madsent

Don't forget players like Geoff Horsfield, Barry Hayles and Efetebor Sodje. I'm still surprised no-one mentions Steve Finnan who is the only player to play in the Conference and all four professional divisions as well as winning the Champions League and representing Ireland at a World Cup.

If you look at our results, we've had a losing team since a couple of years before the Premier League started. The only blip was the play-off season which provided goals, wins and excitement and ironically ended up with the most criticised manager since Branfoot. In the Premier League, we knew we'd stick it to at least one of the big teams every season and we'd survive with 10 home wins. We were punching above our weight and loving giving the big teams an occasional black eye. However, once we were relegated, we expected to win and the fact that we didn't adversely affected our mentality. The fragile nature of the fans' confidence has been extremely noticeable since we slumped down the league in the first couple of months under Burley and it hasn't recovered. There is still a marked increase in tension at St Mary's after the interval and the expectation is for us to lose no matter what the score going into half-time. Nothing short of a few home wins will change that.

Gillett may look like a kid but he isn't one. He'll be 24 soon. If he's not good enough now, he needs to go elsewhere. FWIW, I think he's worth a place in the side but he's not playing purely because of his lack of height. If we had another big lump at CB in place of Perry, there would be less need to play Wotton who isn't that tall but is aggressive and decent enough in the air. As we've seen even early in the season, winning games in L1 is about defending and scoring from set pieces. Open play is just time-wasting for a lot of the teams.

Poor guy has only just joined and people are already spelling his name incorrectly. Welcome to Southampton

Would have been worth more if you'd taken it from his cold dead hands

I see Tommy Forecast has beaten Rasiak out the exit, if only for a month in beautiful Grimsby.

Why do people rate defenders on the number of goals they score? Their most important role is to be able to defend properly. Goal-scoring defenders are a bonus. JPS was a liability in a lot of his later games and I'd prefer someone more reliable as a first choice centre back.

Don't know about that but he likes to stroke his chin a lot.

Actually, 31 litres = 54.5 pints. That's one of the metric to imperial conversions that the supermarkets took advantage of in the 90s when they changed the old 2 pint milk cartons into 1 litre versions because 1 litre is approximately 12% smaller than 2 pints

Because a decent Scottish player can earn more in our L1 than at most clubs in the SPL. A good example is Stephen Hughes at Norwich. He's earning £7k/week in L1 which is a lot more than he was earning at Motherwell.

Alternatively, a bean-counter at Barclay's told management that they needed to rein in the spending of several businesses pdq which led to an arbitrary decision to freeze SLH's overdraft and this led to cheques not being honoured beyond the prescribed limit and henceforth to administration and a new beginning. FWIW, I'm very happy Lowe has gone and the club is in going in the right direction but I'll certainly never bank with Barclay's now.

Not to mention paying close to £2.5m for Chris Coleman.

Saga works very hard and I think his all-round play is good. He just doesn't shoot enough and those shots he takes are usually just wide. If the goal was 25' wide, he'd score loads. Personally, I trace his problems back to the home play-off match with Derby when he hit the bar twice. He's never looked confident since and this has been shown up by two very long scoring droughts in the last two seasons.

Darlington were in with a very good chance of making the playoffs when they went into administration. The 10 point deduction stopped those chances of promotion. How bizarre would it have been for them to get promoted and to start in the L1 on -10 ?

Surely we want someone who can tackle or head the ball ? He's probably lost his pace since he retired in 2002

Mathias Doumbe is available from Plymouth. He's been offered a contract by Millwall but has yet to sign. He would not need a work permit.

Could be a good market given Pardew's renowned success with Argentines at West Ham

Lets hope we get him (or another CB) signed and registered in time to play against Millwall. Does anyone know when he'd need to sign by?

It's not possible for the other 23 teams to win on the first day We won't be more than 10 points back of safety unless there's a glut of draws. I'm going for an 2-2 considering we don't have any chance of stopping Millwall from scoring.

I don't think they've invested wisely at all. They've made several poor managerial appointments and I haven't seen any evidence that their owners are particularly concerned how the club does. They appear to have bought a club in trendy West London for no other reason that it's a nice place to meet on a Saturday afternoon when there isn't a grand prix on. Apart from an initial burst of spending, they've basically run it as a going concern and they've absolutely fleeced the QPR fans, most of whom have stumpwed up £525 or £599 (the early-bird prices) for their season tickets to watch middle-of-the-table second tier football with a manager who has proven less than impressive at a team that has spent much more money than QPR. I really cannot see them challenging with the two north-east teams and West Brom the most likely to challenge for automatic promotion. Cardiff and Preston will be strong again and I can see Forest and Derby being much better than last year.

The Millwall game in just 7 days is key to how the club fares this season. It would have been brilliant to be just 7 points adrift before the other teams even kick off. The team and the fans would have confidence. There has been plenty of time to get new players in and all we've managed to add is a decent full-back. As it stands, the team we have available will be no match at all for Millwall on Saturday. They are a very good L1 team and are expected to challenge at the top of the table. If Rasiak and Saganowski go before next Saturday then we'll have no experience in attack and very little in defence. People are rightly concerned that we could be 15-18 points adrift of safety by the time the transfer window closes.

People are moaning because, while we currently have plenty of options in midfield and atttack, we've got little quality or quantity in defence. For the third season in four, we're going into the season with one experienced centre-back available. As it stands, we may have no choice but to play Wotton with Perry. Lancashire appears to have gone backwards quickly since his spate of hamstring injuries a couple of seasons back.

I had heard that the good people of Pompey could only count to 5 but even a cursory glance would show they had at least 6 England internationals on the books last season (Campbell, Crouch, Defoe, James, Johnson, Nugent). I would not be surprised if Nugent was the only one left for the new season.

Now its 2-2 which is a score I remember all too vividly under Redknapp's guidance.

As it stands, it won't happen to them unless they get relegated. The Football League have penalties for administration but not the Premier League or the FA.