Nordic Saint

He was spotted by our head of recruitment, Paul Mitchell, who'd been monitoring an Espanyol player and was impressed by the style of football Pochettino's team played. Most of our best players and managers were spotted by Mitchell. Since he left, we have been fairly rudderless in the transfer market. Les Reed is just a 'figurehead' and self publicist, who some posters on here seem to worship and credit for other people's work - people who have now either been fired by Reed or have left the Club of their own accord.

Another week of campaigning from Theresa May and Labour would have won. She comes across as a cold fish who can't empathise with ordinary people.

I wonder just how big the remain majority would be if the EU referendum were held now? Remainers would certainly win. The Brexit vote was largely just a protest against immigration after the electorate were bombarded with news about immigrants coming in from Calais. As soon as the media barons got the result they wanted, those news bulletins stopped. Anyway, we are sleepwalking towards Brexit even though most people don't want it now.

Our chairman, Ralph Krueger, actually, who does seem to be a man of principle, unlike Cockney wide boy, Les Reed, who fell out with Gareth Rogers, when he advised him not to sell Mane to Liverpool. He can't sack Krueger though.

Les Reed.

The man who found all our best players and managers, before like everyone else, falling out with Les Reed and going to Spurs - our former head of recruitment, Paul Black Box Mitchell. Since he left our recruitment has gone downhill. At 35, he's got a future unlike 65-year-old Les Reed.

which probably explains why they all left.

How do Chelsea and Man City's finances work then? If they work the same way as ours do, they must have absolutely massive loans to pay back to their owners or do they just regard them as investments?

I don't think she'll allow that to happen until she sells the club. You do wonder though where all these hundreds of millions of PL prize money, TV money and transfer fees are going when a relatively small loan is never paid off.

Once he's built a title-winning team at Liverpool, he'll probably want a fresh challenge and do the same for Spurs.

Do you? Oh well. Constant change is the last thing most of us want. Most fans just want the club to stop selling its best players every summer.

Can we dare to dream that Hampshire might even win the Championship? The bookies currentky have us priced as 4th favourites at 13/2. Win this one and we'll be in pole position and those odds will shorten.

We usually sell early and buy late in the transfer window. Whether this is because we don't have replacements lined up or it's an attempt to save a bit on wages, it costs us millions because, as you've noted, transfer fees rise quite rapidly during the summer. It also means that the new players rarely have much pre-season preparation so they start the season unfit and are often not even ready to play until weeks or even months into the season.

Alan Shearer said on MOTD after the highlights of our final match of the season, "8th is about where they should be." We only have the 11th biggest average home gate in the Premier League but that is partly because of our limited capacity. With a capacity of around 38,000, we'd probably get the 8th biggest gates. Historically, we are a massively underachieving club though. We have had many long spells below 8th place but very few above it. And, of course, just 1 trophy is scant reward for 40 seasons in the top flight, 14 major semi-finals and 6 finals. We have probably been held back by the modest ambitions of both our fans and our owners. We are an 'ever so umble' lot. We think we know our place but in reality we don't. It's higher than most of our fans think. Alan Shearer has got it about right.

As I'm a season ticket holder and also a PhD holder, I doubt that I'd struggle to understand our tactics any more than you appear to. There is a reason why we put in more crosses than any other team in the league and that's because that is just about our only tactic. There may have been a little variety earlier in the season (not much) but in the last few games that's all we tried to do. By the way, I'm not calling for Puel to go. He seems a nice enough bloke and I really hope he learns to try something different. With Les Reed making the decisions, it could very well be a case of our of the frying pan into the fire if Puel were replaced.

I'm surprised it's not been discussed before but we've only got one attacking tactic: get the ball out to the wings and lob in high crosses to the opposition's central defenders and goalkeeper. Then try to get the ball back and repeat ad infinitum. Managers of other teams know that now so it makes us incredibly predictable and easy to defend against. If we had a Peter Crouch or Pelle it might make some sense but with our height-challenged team it makes no sense whatsoever.

Based on the last year, it's highly unlikely that we'll have an outstanding summer in the transfer market but highly likely the squad will be weakened yet further by Les. Since Paul Black Box Mitchell left for Spurs, we have been fairly clueless in the transfer market. Les tends to favour players who show occasional flashes of brilliance but haven't played 90 minutes regularly in the last year or two, if at all, often because of poor injury records. Boufal is a fairly typical Les signing so we can expect more of the same.

The stats support the anecdotal evidence. Shane Long runs fast, doesn't score and passes the ball to the opposition. At his age, is there much chance of him improving next season? He really should be sold in the summer and replaced by a better striker if we want to score more goals next season. I'm a bit surprised that Fraser Foster is statistically the worst goalkeeeper in the league because he seems to keep a hell of a lot more clean sheets than any other goalkeeper we've had in recent years.

He won't work for Les Reed so you can forget him. It will have to be someone who will do what Reed tells him so that's going to exclude most managers who have other options.

No.

Attendance today: 31,286. That means we finish the season with the 2nd highest average home gate in the Club's history. Our 4th consecutive and 13th top 8 finish is another cause for celebration. We just need to send Les Reed away on a well-deserved holiday for the entire summer, so he doesn't have to bother himself with any involvement in choosing the next manager or selling and buying players, and we can look forward to next season.

It seems fairly obvious Les Reed has already decided to get rid of Puel as the stream of negative 'leaks' to the press about him being disliked by the players have already started. We got the same thing when he fell out with Koeman, Fonte and various others.

Looking at the availability on the official site's seating plan, it seems at least 25% of season ticket holders haven't renewed. This comes at the end of a season when we have had the 2nd biggest average home gate in our entire history, largely as a result of the feelgood factor a year ago. A big win today would make a difference.

Considering the weakened squad Puel was left with after Reed sold our 2 top goal scorers, Mane and Pelle as well as our enforcer, one of the best defensive midfielders in football, Wanyama, he has done very well to get us to 8th place. Les Reed is the one who should retire. The ideal replacement would be Paul Black Box Mitchell, the real man behind our success in the transfer market, as we've seen since he went to Spurs, although Man United are rumoured to be interested in him. I'd expect Puel to get even better results next season with Mitchell's help and without Reed's interference.

In fact, you can see loads of people on the steps walking back to their seats. PS That's the sort of photo that usually does the rounds on the Pompey messageboards.