Green

That Liverpool game was also my best memory of Prutton. We were very good that day. Just checked and that was 20 years ago! Can’t remember much of Draper at Saints at all but due to his career before he got to us, then he’s clearly a better player. Prutton was better at Saints though.

We beat Chelsea 2-1 at home in the last relegation season, 1-0 away.

Doncaster was the low for me as well. It was a no police game, we were awful, losing and fights between Saints fans. Looking at the table for the 2008/09 season we managed to win ten and draw fifteen to get to 45 points albeit in a 46 game season. Relatively and in terms of non competitiveness this will surely be our worst season ever.

Rohl wasn’t in charge of Sheff Wed for the first game of the season. He was in the home game in January though.

FlashScore has him down as the central striker, be interesting to see how he gets on.

We’ve had some cracking games against them. In my first season (88/89) of watching Saints we beat them 1-0, a Neil Ruddock penalty which brought an end to a horrendous winless run. They were relegated that year and when they were promoted we had a run of Le Tissier scoring worldies as in that run of games in the article. He didn’t score in one of my favourite Dell night games, 1 goal down and we score 3 late goals to win 3-1 in 1995. The night they told the Archers Road end to sit down over the tannoy seemed to rouse the crowd to an unlikely victory. That FA Cup game they mention in the article, I remember one of the best performances by an away player at St Mary’s, Kieron Dyer was superb that day. Our terrible run against them starts pretty much from our decline in fortunes after the end of the Koeman team in 2016, with the exception of our Covid win to put us top. I wish I could be more optimistic about a result tomorrow.

Did Le Tissier ever score a normal goal against Newcastle?

Appreciate this, I enjoyed the previous thread and found it interesting. What made you decide to use a decimal point for the scores though, rather than 1-0 etc?

We were so good in this match.

Things must be bad if people are starting to romanticise the Ruben Selles era.

In January 2023 we beat them in the league cup, unbelievable to think we managed that, look at the teams: https://www.11v11.com/matches/southampton-v-manchester-city-11-january-2023-378129/ only KWP and Adam Armstrong (starting) and Aribo (bench) are the only players from that squad that are available to play tomorrow. Our last PL point against them came in January 2022 in a 1-1 draw https://www.11v11.com/matches/southampton-v-manchester-city-22-january-2022-373450/ only KWP and Bednarek remain from the starting line up and Stephens and Armstrong from the bench. I remember thinking we were good value for the point that day. We seem to have fallen a long way from that in a relatively short period of time.

Southampton 4 - 1 Liverpool https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_vRya0_9kCg&pp=ygUZU291dGhhbXB0b24gbGl2ZXJwb29sIDQtMQ%3D%3D

Cooper didn’t manage to exploit our weaknesses quite as ruthlessly as Maresca did in both games last season but he obviously noted that we don’t bother to defend the edge of our box from corners in the 97th minute. I like Martin and think he deserves credit for what he has achieved but unfortunately I think that this should be the end of the road for him. We’ve wasted what should be, on paper at least, the two easiest games of the season at home to newly promoted clubs and I just can’t see us improving under Martin, so sadly I think it’s time for him to go and hope that we can appoint someone better at this level.

They destroyed us in both games last season but we beat them twice in our PL relegation season (hoping for some more of that luck and a return to winning ways as that was, as we are constantly reminded, the last PL game we won).

Given his post match comments about going back to the previous players (having said they’d had a chance and not taken it), presumably that means a Smallbone recall (if fit), Aribo (thought he did okay in the second half and has some physicality), Armstrong (?), Stephens (suspended but would have been recalled), and who else will he bring in? Positive past encounters away at Arsenal: a draw in the last league meeting (albeit from 2 goals ahead twice), beating them in the cup including a Clyne wonder strike, a battling draw (Forster masterclass), in our other PL relegation season we drew (again after being two up), any other positive past visits?

I think Bournemouth are one of the more aggressive pressing teams in the league so this could mean big trouble for us playing it out from the back. We’ve had some good wins down there over the years though so would be nice to replicate one of those. My personal favourite was the 3-1 in the League One promotion season. I’ll go with the optimistic 3-1 win and BBD to get sent off for an Oscar Gobern style challenge near the end.

Based on four PL games for Downes, who still thinks Downes is better than JWP?

A number of people seem to think that the person to save our season is the same person who allegedly faked a dislocated shoulder because he didn't fancy a midweek game against Nottingham Forest and then got subbed off because he didn't fancy the away game as well.

Be careful what you wish for. People wanted Ralph out and we got Nathan Jones. Potter is a very good manager but can't see what's in it for him, he's turned down better offers already. I think they'll give him a longer run and then if they do decide it will be another Championship manager or left field European appointment that we've never heard of but they would have to fit this style of play so rules out Moyes and his type.

Yes, I think it’s Man Utd, Wigan, Cardiff and Nottingham Forest since we were promoted in 2012 that we haven’t beaten at SMS in the PL.

He also headed it (softly) straight at the keeper from the Edozie cross right at the end as well.

Exceeded my expectations then, however, I hadn’t appreciated how much dross there was in this league.

T. Small scores the equaliser for Charlton.

Harsh decision, would have him at Saints.

This game was one of them: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/25115885 we lost 2-3 against Aston Villa, 3 shots on target, 3 goals conceded.