Charlie Wayman

There is no good strategy for playing Man City these days. No matter who you are or what you try if you're not a top six club the chances are you're going to lose and lose badly. No point in trying to match them with front foot football as they are going to outplay you such is the quality of the players at their disposal. It's a conundrum for every manager and Hasenhüttl's approach was no worse or better than any other. 3-1 was not so bad bearing in mind the relatively poor quality of our players and the self inflicted catastrophe of Black Friday. The obsession with Ward Prowse is beyond comprehension, no more than an inept spectator at most games you have to wonder what the hell is going on. All he seems good at is waving his arms around and pointing to other people to mark players that he should have tackled or stopped in the first place. Blimey it must be a very low bar to get into the first team these days; can't run, can't tackle, can't head the ball can't take a decent corner.... perfect qualities for becoming a Saints fixture. Dead Ball specialist my Rrse. Not surprisingly we don't see Southgate in this part of the world much.

Professors lecture other people of course as you seem to like to do but usually they stimulate and encourage debate rather than deride it as "infantile". Maybe it's time you changed you moniker?

We may well go down but it is the last thing we should wish for. There is no basis at all for rebuilding a new squad, the present U23's are absolute dross and getting tanked every week and look likely candidates to be relegated as well and all the local lads out on loan have been proved wanting at this level and not many have made an impact in the Championship. In short we are in a bugger's muddle and having no money at all to spend on players exacerbated by taking the drop will just compound the issue. Go down now and we might be looking at a ten or more year gap before we could ever hope to get back again.

Bielsa an this team would be good option

Of course not.

A night of shame indeed. Very difficult to see how Hasenhüttl can survive this humiliation. He's a decent sort of chap and my guess is he'll fall on his sword on Monday morning before he's pushed. Where that leaves us is anybody's guess as no manager worth his salt will want to untangle this mess. Inevitably we'll only attract journeyman like Allardyce or Redknapp and we all know where that ends up. Relegation seems inevitable now, the sheer lack of stomach for the fight last night tells you everything you need to know about our preparedness for a relegation battle. More than a few of the senior players must be poring over their contracts with their agents today trying to find an escape clause to get away from this rat-hole.

Not bad though for a £500 contract with a local builder. We've always spent within our means.

Know for fact that Saints fans including my Dad were singing OWTS in the late 1940's.

I do indeed. There had been lots of rumours of Keegan coming back to England to end his career and the press was full of speculation as to where he might end up but the announcement of the signing at The Potter's Heron at Ampfield was agenuinsq surprise. I was actually driving past the pub around the same time although there was not much sign of unusual activity there.

Sadly no with Ralph's obsession with Redmond and Ward Prowse who will never be dropped. The joke is that people on here say that Moi has no pace, that he is too slow. Ward Prowse is not exactly like a hare on steroids so where's the difference.

So, you are seriously suggesting that we are a level above Celtic? Did you think about that vey seriously before you wrote it? Give praise where it is due, the lad is in a rich vein of form and playing as well as he probably ever has done. Good for him, he's a bloody good footballer and it is showing.

Lampard's Chelsea are rather English in their style of play after years of being anything but. Their kids have played us at U23 level so we should know how they play. I fancy we could win this and win it well, maybe 3-1 (two o.g's & a pen)

You paint a very bleak picture and this scenario is certainly not the one expressed by board members at the most recent Fans Forum. We may not have a perfect squad but we do have perfectly good squad and clearly the club is more ambitious than to settle for a process of gradual improvement. It is up to Ralph to deliver with the squad he has and if it is the case that he is still unsure of his best squad that may be in part because he was focusing absolutely on building a new young team and did not expect Cedric, Bertrand, Yoshida & Boufal to re-assert themselves so forcefully and show how limiteds some of the "young buck" options he was backing turned out to be. I hope he is flexible enough and man enough to admit he may have got it wrong.

Surely it didn't help when the North London Yobbos started singing their version of our song much louder than we could sing ours by sheer weight of numbers. Likely that many job our fans just gave up in frustration. You could here OWTS over the TV commentary from our people mostly in the first half.

Exactly this. It is not black & white, back him or sack him.

Simply at the time of the question Ralph wasn't fully informed. The medical people probably hadn't had time to do full tests and analysis and certainly would not speculate on the lad's condition. When people go to the Doc's and report a tummy pain, the Doc doesn't whip out their appendix without further investigation!

More Teamsheet update #SaintsFC's @OficialCedric has picked up an injury in the warm-up and will be replaced by @JVestergaard7. This was published on the Saints Twitter feed about 20 mins before ko. Why are people questioning this especially when some who attended the match saw him pull up sharply during the warm up. Since when was the Echo regarded as a reliable source?

Exactly and to think Brendan Rogers was touted to becoming here at one stage. Comparison with Ralph is perfectly legitimate and in those terms our man is not doing particularly well. Having said that Rogers has been around the PL block a few times and knows the ropes whereas our beloved Austrian rabbit whisperer is still in awe of the "bestest league in the world" where all teams are "world-class and hard to beat". Rogers knows that you get what you deserve.

If only! One day soon perhaps.

If you look at the Saints Twitter feed you'll see the team was announced with Cedric at RB. This has to be genuine surely, Cedric probably didn't feel right about something and reported how he felt to the coaches. They would have made the decision for him to stand down. Ralph would probably be the last to know and probably would just be told that the player had some sort of muscle problem. It's all speculation and we are nowhere near January.

It was diabolical. Kane was standing free for over 20 seconds as the move developed, nobody seem to be aware he was there and of course our stand-in right back was not even in the vicinity when he should have been running with him.

Strange observation when Ings completely messed up on the Boufal's penetrating cross at pace into the six yard box late in the second half which any half decent striker would have simply deflected into the net. Ings didn't read the play, didn't react quickly enough and was well over a yard short of connecting. Great chance spurned.

Silly boy. Think before you write.

If he is the next de Bruyne w won't get a sniff. Hope we haven't shown our hand too soon.

Just guessing but is Adams problem that under Ralph he is thinking too much on the ball and not letting his natural instincts take over? In the Championship he probably hit the ball first and posited the questions afterwards. Quite a few years ago I used a very experienced (and expensive!) golf pro to try and improve my swing. He began by totally deconstructing every thing that I was doing so as to begin afresh as it were. Trouble is what he then built up in my game was so alien to my instincts and body and therefore so artificial that my game never recovered. You don't always get what you hope for when you start spinning a pot.