they are shining beacons for what we are about as a club. Many of these players grace the Premier League already, with several others currently on the verge of breaking through within the next year or two. When the way we play translates into a successful campaign in the top flight, our fan base will grow to appreciate that it is effective and productive in the points it gains us and there will be less of the neanderthal tendency making inane comments towards the players; although by the nature of the beast, there will always be an element of the lunatic fringe amongst football fans.

I certainly recall us having poor starts almost as the rule rather than the exception. Perhaps some have selective memories and have grown unused to us having faltering starts like this. But personally I'm much happier getting the top teams out of the way earlier like this. Although there was disappointment at losing to Wigan, the TV pundits generally have been impressed with how we have played both Manc teams and surmise that if we continue to play as well as we did against them, we'll have few worries about survival. A bit of a run against the lesser lights in the division and we'll soon start climbing the table and our chances of doing that will be increased once we have the full squad available.

Exactly the thought that crossed my mind. And Fergie was fulsome in his praise for the job that he did yesterday, in calming things down and putting in some great balls.

You are being sarcastic, aren't you? Indulging in a little irony? I do hope so, but with some on here you can never tell.

I was going to respond to the OP, but you have comprehensively responded to each and every point in much the same way that I would have argued it. The OP says that it is a forum and that everybody is entitled to their opinions, but then those who disagree with the scepticism shown by a few posters is labelled as viewing the situation through rose tinted glasses. And yet, as you so astutely point out, the trouble with some of those opinions, is that they are formulated without concrete evidence of the facts, unless of course they have inside information regarding the way that decisions are made at the club, what the budget is, etc. What really takes the biscuit for me though, is the fact that Ramirez hasn't even kicked a ball for us yet, neither has Yoshida and we only had a short glimpse of Mayuka and yet judgements can be made about whether Ramirez was worth it? In much the same way that for the past couple of seasons there were those who felt capable of commenting that we had thrown our hopes of promotion away after a paltry handful of games, it has to be pointed out to them that validity is only added to such opinions by the passage of time. It is a marathon, not a sprint. Equally without inside knowledge, it is futile believing that it is possible to make all of your signings at the early stages of the window. And in any event, there is still the possibility of bringing in out of contract players. So I am perfectly content to wait and see how it turns out. But I expect that Ramirez will turn out to be an inspirational buy and have the doubters eating their words.

This really is an insane comment. We weren't playing ordinary teams where we shipped 6 of those goals. We were playing the Champions and the second placed team who were last year's champions.

No, I don't. Sorry. Perhaps I was watching a different game to you. Lallana in particular had ceased doing very much that threatened that late on. You and others believe that the three of them presented more threat to the Man Utd defence than three fresh players. When late impact subs come on and change the game, then the manager is a genius tactically. When it fails, he is an idiot. The only thing I reckon was at fault, was the positioning of the subs. Jay Rod should have been in the middle, with the other two either side.

Look, several people have answered it. He was knackered. You might not have thought that, but then it wasn't your decision to make.

Why can't the OP just leave it at the same comments he made in the post match thread. Or does he feel to need to say look at me so badly that the only way that he can achieve it is by starting a new thread?

Quite.

No doubt they could have lasted 90 minutes, but not at the pace they had produced earlier in the match when they were most effective. You do see that, don't you? If a player lacks that extra yard of pace that they started with, or is not mentally as sharp as when they are fresh, then opposition players who have fresh legs and who have been instructed to exploit weaknesses by a great tactical manager, will run rings around them. But I'm sure that you and others who do not see this, have the ability to accurately forecast whether those two late ManUre goals would have been prevented had we left those three players on the pitch until the end.

Having read back from the end, I'm absolutely gobsmacked to hear that posts on here echo those texts and calls to Solent that I listened to on the way home, saying that it was lunacy to replace out three best players. I agree entirely with you, that as far as I could see, all three of them had run themselves into the ground and when Ferguson had made tactical changes to introduce three fresh-legged substitutes, they would have run rings around our most tired players, whose threat had reduced. Like you, I would have had Lee on, as he would have been a player giving us something different and I'm not certain that United would have been able to handle him running at their defence. J Rod should have been up front intead of out wide again, as he doesn't seem to do much out there.

It's simple, Art. The players you mention were knackered and therefore arguably not our best players in that condition. Had further goals been scored after the substitutions, or we had prevented United's late goals, then Adkins' tactics would have been lauded. Who is to say that those goals would not have been scored anyway as a direct result of the tiredness of those players? I agree that the team played a blinder and I'm really proud of them. We've now played both Manchester teams, (last season's champions and the champions from the season before), within the first three matches and have been 2-1 up on both of them, only to lose by the odd goal at the death. Whereas most of the pundits and some of our fans would have had both of those matches as potential thrashings for us, I believe that both our fans and the pundits are beginning to revise their expectations of how we might end up this season. I find it mildly amusing that Puncheon was considered amongst our best players. I don't disagree based on his performances recently, but how ironic it is against the backdrop of the flak he received within the past few months. I'm pleased for the lad and the ovation he received for his performance today was certainly warranted. I had him man of the match, but that doesn't mean that he shouldn't have been substituted, as he was tired. I remain fairly optimistic that this team is capable of a top ten finish. I thought so at the start of the season and the performances against the two Manc clubs doesn't alter my opinion. In fact, our new signings this window increase my confidence for this season. I'd go as far as to say that had this match come say two months later, with the new players bedded in, we might well have come away with three points. What would we have achieved with Ramirez and Lee running at their defence and hopefully the defence strengthened by our new Japanese defender?

So are you going to point out where the argument is flawed, or what is so nonsensical, or will we just have to accept that the only opinion worth hearing is yours, because as an Arsenal supporter, you know everything about football, including what makes a good player, one capable of playing to the same standard, regardless of what division they find themselves in?

If we were generous, we might accept that originally they may have come from Manchester. But the origination of most of the coaches that I have ever seen bringing their fans down to either St Mary's or to the Dell, have hardly ever been from Manchester. Yes, I've seen Truro, Welwyn Garden City, Margate, but hardly ever any that my knowledge of Geography would equate to being within a decent radius of the metropolis. On the way down South from a Saints away match, I once encountered a Lucketts coach in full ManUre livery, emblazoned with the legend "Portsmouth Manchester United supporters." So were all these supporters people who originally lived in Manchester and sought a life elsewhere, or are they plastics, presumably like the one wearing his ManUre shirt in West End Asda this morning? He got down here early this morning, didn't he? Rather than chanting "do you come from Manchester", we should be asking "do you come from Tunbridge Wells or wherever the coaches come from?"

This /\. Take last season for instance. Although they suffered defeats at the hands of the likes of Citeh, it was 6-1 at home. And the fact that they were knocked out of the cup by Palace? OK, they fielded a weakened team, but I'm certain that Ferguson didn't actually want to go out of the competition and not to the likes of them; it was humiliating. And they were knocked out of the Champions League by that powerhouse of European football Basle. They then suffered another home defeat by eventually relegated Blackburn. Other defeats were against Newcastle, Liverpool and Wigan. So a season where they won nothing, not even the Europa Cup. So what is their confidence like, especially having been beaten by Everton recently? OK, they have Van Persie now, but no Rooney or Young. For them, we are an unknown quantity, heck, even to us our team is an unknown quantity in some areas. Tactically Adkins has to get it right, or we could be hammered. But equally United have to figure out how to play us too. On paper, they have by far the stronger team, but we should be a better team on paper than the one that gave Citeh a fright.