Saintmike5

QPR better than I thought they'd be, but still a well deserved win to keep the momentum going. One Judas ex-manager down, one to go next Sunday. Davis MOM. Looking at the table I almost want Tottenham to get something at Arsenal tonight so we can maintain our 2 point gap over third. Edit: thought about it for a millisecond; of course I don't.

Thank god we got 2 CBs in over the summer! Hope Toby is 100%. Otherwise looking good COYS

Good luck with your bet, but frankly I think this in-game betting lark is getting ridiculous. I hark back to the good old days of MLT kicking off straight into touch, it was a simpler game then...

66% possession and zero shots on target after 70 minutes, yep Poch has certainly got them playing his way alright. Particularly enjoying the performance of the one who got away from us, one-trick Townsend. Surely if WBA and Forest can beat this shower then the mighty Saints are going to whip them a new one next Sunday! I know I've probably jinxed everything now but what the hey!

Ooh Fox there with an impeccable bit of defending as usual. I still get the odd anxiety dream about his performance for us against Swansea last year, good chance it will recur tonight now... And it's gone 1-0 to Forest ha ha Poch out!

5 wins in a row, wow! And 4 of them away from SMS as well. Clyney you beauty! Mane and Targett both very promising, Tadic class as ever, and Morgan and Gardos had stormers, but I've got to give MoM to that man up front. Yes Pelle missed a few but he led the line superbly, used his height and strength really well and generally must be a nightmare for central defenders to play against when he plays like that. Can't find a single negative at the moment COYS!

Interesting to see how poorly Feyenoord have been doing since he (and Pelle) left in the summer - I know they've had a bit of a summer sale (hey, who hasn't!) but they've gone downhill very quickly from finishing 2nd under him last season. 5th bottom of the league after 5 games, out of the CL and currently 2-0 down at half-time in the Europa. Maybe a sign of the effect Koeman had there and the great job he did with them.

Two of the more attractive sides in the division, although ironically all four PL games we've contested have been stinkers to some degree. This will be a much better test of how good we actually are than that stroll in the park yesterday. Think our best chance is to try and bully them a bit with Pelle and Long getting in at them up front, Wanyama and Morgan breaking up their attacks and our full backs supporting our attacks where possible but having to be on guard for Routledge and Dyer in particular. A draw would be a perfectly acceptable result.

Won 4-0 without really getting out of 3rd gear, quality stuff. Probably signed Pardew's death warrant as well (although TBH I don't mind the guy). I know it's early season, but there's something delicious about having Poch, Shaw, Lovren, Lallanal, Lambert and Chambers all enviously looking up at us in the table!

Probably for the best if Capel deal doesn't happen, doesn't seem the most inspiring player and last minute TDD loan deals just have a Redknapp stench about them (although would happily make an exception for Toby!). Would be happy to get either Mare or Redmond over the line (providing it's no more than £8m for the latter) with TA, and keep hold of Morgan and Jay. If Jos wants first team football at Burnley then good luck to him there, but this seems to have gone cold today.

Pelle!

Come on Pelle keep at it one will go in! Have to say he's looking so much better this half, but really needs to score. Ooh and Man U are getting spanked 3-0 by Milton Keynes. P.S come on Maribor!!

Spurs, to make up for the 2 sh1tty 3-2 defeats last year and the 2 narrow losses the year before, the fact that we via. Bale have pretty much indirectly funded half their first team, Levy being an unspeakable w@nker, oh and the fact they nicked our manager and made his translator redundant.

Good stuff, may take a bit of time to settle in but we would have been cripplingly short of defensive options without him (we're still a bit short but I think this will probably be it as far as signings go). Welcome Florin!

Hope common sense prevails and nothing comes of this. If at the end of the season he decides he doesn't want to be here and we end up letting him go for a free then so be it, it's not like we're desperate for £3m right now and I firmly believe he still has a lot to offer us this coming season. Any talk about us having 5 better central midfielders at this moment in time is complete horsesh1t, not to mention the fact that he gives us (just about) adequate cover at right back. Secretly hoping that once things have settled down a bit into the season he'll decide to commit his future with us for a bit longer.

If this happens, and lets face facts it probably will, this will be the latest in an ever-lengthening list of wrong turns made by the club, not so much the fact we're selling him but the fact that we have got to a position where we have no choice but to. I'm afraid that something is so clearly wrong at the heart of the club that refusing to believe it is no more than pure blind faith which I can no longer share. As well as the 6 that have already gone, Morgan, Cork and Boruc seem desperate to get out of the club, Jay Rod is not signing the contract extension that we so publicly offered him and I suspect that Fonte would have also left had we not offered him the captaincy and possibly assured him of first team football this season. The fact that we are being tipped as dark horses for the drop by some pundits, despite the fact we finished 23 points off relegation in May, is in itself an utterly damning verdict on the club's performance over the summer, and no amount of blindly throwing money at mediocre strikers will help them crawl out of it. The only positive I can draw is RoKo himself, who has played a bit of a blinder so far in an impossibly difficult situation. Oh, and for anyone to belittle Cork's abilities and believe that we no longer need him because we think our new loan player is better based on 45 minutes in a friendly makes me pretty annoyed to say the least. Lest we forget, he was considered good enough last year to receive the presidential pick award from Terry Paine at the awards dinner 3 months ago (which is still on YouTube by the way. If anyone was thinking of looking it up, please don't - it's too painful for words).

Could be the lowest point of the entire rotten summer for me, though at least it shows that the conspiracy theorists were all wrong about asset stripping. All through the summer I have been reminding myself of the phrase that goes something like "never put down to grand conspiracy what could equally be put down to incompetence" which may be a bit mean in this case but this puts Ralph's claims of being in control of the transfer situation into a harsh light. Bluntly speaking we have set up a triple whammy situation where a) clubs know we've got money to spend and b) know we are under pressure to spend it, while c) the players we would like to get in take one look at the situation and the press storm it has created and say no thanks. This is how we have got to the point where we are seemingly about to spend £12 million on Shane Long. Nothing against the guy, who I hope will end up doing ok for us, but you will not find a single person outside the club who thinks he is worth anything close to that. More worryingly, we have seen with the likes of Torres and Carroll that putting a grossly inflated fee on a striker can have a major detrimental effect on their confidence if things don't click right away. Also, and this is just my opinion, but it would have at least been nice if, having decided we were willing to pay an English premium, to have got an English (or even British) player.

If it's a choice between the 2, I would say no. Don't get me wrong, JC has been better than VW for us this season, and should come back in against Everton. However as a horses for courses decision, I don't have a problem with seeing VW in today, as long as he leaves the 40 yard passes to JWP.

Strong line-up, would like to see Davis and maybe MS take responsibility for making forward runs in J Rod's absence with JWP hanging back if necessary. Pace was what we lacked last week and I can see this game playing out a similar way as Villa tend to be more set-up as a counter-attacking side even at home, just hope the result is not the same. Makes sense to put VW in if fit (although tough on JC) as it should be a hard physical battle, can see it getting scrappy in midfield today.

Yeah in reality it's worse than that, we've not won a game this season in the league when the opposition has scored, except if we already held a 3 goal lead at the time! May just be a freak stat, but may hint at something on the mental side. Regardless it's very frustrating! I think we've only won one game that we've been behind in since we came back to the PL (Villa last season). It is very true that we struggle when the opposition takes the lead, however it's also the case that we've dropped more points from winning positions than any other team. It's a wonder we're doing so well really!

I might have missed something, but who exactly are you guys all planning to replace Shaw with? We simply don't have anyone else who could do the LB job to anything like Prem level (I include Yoshida and Clyne in this). Based on how their loss would affect our current squad, or to put it another way the first names I go to look for when the match team sheets come out, I would go with: 1. Lallana 2. Lovren 3. Boruc 4. Shaw 5. J Rod 6. Schneiderlin 7. Lambert Everyone else kinda has a direct replacement but the 7 I've mentioned are very difficult to replace with our current squad.

Morgan and Cork looked knackered at end of Tuesday, Fonte has had his leg issue and JRod I think I'm right in saying has played more than anyone else for us this season so is bound to be feeling tired. The only one I can't understand is Boruc if he's not injured, appears to be deliberately weakening the team for no good reason that I can see. Anyway COYS!

8 Englishmen in the starting 11 (+1 from NIreland). Can't have happened for some time. COYS.

He made a few mistakes, which were more noticeable because every other player was almost flawless (including all 3 subs by the way). Hopefully will take it on the chin, recover from his back problem and return to the levels he hit against Fulham and Stoke. I get the feeling he will be our key player in the next couple of games - if he does the job we know he can then we can get something from both of them. Have to say however that I was hugely impressed by JWP's versatility and his ability to drop into VW's role on occasions after he went off, as well as turning up on our right side when needed to support Clyne's bombing runs forward.

I'd hope we keep the majority of the first team at home ready to tear Hull a new one on Saturday, maybe go with this for Wed: Davis in goal (either one I'm not fussed) Chambers, Yoshi, Hooiveld, Foxy in Defence. Schneiderlin/Waynetta (45 min each) along with Corky in Midfield Ramirez, Isgrove and maybe the other Davis behind ... ... Lee (why not?). Or maybe Ossie for a bit if he doesn't mind a wet Wednesday night in Mackem land