Charlie Wayman

That's because in most leagues the top clubs are promoted out of it and replaced by poor teams in serial decline from a league above. So mediocrity is maintained. In the PL the top teams remain as the top teams because there is nowhere for them to be promoted.

He has been left behind by Henderson & Berkley. A year or two ago he was seen in the same light as those two midfielders by the media and no doubt by national team set-up at St George's. Arguably had he been with a top six club with far better players around him to help his development he would have continued to progress and maybe realised all those earlier hopes and expectations. Staying in a comfortable backwater is never a good strategy for a young person in any profession but in the highly charged media spotlit world of football, to be the best you have to rub shoulders with the best. His chance appears to have gone.

Hughes seems to be in permanent denial at his press conferences, he's been saying for weeks "we have a very good group of players" "we are about to turn a corner and move up the league" "we create more chances than most other clubs" "we just need to start converting a few more of these and we'll be fine". Yet, nothing changes and today he admitted for the first time it won't happen overnight What an indictment of him and his coaching staff. The excuses are being lined up already for this weekend and where is the passion you'd expect from a manager with his back to the wall? "Newcastle are a much better team that their points tally suggests, 6 of their opening games have been against top six clubs, they were 2-0 up against Man U...." "Losing Tadic was a big blow" "It's very hard to get any points in the PL" He's under pressure alright but with Les's 3-year gold plated contract in his back pocket why should he be worried?

Exactly this please

I was just toying with the idea, suppose, lust suppose we win 4-0 on Saturday, how the hell would we handle that on here?

...but we're not playing "top flight" football at St Mary's Patrick, so what's your gripe?

Google has a lot to answer for. Just so the others don't have to bother https://thesefootballtimes.co/2015/08/12/the-libero-footballs-forgotten-man/

Not a lot of fun 'though aye? Only 4 league goals. Poor against Wolves last week.

If he can't train and isn't fit then why the hell do we play him and pay him? The bloke has become a liability and we need to offload ( & long ) as quickly as possible. Gallagher never was and never will be the answer.

Nice rosy pink glow in La La land

You need better binoculars, it's a long way from Brisbane to St Mary's

Very clearly they are not coming from anywhere as we saw today. Four useless effing strikers who can't score. How can we possibly stay up?

He's playing as well as anybody you clueless twit.

339 of us trekked up to St Mary's last evening and were treated to a quite entertaining match. Very much a tale of two halves with Wolved dominant in the first and saints more prominent in the second. Wolves played a highly organised, highly disciplined game of pass ball in the first half that was in many ways similar to the first half of the Spain v England game last week. Wolves had all the possession and our only attacks came from long balls over their packed defence. On the other hand they never really looked like breaking us down and scoring. Our goal came out of nowhere, a long punt up the middle brushed Obafami's shoulder and dropped at his feet right between the two centre-backs who were caught wrong footed, he couldn't really miss and he didn't. Second half we were a lot better and got hold of the midfield for a long spell and scored a superb second that should have made the game secure. Wolves 'though woke up, in command again for a while and scored two easy goals that we should never have allowed, after that we had just about had the better of it with everyone tiring quickly and the better chances and a wonderful corner with O'Conner finding space. I've read a lot of what has been said above but the live game was quite different to what you see on the highlights. Here are my ratings for Saints Rose - some good stops but could have been better positioned for the first goal - 6 Valery - poor in first half, not getting forward and passing back and sideways too much - 6 O'Driscoll - commanding in the air and solid performance with few errors but positioning for their goals could have been better - 7 Klarer - made a few basic errors but also good in the air - 7 Vokins - defended well and always tried to get forward. Some really good through balls to the inside left position - 7 Gallagher - simply awful, a nightmare of a match that he clearly didn't want to be in, Subbed off just after the break which was a mercy to us all - 3 Slattery - worked hard all night and impressed with runs forward and strong tackling - 8 Smallbone - good solid performance in midfield especially in second half - 8 O'Connor - MotM (Saints) and a captain's performance. Worked his socks off all night and broke up many attacks and got us moving forward many times with the right ball - 9 Barnes - good in parts but little service in the first half and in exactly the right place to get the second goal. Saw more of the ball in second half and often beat his man to get in crosses from the bye-line - 7 Obafami - Lots of running with little end product, not much service in first half but took his goal very well. Couldn't make much of an impact with far better service in the second - 6

Easy to chide others whilst you sit on your own hands

Not very imaginative. The last thing most of us would want to do on our stag do is watch a flipping' football match. For goodness sake man this is your last chance to do something really different and exciting with your mates before the shackles are clicked shut, get abroad, get ****ed, go sky diving and get a life before it's too late. **** football!

The thing we all really know is that Hughes will not be sacked. We are lumbered with him for the rest of our time in this league and in the next one down. There are too many cowards in our boardroom to take decisive action in the face of an inscrutable boss.

...and it's only on Sky which means even fewer of us will get to see games played by the national team which means in turn that that the national team will have even less relevance to most fans than it does now. That's one fat goose plucked!

Nope! Unless hell is about to freeze over.

Come on MI6 there must be some CCTV footage around, everything is captured on CCTV these days. I'd go for Yoshi myself, it's called "taking one for the team". Um... sorry Elio......

Nailed on! The only thing you missed was the obvious jealousy aroused within his real daughter Kat by Marcus' close relationship with his 'adoptive' son Nicola. As soon as Marcus croaked Nicola was done for and the Kat could turn her attention to liquidising her inheritance. Nobody can blame her for not sharing her father's obsession, not many kids do but her less than subtle means of selling off the family silver ignited most of the subsequent rancour. She failed to understand what a football club is, that is far, far more than the sum of its disposable parts. What she should have done is admitted no interest and put the Club up for sale immediately lock, stock & barrel as a going concern. Had she done so it is quite probable that we would not be in the mess we are now.

You know as well as the rest of us that all STs are included in the official attendance figures whether our not the owners are sitting in them. There were loads of ST absentees in the Itchen so the real attendance figure might have been lower than 25k. Looking around you could see empty seats in every section on Sunday. OK it was on TV and there were travel disruptions but what should be more worrying for the PL is that many people can no longer be Rrsed to turn out just to see a rich club strut itself in totally uncompetitive one-sided matches. This season is beyond boring, it is becoming no longer of any interest to even the most fair minded of supporters.

14 down and 14 up sounds like a very good idea to me.......

All very worthy comments but very naive. Gao's ownership interest is purely financial, as long as we stay in the PL and don't spend money we don't have and the TV contracts after 2022 continue to be as lucrative as they are now then the guy will be getting around 10% return on his investment - very nice little earner indeed these days with interest rates generally low. It's easy to work out that if he started buying players for £60m he would wipe out 3 year worth of earnings for every player brought in at that level. He is also picking up his regular shareholder dividends. Even if he plans to be here for 5 years there is no way he will dilute his earnings by providing new transfer money. Any transfer money will have to come from player sales... you know the rest of the story!

Most people in the ground saw it as a clean tackle so did the ref and the linesman so that's all there is to say. The decision was made there and then and there is no more to be said. That's why we have refs and linesmen. Hindsight as always is 20/20 vision and how do we know that the video had't been doctored, in any case it was only from one angle?