Nordic Saint

We got the goalkeeper we needed, but our outfield recruitment has been confused. We've now got too many wing-backs and wingers and no striker. Asking our rectuitment team to explain the logic behind their strategy would be like asking Eric Morecambe to explain his piano playing. "I'm playing all the right notes, but not necessarily in the right order."

What a massive difference a red card makes. Arsenal were cruisng to victory; now they're desperately trying to hang on for a draw.

By ensuring they can't eliminate each other and giving them easy draws, they're making sure they'll all get more fixtures, supposedly to ease their fixture congestion???

Dibling and Amo-Ameyaw need to start together in league games. They are training partners and bring out the best in each other, as we saw in pre-season and tonight. When you have two very good players with an understanding like that, you don't separate them, you build your team around them.

Brilliant night for Saints' fans so far. Ramsdale and most of the team playing tonight should start in league games.

He may not be the solution to our need for a new striker, but he could give us a new song. To the tune of 24 hours from Tulsa: "He was only 2 weeks away from St Mary's"

The former Dutch goalkeeper failed his medical. They tried their best to get him through it, but the poor bloke was falling apart. Even his wheelchair had one wheel hanging off it so they couldn't get him up the ramp.

We need a striker so: 1. Ayoub El Kaabi 2. Vedat Muriqi

The acoustics in a corner are much worse so the sound doesn't carry as much as it did when they were behind the goal. That's the main reason football clubs around the world stick the away fans in a corner. I only really heard them at the end when they were celebrating winning and home fans were drifting out. It made a nice change from the last time we were playing that badly in the Premier League when all you heard throughout the game was the away fans singng.

The team he scored against beat Bayer Leverkusen in the Europa League Final so they're a bit better than sh!t. Sh!t hot perhaps? Serie A | Torino 2-1 Atalanta: Che Adams master class (football-italia.net)

I guess they remember his last Premier League game, when he looked so promising playing at centre forward. Of course, whether he'll ever play like that again remains to be seen but in light of the fact we currently don't have a centre forward, he might just be worth a try. The other alternative would be to play Tyler Dibling there and he does appear to be a far more consistent player. Southampton 4-4 Liverpool | Premier League highlights | Football News | Sky Sports

I agree. The new setup was a clear improvement. The atmosphere at the beginning was very good, but the dire performance from the team slowly sucked the life out of the crowd. in the past, there would have been almost total silence from the home fans and all you'd have heard would have been the Forest fans throughout the entire game. It wasn't like that this time. The home fans were noticably in the ascendance until the end when people started leaving and the Forest fans knew they were going to win. That Pompey song needs to stop though. Once might be just about acceptable but to keep hearing it repeated is soul destroying.

Wellington, Victor Hugo. Who's next? Napoleon or Charles Dickens? On match day, St Mary's will soon look like a nineteenth century library.

4 goals in 39 Premier League games. He must be due another one.

If we keep saying it, maybe it will happen. Pompey fans keep saying they are the best fans in the world. They've said it so many times now that some people are starting to believe them. Doesn't make it true though.

The general consensus is that a player who's continuously injured is a luxury Feyenoord can no longer afford, but they wish him well at Southampton and hope that he can overcome his injury issues.

The poor bloke is going to risk ending up in a wheelchair if he carries on trying to play football. The long-term effects of all those injuries must already severely limit what he can do. It will be a miracle if he manages to limp out on to the pitch for even a handful of games. Season..Days..Injuries..Games missed 23/24.. 121 days.. 2.. 27 22/23.. 68 days.. 1.. 16 21/22.. 108 days.. 5.. 27 20/21.. 144 days.. 6.. 34 19/20.. 35 days.. 2.. 20 18/19.. 228 days.. 2.. 65

McCarthy isn't going to kick up a fuss, even if he never plays another game, because he's getting paid far more than he's worth and no other club would have him. If he's more sensible with money than he is with a football, he'll already have so many millions in the bank that he'll never need to work again. But, somehow, I suspect Saints are going to pay him to do something or other - hospitality, God forbid it's goalkeeper coaching - for the rest of his life.

I saw Lis play for Saints in a pre-season game. He was terrible. That explains why Göztepe are signing Rui Patricio. If he's still fit, he should be a massive improvement.

It's all very well saying 2-1 but what happens if Forest get more than 1 shot on target? Not every team we play will be reduced to 10 men.

We still need a centre forward. Che Adams wasn't a very good one, admittedly, but now we've got no one. Archer is a left winger/inside forward, not a striker. Definition of a striker: "A striker is the furthermost attacker on the field. Their main task is to score goals." We seem to be collecting more and more midfielders and inside forwards with very poor goalscoring records. All that will do is block the path of good players we already have like Tyler Dibling and Sam Amo-Ameyaw. The 2 most important positions on the pitch for stopping goals and scoring them and so determining the results of matches are goalkeeper and centre forward, and those are the players we should have bought in this transfer window. Although Brereton-Diaz is another winger/inside forward, at least he looks like he could score some goals.

The result will be very much influenced by whether we get a new goalkeeper in time to start against Forest. Of course, a centre forward would help too, but that's probably too much to expect. Relegation may very well be determined by just 1 or 2 points, so playing these early games without a decent goalkeeper or striker, just because the end of the season seems a long way away is not very smart.

Hopefully, the ruling that the transfer is illegal means we can send him back now and use the money to buy a goalkeeper or a proper centre forward.

McCarthy has slow reactions for a goalkeeper and can't make quick decisions. He dithers. It's the reason why he lets in such a high percentage of shots on target.

Well that was inevitable.