Charlie Wayman

Well this old fart said from Day 1 of his appearance in our first team that he would be the new Pires and he has never changed his mind. I was labelled by everyone on here at the time as a looney when so many complained he was a waste of space and get rid, so it is for me a Schadenfreude moment that everyone now agrees. Glad you all caught up chaps! I am also the only one saying we will win the Premier League this year, yep same old looney!

We still need to be better at finishing, offered nothing much of a goal threat in the 18 yard box. We are good at containing but must improve going forward and strikers need to work more intelligently.

] Pretty much agree with that but getting any sort of result up there is a very tall order. The real test will be if they score early on and our defensive confidence gets sapped away. So much of this game is in the head these days that any sign that our present invincibility is under threat could be catastrophic. We have good players but not many excellent ones so much of what we are about is physiological self-belief.

THINK ABOUT IT! Unless there was real interest in a player and a real chance of signing him on a permanent basis why would Saints bother to disrupt a long-term team building programme with a short-term loanee fix? It doesn't make sense and it won't happen.

Roy Hodgson is far from being a joke. If you recall he had his WBA team playing great football like the Arse. before he moved on and weren't they top 6 for a while? England looked good and fast last night in the first half so where the heck did he make a poor selection by leaving Ricky out? Of course I would have loved him to play but he wouldn't have fitted at all last night in that all out attacking game. Can't understand your nonsense about Hodgson, he looks like the best England manager since Robson and Ramsey and he might just pull a surprise out of the Brazilian hat.

It is more meaningful to ask if Southampton will be the new Manchester United

Agreed there were some bad times many years ago but he was talking about here and now. Times have changed.

He doesn't get many chances that's for sure presumably because he does not play well enough in training matches? At least let's hope that is the case because if it is just old fashioned favouritism that governs who plays and who doesn't then we are in serious trouble. On the few chances he has had to start he has fared no better and no worse than any of the other front runners. On the other hand it is easy to imagine that Pochettino's oh! so chummy "hugga-mugga style" could get up anybody's nose after a while. If Gaston has decided that he doesn't want to be part of such nonsense then he will have switched off ages ago so it would be better for him to be away to a saner environment sooner rather than later. After all how many of us want to be too up-close and personal with our bosses?

That is utter rubbish. What evidence have you for supporting such a claim. Why make things up just to stir the pot?

That's beacuse we've been with our lads through all the bad times and lower divisions and saored with them. We are as one. We are The Saints! All these ne hangers on are Johnny come lately Rrsoles!

Say what you like he's coming back to haunt us again next year and it can't always be a co-incidence.

Like Martin Effing Keown who said yesterday "Lambert's OK but he won't start as England need front men who (no disrespocet) have a bit more quality and bring more more to attacks". Nasty Bastard!

What should not be overlooked is that he had no pre-season with Saints and is still trying to catch-up with the style of play and how to link with Ricky and Adam. It takes time to become a well oiled machine. Judge him after Christmas. He certainly has a physical presence that intimidates CBs and that's good because it relieves some of the pressure on Ricky who's been marked by two people ever since his England call-up. Chances will come as these two work out their routines and it could be very exciting.

You're kidding? You mean there are three worse? Unbelievable.

Obviously they do not know their own Rules. Hope you told 'em where to stick it.

Crikey mate, where did you learn your English grammar?

Only 26 more points needed and we're safe for another year.

Good stuff.

Am I the only one who thinks we'll win the league?

Which is why it is a waste of time buying them. What are you supposed to do with the damn things in conditions like those for the Sunderland match? Bad enough finding somewhere to keep them pristine even on a fine day. Sorry Nicola you're going to miss £54 from my pocket this season. I bought the first one so all the problems are real.

I've always thought that the PL clubs miss a trick by not screening their away matches live on the big screens at their home stadia and charging for entry. It would be worth a tenner of my money based on modern cinema pricing and if 10,000 turned up the club would be quids in rather than the stadium lying empty most of the time. It would certainly beat by miles waiting for Sky to deign to screen us once or twice a year or those useless feeds from foreign websites.

Not sure that's quite right but there does seem to be a disconnect between the ball passing skills of the back 6 and the ability of the front four to run and pass in the final third. Anybody who watched Arsenal on TV last night will have recognised the style of play immediately as much like ours at the back and in the middle of the park but of a very much higher level of speed and intensity and with the essential difference that their players moved on into the final third with exactly the same style of quick open play and movement and of course as we saw penetrated the oppo defence with ease. Only Adam Lallana of our front four has the level of ball skill of the Arsenal front four and there's the rub. He can't do iut on his own. Ricky is an old fashioned up and under striker whilst Osvaldo and Rodrigues are channel runners mainly without a high level of retention, deft movement, close vision awareness and passing skills that would allow them to dart about in intricate little four-yarder passing movements that confuse and open up defences. Last night Arsenal seemed to be capable of annihilating anybody and it must have been a one-off but as a yardstick for our aspirations it did rather point up our limitations. But, we are not WHU and we are not per se "long-ball". Long Ball by the way is not all that bad as Howard Wilkinson once pointed out from his analysis of many goal scoring moves. He proved that goals more often follow 2 or 3 touch moves rather than long drawn out showmanship moves of 20+ pass, yet instinctively fans prefer (these days) the multi-pass method because it more delights the eye and heart.

Hot air balloons rise very quickly but can come crashing down without warning with disastrous consequences.

Accurate but churlish ;-)

The better we do and the more lauded our players the greater the risk of the bigger clubs trying to poach them so we should discourage international recognition. What's better than being a Saint, we don't want people like Ronaldo in Jose's ear about big wads and Galacticos