Nordic Saint

Probably because he was our best player AGAIN.

Small northern mill towns with a population half the size of Eastleigh's, whose football team has massively overachieved by winning the league twice? By rights, you'd expect a team in a town that small to be in League Two, at best. Having been to watch Saints play at Burnley, I can't say I was feeling the similarities but as you say, the folk there are friendly enough. View of Burnley (looking remarkably like Southampton) from the Singing Ringing Tree:

Your memory is correct although I wouldn't say he was 'darting'. He was slowly ambling across several blocks of empty seats for ages and then one of our lot started walking towards him. The Pompey fan got slower and slower as he saw he was getting near the Saints fans and fell into the arms of 2 stewards when he was about halfway across the empty stand. Then the Saints fan, who'd gone out to meet him, spat on him as he was being led away, which was a bit unnecessary. But it certainly couldn't be described as a 'punch up'. That FA Youth Cup game was the second time I saw a Saints team beat a Pompey team 7-0. The first time was when our first teams met in the John Milkins Testimonial at Fratton Park and poor John Milkins was in goal for Pompey. There certainly won't be any hooliganism at a women's football match but there is a chance the result might be another 7-0. (58) GOALS: Southampton 7-0 Portsmouth (FA Youth Cup Third Round) - YouTube

This thread is certainly going to be interesting to revisit if we do. The chances of a club with our budget replacing him with a better goalkeeper are slim. It may take years of trial and error. We still haven't replaced Fonte.

You'd think he'd at least remember last year's winners, Leicester, as they beat us in the semi-final.

Our Player of the Season. With any other goalkeeper, we'd have lost today.

The Europa League has been the best competition to watch this season: more exciting than both the Champions League and Premier League. The West Ham and Rangers games, especially v Sevilla and Borussia Dortmund, have reminded me just how special those European nights can be. I used to go to Eintracht Frankfurt games so this was good to see too: (12) The Away Ends on Twitter: "30,000 Frankfurt fans at Barcelona tonight #Eintracht #SGE #SGEurope https://t.co/YYKWZA3WK3" / Twitter

It's been the same story since Fonte and van Dijk left: we still need 2 reliable central defenders. Joe Worrall, Gleison Bremer and Dael Fry are out there, although it would have been easier and cheaper to buy them in January as the interest in Bremer from other PL clubs is increasing while in Worrall's case, Forest look like they might be promoted.

I watch a lot of Serie A games and some key players, not at big clubs, who I think would be good for us are Bologna goalkeeper, Łukasz Skorupski, Torino central defender, Bremer, Atalanta midfielder, Ruslan Malinovskyi and Verona striker, Giovanni Simeone.

That's a relatively new thing created by the fans and the club together. Palace traditionally had some of the quietest home support in football but their ultras group decided to change that and the club even moved season ticket holders to give them the prime location behind the goal. It's spread from there. The teams with the best home support have a proper home end and I'm not sure the will is there among our fans to create one.

Forster Walker-Peters Fonte van Dijk Shaw Ward-Prowse WanyamaTadic Lallana Mane Ings Subs: Boruc, Alderweireld, Clyne, Bertrand, Romeu, Schneiderlin, S. Armstrong, Lambert, Pelle

Dressed like that he wouldn't look out of place at Fratton Park.

That's the third time in the last month, Obafemi has scored 2 goals. At the rate he's progressing, he'll be converting those into hat-tricks soon..

It will be Andrea Belotti on a free transfer.

I should imagine that if you were the type of person who got confused over left and right, you'd get even more confused over palms up or down, in which case there is a 50% chance you'd make an L with your right hand.

I saw Alan Ball play his first ever game at the Dell, just after he joined Everton in 1966, and he was absolutely brilliant. He was best to watch in his early 20s, at Blackpool and Everton, when he was a freescoring attacking midfielder who ripped opposition defences apart.

Obviously, Winks is more of a defensive midfielder but if we do sell Ward-Prowse in the summer and need a suitable replacement for him, then Ruslan Malinovskyi would be far better than Winks, even if he would cost a sizeable chunk of the fee we got for JWP.

He was clearly under the infuence. You could see that from his tearful, rambling speech. Just as well he has colour on his side, or he'd never act in Hollywood again after that.

Gazza giving a young fan a good kicking: Paul Gascoigne is being slammed for inviting young fan onto pitch just to trip him up (msn.com)

George Best. But, you can take your pick from the British players listed here: Ballon d'Or - Wikipedia

I remember when Kat sold 80% to Gao, the Club had to pay back 100% of their debt to her plus interest before she would let the deal go through. I still wonder what this means. The implication is that money was to be put aside for Saints' future: Markus Liebherr 'made provision for Southampton's future' before death | Southampton | The Guardian

North Macedonia have only lost 1 of their last 10 World Cup qualifiers, which included an away win against Germany. It was Germany's first defeat in a World Cup qualifier for more than 20 years. All of the former Yugoslav republics are good at football.

I've been watching Saints since 1963 and in that time we've only had 3 goalkeepers better than Forster - Shilton, Flowers and Niemi - and the number of international caps our goalkeepers have had in that time would tend to support this view. It's bizarre that some fans think we can just get rid of him and replace him with someone who'll be better and that it will also save the club money when the reality is we could waste at least £20 mill on a transfer fee + similar wages to Forster's on a goalkeeper who'll turn out not to be as good as him.

'Greatest manager...love what he did for our club': 'Greatest manager ... Love what he did for our club ... Thank you Harry' - Portsmouth fans on social media show why ex-West Ham, Spurs, and QPR boss Harry Redknapp is still much loved | The News

The priority still has to be to replace McCarthy. We certainly don't want him playing for us again next season. Because of Rasmus Ankersen's Brentford connections, I'd expected the new goalkeeper to be David Raya but now that it looks like they are staying up due to the points they've picked up since Raya's return from injury last month, perhaps that will no longer be possible.