OnceaSaintalwaysaSaint

The way KWP got on with life in the championship was just brilliant. He wasn't great at the end of last season along with a load others, but we heard noises of discontent from them but not him. Great attitude, playing great. Got to keep him for the rest of the season.

Agree Chez. A little concerning. Just knew we should have had a KWP song earlier. FFS, Livramento had a song all last year and he never played.

Everton and Forest, really? Guess it depends on your era - Man U, Liverpool, Leeds and Portsmouth surely take up four slots. Must admit, I thought we could get walloped with FFP rules until we did some good business over the summer. Got rid of a load of high cost dross and made a lot on our quality players. Surely we must be well within acceptable limits at the moment and there's a few players that have built up their stock/price for the future.

Agree, and if you include Plymouth, Swansea, Millwall, QPR, Watford in southern aways, none of those also went to general sale so there's quite a few games unavailable to those of us that like the away atmosphere but don't hold season tickets. To compare, this time last year, it wasn't a problem getting tickets for Chelsea. So Blackburn it is!

Yep, already been checking trains to Blackburn! In some ways, it's disappointing that Saintsplus members can't even get tickets for a midweek game at Bristol when they give us a 3,400 allocation but that's what success brings. Tickets for WBA no hope, even though it's now on a Friday night.

Away game tickets are getting to be like gold dust. Rotherham (2,444 tickets) is also sold out before going on general sale. We're getting too big. All we need now is a Saudi takeover and only the privileged few will be watching us.

Haven't yet seen Wade G's insightful predictions, but as long as we don't play Jack Stephens or Holgate in defence against a pressing team, which would be a concern, I'm expecting another convincing win. 4 or 5 - 1.

In our Geography lessons, we were told the River Humber is the arsehole of England and Hull is half way up it! Indeed a sad day and where does it put us? Still think we need to dig up a proper No9 first.

Thanks H&W, totally agree with all of this. Couldn't have had a better day. RM put out a solid team, he gave a lot of game time to youngsters and the result never looked in doubt. Shit, I'm starting to like the guy. It also confirmed JS and Holgate (if he stays) should not be in our team if we get promoted. Speaking to the person next to me, we were discussing whether this team is better than the team this time last year. Yes we haven't got a JWP or a Lavia but we also haven't got such a bunch of losers (Ely, Diallo, Maitland-Niles, Lyanco, Djenepo etc). Really like the atmosphere around the club at the moment

Really don't agree with picking a team that will just about beat a lower division club. Never forgave Poch for that Sunderland team. It could ruin the positive momentum we've built up and the schedule is currently once a week for the next few weeks so the 'resting players' reasoning is not valid. If anything, it gets them out of match practice.

Totally agree. We currently have the basics of a competitive premiership team and this will get eroded away the longer we stay in the championship. Plus, I much prefer to be the 'underdog' and get more satisfaction out of getting a point at Man City than an away win at Rotherham. Plus, as a Saintsplus member, it seems harder to get tickets for away games in the championship. Plus, Kenilworthy is right - as a premiership club, we've had good cup runs. Many more pluses than negatives. Surely VAR can be sorted out. Define 'clear and obvious error' properly; impose time limits on decision making but do something. People realise it's ruining the game but there seems to be this inertia to do anything concrete about it.

I'd rather he sat on the bench. The centre backs aren't being rotated so all that's happening is he's getting a tiny amount of game time out of position. With ten minutes to go and comfortably winning, I'd rather see one of the youngsters come on. Instead, KWP has to move up field to make way for Jack, the balance of the team gets affected, he contributes to their goal with a lazy back pass and from nowhere they could have snatched a point (or more important, we could have dropped two).

Quite ironic that we started singing "You've only got one song" though I did like the "F*cking useless" chant that we'd say about their goalkeeper as he knocked another goal kick in to touch and then they'd do the same to one of our missed passes. This match really highlighted the gulf in class between the top 4/5 in this division and the rest. Apart from needing a striker, it's looking pretty complete. Manning has upped his game and the centre back pairing is premier league. Only Smallbone spoils the midfield and the wingers are quality. Just a little concerned Jack Stephens is given game time. As people have said on here, he upset the balance of the team and I half felt that even Baz on his fuck up hesitated because he looked around and thought 'can't pass to that muppet' so options from playing out from the back are more limited.

I'm in the Sam camp. Physically he's not as strong as Sulemana, but when Sam has the ball, there's the feeling that's something positive is going to happen - and that's not just in the last couple of games. He also has a rough idea where the goal is. Contrast that to Sule who flatters to deceive. His control is rank, his crossing is rank and he can't shoot.

Also liked how the Swansea fans joined in our goal celebrations after the fifth goal. The goal difference between us and Ipswich is also now within touching distance. Happy days.

Ever since he cut his hair, he has played better. Perhaps he can now see what he's doing. When asked about his A-r-i-bo chant today, he said it's the first time he's heard it! He's evidently taken the cotton wool out of his ears as well! No wonder he's playing so well now 😀

He did, though I think he stopped short of calling him the 'wee man'. Our link kept switching between the Saints (Dean Hammond) commentary and the Swansea commentators, who sounded brain dead and made Efan Ekoku sound exciting. I'm sure when the fifth went in I heard one of them say "For Fuck's Sake" 😀

Yep, hope he's more in a CDM role. Don't trust him playing out from the back

And he's given the ball away in the first minute and they've scored. Hopefully RM was watching!

Good point. To be fair to him, he no longer runs around as if he's dragging a tractor tyre and yesterday, he held the ball up well, saw some good passes and even made intelligent runs in to spaces which weren't necessarily seen but could have broken their lines with the right pass. He's definitely starting to have an impact in our team.

Exactly. He's also probably happy knowing he's the best player in the club and in the summer he'll be in a better position to assess his options. If we're promoted, he may even think of staying. Don't know if anyone came for him in the autumn but maybe he actually likes it at Southampton - or maybe his agent isn't as pushy as most!

Totally agree and remember singing it at Villa when we won 3-1. Comprehensive win today but they were awful. Understand all the positives here but left the ground feeling less excited than I would have expected for a 4-0 win. We were good value in the second half, but couldn't help think Edozie's goal just before half time changed everything. Going in 0-0 might have got a different audience response. As a tip to our set piece coach, we need to stop doing those short corners and pump the ball in the middle and when we get a free kick on the edge of their penalty area, don't do the short pass.

Sort of bet we can find on Paddy Power. Thanks Convict, accurate as ever. I'm going for a Cardiff display and our first big win. 5-0. Only got poor odds (40/1), but tomorrow we'll walk away happy even though thread will only reach 12 pages.

What doesn't RM get? Like someone said, we had 12% less than our usual 70% possession against Cardiff and looked thoroughly dominant. Yet we quickly revert to this bore fest. I know Egg and a few others warned us to be prepared for this shit, but what's right about it? As Convict shows, at best we scrape wins. Against Coventry, it's the usual fuck about passing to nowhere and then when they score we make changes and chase the game. And when it's the other way around and score first, we sit back and try to hold on. Just one of our players costs more than the entire squad of Sheff Wed, Plymouth, Rotherham, Ipswich and Huddersfield. We have have the most expensively assembled squad in the championship by a country mile and while I appreciate that doesn't entitle us to be the best team, I still expect us to trounce some teams. C'mon RM. Speed up our game.

One big positive - Is this the same Joe Aribo we were watching play in wellington boots last year?