saint-crinny

Whilst I've publicly been saying we're going down since December, I've always been clinging to the usual football fan shred of hope that we'd turn it round somehow. Tonight ended that last bit of hope in a truly abject display that you can only say showed we've already given up this season. Watch us play well against Chelsea, ultimately lose, and then play terribly to go down with a whimper against Bournemouth. To be honest, I'm done with this lot - clear out in the summer and actually get some players who play with a bit of fight and desire to be here and want to achieve, including a number of our younger players. And really not sure Hughes is the man for us in the Championship - judging by tonight's bizarre subs. This season has been a total shambles from start to finish, top to bottom. And if we now somehow win the FA Cup, it will probably be my favourite ever.

Bertrand in as one the three CBs and McQueen at LWB for me. Certainly against Chelsea anyway. Not a massive McQueen fan but he could do a job there hopefully

quite a good player on the ball, not a particularly good defender with a real weakness in the air. Yoshi should play ahead of him every week

HIs "anger" probably stems from the fact that he knows he won't be able to get a move to another PL team unlike many of our other slackers. On his wages, with his atrocious fitness record, who would take him? Keeping him the championship might not be a bad thing for us - he could score the goals that keep us from doing a Sunderland. Or he could score 5 in 5 and then miss the rest of the season

Tadic, he's performed on a consistent level...

No-one plays 442 away from home in the Prem - asking for trouble despite people on here banging on about how that's the way to go. You get overrun in the middle and totally dominated. As we are grimly watching now. Bizarrely we need to go more defensive to have any hope here

Mane - absolute x-factor, last player we've had to regularly get you off your seat VVD - the best defender I've ever seen for Saints, he's got the lot Bertrand - filled a hole when Shaw left that was as much about the disappointment of a young talent leaving as the ability that we lost, despite uncertainty about him when he signed, and has gone on to be one of the most consistent English players in the league

he spoke very well, relaxed and assured - hope this is what we need to get things going. As others have said, most interesting comment was about the intensity of training, which he suggested was good in the last two days but that others had said had been lacking in recent months. There's certainly been a lack of intensity of the pitch for a lot of that time.

That was wretched. If MP stays, which I think we all know he will, i'm certain we go down and almost certain we do it without winning a game again this season

If we are going with one up top, which we obviously are, then I cannot get on-board with it not being Gabbi. He should have started against Stoke off the back of his equaliser against Burnley. Clearly our best striker and has shown throughout his career (here and in Italy) that he goes on little streaks of goals. We could do with exactly that now, but he scores and then remains on the subs bench, while Carrillo, despite a fair amount of effort, just doesn't look that good. We now must beat at least one of Newcastle and West Ham (preferably both but right now, three points from anywhere would be a miracle)

This is pretty funny - the clamour to sign him and the discord among some when he went to west brom - three appearances, no goals, injured. Textbook

The sheer arrogance of the approach at the top of the club, followed by the incompetence of the manager will make relegation a tough one to take as it could have so easily been avoided. But thick and thin and all that, I'll be renewing. Besides, we could still do a Wigan...

Very easy to feel disenchanted and end up thinking this way. I actually disagree on this one, think there was an intention to buy, just maybe the release clause was higher than our valuation so we didn't make it work. Hard to criticise that principle of course, although if we go down the question is screaming out at them all. Guess the acid test would be if we stay up (as we should with this squad) then how quick do we seal a Promes deal in the summer, given we were reliably informed that it would happen in the summer as a deal was already struck?

When people mention Kelvin motivating the players, where has that come from? Because he's their mate? A) when has that ever worked? Really not that often B) where is the evidence that his promotion to first team duties has had any motivating impact or influence? Hardly a sudden surge in form

Were probably going to be relegated now, which is incredible with this team. Do I think we would have been relegated with Puel this season? Definitely not, especially with some of the poor teams around us that we have essentially now become one of. So in that sense, yes, I regret his sacking. But as others have said, it was probably the right call with the way the season ended - nobody can have anticipated that we'd have gone for MP - a guy who really had no track record to speak of. At least with Puel you knew he had some tactics nous and experience. Our desire to be 'clever Southampton', look how smart they are with their left field appointments that work so well (have basically worked once with Poch) has come back to bite us hard.

Did we get anything right today, as a club. Terrible work to close the transfer window - we absolutely needed a player just like Promes tonight. Bizarre team selection against a team we had to beat and we knew would sit back and be tough to break down. Selected a team full of midfielders who rarely show an ability for a creative, non sideways/backwards pass. Left Lemima benched the entire game despite Davis treading water for most of it, as he has done for the past few months. A striker who never scores up top. But also a set up that really doesn’t allow for us to play with any creativity. When we equalised we still had so much time to get the winner but yet failed to muster a single good chance. A clueless manager, players lacking direction, best players left out on and off all season, a string of terrible results against teams we should be beating, and a board who seem to think it’s all going to be ok because of some mythical Southampton way and are not prepeared to deliver when it really needs strong leadership, either in terms of adding crucial new blood or putting us and MP out of his misery. Equals, almost certain relegation

if they didn't want to pay Dzeko wages because of his age, they're hardly likely to pay Pelle, a much inferior player, a whopping wage instead

If we could actually finish even 50% of our chances we would have been 3-0 up by that point - the bloke, for all the obvious mistakes he's made cant do much about that ineptitude in front of goal. Let's hope Carillo hits the ground running. I imagine he felt that as we have missed so many chances we're going to get done with an equaliser and decided to tighten up, especially given the subs they had made. In this instance, possibly not the wrong call and we won at the end of the day. When he has done it at other times this season it has been more infuriating than yesterday. Brighton away is still one that really bugs me

I mean, yeah, that feels about right. It's only about a year ago that we'd have been s******ing about a tweet like that levelled at other teams in the Prem. Now it's us. Nice

Deal agreed for Carrillo according to SSN

If he's considering it, let's hope Promes doesn't think about getting Clasie's views on coming here

If we signed Promes and took Slimani on loan I'd be pretty happy with that. We'd still have MP in charge though, which is the real issue for me. For that reason, I expect us to sign neither of them and keep MP

Still, if ever there was a game to play your triple captain card on Kane...

Another in a growing list of relegation results in afraid. Only one way we're going right now

Keep it quiet then, as they've always done in the past. Just suggests that either they thought it was in the bag, in which case its a bit of egg on everyone's face, or as others have said, just a bit of PR fluff to suggest to the fans we're trying to sign decent players West Ham style. Neither option is great is it let's be honest