Nordic Saint

No, I was joking.

So, basically, we've been lucky to have such easy fixtures so far. Also in our favour has been the fact that promoted teams tend to perform much better at the start of the season than they do later on. Promoted teams that perform better( points per game) in their opening 10 fixtures than they do in their remaining ones are much more likely to stay up (71%). The first 10 fixtures are, therefore, crucial in determining the final outcome of our season. "Over the past 20 seasons there has been a reasonably clear threshold that promoted teams have to reach to be confident of survival - 11 points from the first 10 matches. " The stats show that anything less than 8 points from the opening 10 fixtures makes relegation for a newly promoted team almost inevitable. So, as Russell Martin is a stats man, he must know that if he can get us through the opening 10 fixtures with less than 8 points, there will be no point in us sacking him and bringing in a new manager

I'd like to see Tyler Dibling played in a more central position up front with Amo-Ameyaw on the wing, as I think they'd score goals against the Bournemouth defence (and I can't be proved wrong because it's not going to happen).

Oops. I knew I should have stuck with Mighty. Thanks, I'll correct that. Anyway, it's not as if anyone's going to sing it. I've noticed that songs about Saints players posted at night always look silly the following morning. I've managed to do it in record time.

A song for Tyler Dibling: Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn) by Bob Dylan: Come all without Come all within You'll not see nothing like Tyler Dibling

He was saving himself for this Ipswich game.

Getting the reigning European Footballer of the Year, Kevin Keegan, was the all-time most exciting signing. Most of us can remember exactly where we were when we heard the news, but It's certainly exciting that we got Aaron Ramsdale, the goalkeeper from the 2023 PFA Premier League Team of the Year, to come here the following year to a newly promoted club. It's one of those rare occasions when 100% of our fans were overjoyed to hear the news that a player had signed. Just look at the quality of the players in this team. That's the level he's at: Premier League [edit] Pos. Player Club App. GK Aaron Ramsdale Arsenal 1 DF William Saliba Arsenal 1 DF Rúben Dias † Manchester City 2 DF John Stones † Manchester City 2 DF Kieran Trippier Newcastle United 1 MF Martin Ødegaard Arsenal 1 MF Rodri Manchester City 1 MF Kevin De Bruyne † Manchester City 5 FW Harry Kane † Tottenham Hotspur 6 FW Erling Haaland Manchester City 1 FW Bukayo Saka Arsenal 1

Is this the worst squad in the Premier League? How many of them would you want in our team? 1 GK Kosovo KOS Arijanet Muric 2 DF England ENG Harry Clarke 3 DF England ENG Leif Davis 5 MF Egypt EGY Sam Morsy (captain) 6 DF England ENG Luke Woolfenden 7 MF Wales WAL Wes Burns 8 MF England ENG Kalvin Phillips (on loan from Manchester City) 10 FW England ENG Conor Chaplin 12 MF Sweden SWE Jens Cajuste (on loan from Napoli) 13 GK Scotland SCO Cieran Slicker 14 MF Republic of Ireland IRL Jack Taylor 15 DF Australia AUS Cameron Burgess 16 FW Iraq IRQ Ali Al-Hamadi 18 DF England ENG Ben Johnson 19 FW England ENG Liam Delap 20 FW England ENG Omari Hutchinson 21 FW Republic of Ireland IRL Chiedozie Ogbene 22 DF England ENG Conor Townsend 23 FW Republic of Ireland IRL Sammie Szmodics 24 DF England ENG Jacob Greaves 25 MF Australia AUS Massimo Luongo 26 DF Republic of Ireland IRL Dara O'Shea 27 FW England ENG George Hirst 28 GK England ENG Christian Walton 33 FW Wales WAL Nathan Broadhead 40 DF Democratic Republic of the Congo COD Axel Tuanzebe 47 FW England ENG Jack Clarke

Md. Salisu and Minamino are playing against Barcelona in the Champions League tonight.

Yes, and what made it even worse was that it was in the 90th minute.

Gazzaniga and Romeu are playing against PSG in the Champions League tonight.

Why do McCarthy, Aribo and Smallbone need any more game time? They've already played most of the games this season, and been found wanting. Ramsdale has only played once, and Amo-Ameyaw and Stewart need starts too. They are players a game like this would be ideal for to see what they can do.

Well, at least he's made it all the way to Birmingham City's first team.

STEWART SULEMANA DIBLING AMO-AMEYAW UGOCHUKWU FERNANDES TAYLOR ABK THB SUGAWARA RAMSDALE

Spot on. The best home amospheres in Southampton and all over the world are when you hardly notice the away fans. That's why, at most of the stadiums with the best atmospheres, away fans are stuck in corners or high up, as far away from the home end as possible, and that's why our players, managers and most of our fans have wanted this change in the setup for a long time. The few special fans who prefer to gawk at the away fans can still go and sit near them if they want to. Even though we lost 0-3 to United, it made a nice change not to have their fans' deafening singing booming out from the Northam end for 90 minutes, like it used to, when there was no apparent home end whatsoever. Until they were 2-0 up, you hardly knew they were there. It's the first time that United fans haven't totally 'owned' St Mary's. The fact they were stuck in a corner, where the acoustics are worst, and that the fans around them largely ignored them certainly helped.

That's not true. What is true is that we need success to gee us up THE SAME as other teams, and, in terms of trophies won, we've had less success than other teams of our size. Most clubs with a fanbase our size or even smaller, like Forest or Leicester, have won at least 5 or 6 major trophies. Forest have won 9. Even Pompey have won 4 major trophies and they have a smaller fanbase than ours. For the size of our fanbase, in terms of trophies won, we are arguably the most underachieving team in the country. After we won our only major trophy, we had some of the noisiest and most passionate fans in the country. We built quite a rep and other clubs' fans used to be in awe of us. In 1977 we took 13,000 to the City Ground for an FA Cup game and completely took over their home end. For the replay, the atmosphere was so intimidating that there were no Forest fans there at all visible on the terraces. The singing used to ring out out from all 4 sides of the ground and it was deafening. I took a mate, who was a Coventry fan, to a few Saints games in the late 70s, and he said that Coventry, another underachieving team, had never had support anywhere near that good. I do agree with you that success on the pitch is vital, but that applies to all teams. The new setup at St Mary's is ideal and it's the one that you find at nearly all of the stadiums in the world with the best atmospheres: a big home end with the away fans in a corner or high up at the other end. All we need now is a little bit of success on the pitch. Even a goal would help.

Pompey 0-3 WBA. At least we won at Cardiff. Pompey haven't won any of their 6 games this season.

Ramsdale had a brilliant game. He made some outstanding saves.

Tyler Dibling would be a brilliant striker, but he'll be stuck out on the wing until he moves to a big club at the end of the season.

Bednarek takes Russball to Poland: What Polish media said about Southampton defender Jan Bednarek after Poland's 1-0 defeat vs Croatia (southamptonfc.news)

Who speaks like that? Fabrice29 - SaintsWeb

He's never going to change, is he? He's found it's the easiest way to bump up your passing stats and those are what got him this job, not the results of football matches.

🤣

That's the spirit. Now, what about 19th place? All it needs is for one of the other teams to get a massive points deduction and we might just do it. God, I'm feeling optimistic this morning.

We're recruiting all the right players, but not necessarily in the right positions. Arguably our 2 best players now, KWP and Sugawara, are both right wing-backs so one of them is forced to play out of position, which means that Charlie Taylor, one of the most reliable Premier League defenders we signed this summer, can't get into a team lacking Premier League quality players in almost every other position. Did nobody ever notice what was happening and say, "Wait. Hang on a minute..."?