mitch01

Thanks for the memories Ads. Couple of quotes pale into insignificance compared to years of commitment and match-winning displays. Much rides upon the replacements we bring in now.

Disappointed he still hasn't produced a run of form to nail down a starting place, but I have no doubt that he can be excellent player for us. Suspect those who can't see his latent ability were also oblivious to the qualities of Schneiderlin, Lallana, Rodriguez etc etc etc.

My favourite sportsperson of all time. Epitomises a very happy time in my football-watching life, and he just kept adapting and getting better. Loved every second of watching him play. Brawn of Shearer, brains of Sheringham. Thanks Rickie, go forth and win trophies.

My article for anyone not already too depressed by all of this to spare five minutes: http://notplayedonpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/we-are-southampton-and-we-know-our-place.html

My article for anyone not already too depressed by all of this to spare five minutes: http://notplayedonpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/we-are-southampton-and-we-know-our-place.html

http://notplayedonpaper.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/we-are-southampton-and-we-know-our-place.html Been trying to write an article on what's happening at Saints for ages, but the situation keeps changing for the worse. In the light of thos horrible story I decided just to have a few drinks and finish it tonight. Let me know what you think.

I hate this.

Big fan of Hansen, talks a lot of sense and fair to us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C45Nvuk7hLk Midlake, Antiphon - superb album.

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/football/news-and-comment/andrea-pirlo-deportivo-la-corua-were-so-crazy-they-may-have-been-on-drugs-to-topple-ac-milan-in-champions-league-quarterfinal-9259877.html I agree, but Pirlo recently had this to say. I don't know enough about performance enhancing drugs to know whether there are any out there that fit the bill for this, but it's interesting that Pirlo suggests it.

Some absolutely cracking saves in there, but he lost his place that season didn't he? One too many mistakes in him to really improve us that much in my opinion, but still a very good keeper. Adler is excellent and he's such a formidable presence, which is a valuable quality. Van der Sar was a great keeper in part because of his frame, he had such a great reach that he made other keepers' 'wonder saves' look relatively routine. Adler strikes me as similar.

Fonte is having the season of his career but that was a major mistake yesterday. Combined with that nasty injury, offside goal and poor goalkeeping from Gazzaniga on number 4 the game was taken away from us. Hope Gaston is back in the team to replace Rodriguez next week.

Gazza has all the ingredients to be a good keeper in the PL, but he has some mental barriers to overcome first. Hoping today is the first step in the right direction.

He got all the major decisions absolutely spot on. Not the perfect chairman but he installed an amazing drive and momentum at the club that we are still benefiting from. I am interested to see what the new regime bring to things but I fear that we will not have quite the same aspirations and expectations for the future now, hope to be wrong!

Not sure there's room for Rodriguez and Lambert. If thats the case, whoever doesn't make it can consider themselves incredibly unlucky. Rodriguez was fantastic vs Norwich and again yesterday, he's such a threat now.

Best I've ever seen us play. Loved it all!

Considering we are a team in upper mid-table it makes sense that there will be certain elements of our season that aren't particularly good. Whether it's a poor run of form at the start, middle or end of the season, or results against the top sides or the bottom (as it was last season). In reality, this is just a manifestation of a general worry of how we are going to move up the table to be higher than 8th in the future, and not an unwarranted one - that's a good question to ask. I don't think that there is anything wrong with our attitude/tactics against the top sides - some of the performances have deserved more. Self-evidently they are better than us and therefore are more likely to beat us than the teams lower down the table. Our record against them is probably worse than you might expect, but it was better than we might have expected last season, and both are in line with standard deviation for upper and lower mid-table respectively. For what it's worth I think that a few more good signings to add some more class and depth to our squad would serve us very well next season and allow us to spread the workload. We have been unlucky this year in that Ramirez and Osvaldo (two players I was expecting to contribute a great deal more than they have) have been largely unavailable, and that has placed a good deal of pressure on our three England forwards, and I attribute Lambert's drop in form, at least in part, to this.

Rodriguez's best game in a saints shirt, he was superb.

He's barely dropped below 8/10 all season. Absolute class, can't wait to see him at the WC.

I loved the Strachan era but what we are seeing now is something else. That squad relied heavily on Rory Delap, Paul Telfer and Brett Ormerod, hardly the most technically gifted players. Not knocking what Strachan achieved with that squad, we were solid, but our team now is full of pace and skill - I absolutely love watching us play. Disappointed that we haven't turned a great season into a phenomenal one with a better cup run, but we have a very small, young squad and we have been given plenty of great results and performances to enjoy this season. For the record, I think MP is going right to the very top. Hoping he is as excited about our young squad as he says he is and sticks around for a good few years, although I share worries about the club's leadership post-Cortese but I guess we have to wait and see on that one. Not usually one to wade into the 'troll'/'negativity' debate on here but for what its worth I think some on here could do with tuning into Hull/Palace/West Ham games for a few weeks and see the difference in style. Some of the comments I've seen post-defeat really are incredible, and they make me wonder how I'd react to someone speaking like that in real life. Not sure I could take them seriously.

I managed to see Jungle live in Shoreditch on Tuesday. If you're into your soul/funk/disco/trip-hop kind of stuff, you will love this:

I for one still think this has been an immensely exciting season. Young, vibrant english players, more looking to come through and money still in place to strengthen from abroad. We can keep progressing, just hope we keep Shaw a bit longer and MP long-term.

Curtis' clearance was ridiculous! I didn't think we played particularly well for 65 minutes, but its great to finally win a bit of a scrappy one, which we don't often do (perhaps just the two WBA games?).

Lallana strangely quiet. I think we will win.