Sidney Fudpucker the 3rd

Just checked his past stats. His time at Benfica, Valencia and AZ is probably where my mate is drawing his conclusions from.

Depends which way you look at it. If you look at the same two fixture's from last season then we're already 5 points down!

When he joined a Dutch friend said to me, 'He'll have a great first season and then you'll really struggle in the second. He'll walk away about two thirds of the way through the second season'.

I feared this when I saw the line-ups. I don't understand why Romeu didn't start. Hopefully he'll be on in the second half. This is the worst Saints performance I've seen in a good few years. As others have said, it's going to be a very long season.

Recovered from his hamstring but had to go off during the U21's game with a ankle ligament injury.

Well said! We wanted him to stay and according to one of his former team mates who I spoke to recently, the offer that was on the table would have doubled his wages. Ultimately he went because we couldn't guarantee him first team football. A lot of players would have been happy to take the money and sit on the bench. You can't knock a player who wants to leave so that he can play regularly.

Have we? Who? I don't think we have. Nobody had linked us with Romeu. I check Sky sports and the BBC websites on a daily basis and we're one of the least mentioned teams on there. Sure, if you look at transfer rumour websites then I'm sure we're mentioned on a regular basis but those sites are a load of ********. I'm sure they simply create rumours in the hope that a percentage of them will come good. Clubs like Stoke, Villa, Palace, Newcastle seemed to be mentioned on the SKY site every day and with every player that's available. Even if you look at the regional papers round-up on the SKY sports page there is rarely anything about Saints in there. There's often more from the likes of Reading, Bolton and Derby than Saints.

It's funny, I had a feeling last night that a signing might be announced today. This looks like a good bit of business and further more, it demonstrates how the club conduct their business behind the scenes and out of the eyes of the press. Log onto the Sky website and you'll see pretty much every club in the Premiership linked with different players on a daily basis, but Saints are the one club that you don't tend to hear too many rumours about. This is another fine example of this. I don't think we've been linked with Romeu in any press articles? The first we've heard of this is on the day that he's having a medical and is set to sign. This also demonstrates how we shouldn't get all panicky when every other club is being linked with players and we're not. Just because we're not on the back pages being linked with players doesn't mean that we're not working behind the scenes to bring people in.

Assuming that Caulker is going to get regular football and the fact that this guy can play at CB if required, I'm not sure we'll go for VvD. As things stand there's a few clubs interested in Virgil and Celtic will hold out for the highest bidder. I could see a price war between Sunderland, Newcastle, Everton and ourselves and we've never been a club to get involved in that nonsense. We'll have a figure that we're prepared to go to but will walk away if it all starts to get out of hand.

We have, but we also lost some better full internationals. Our competitors have certainly closed the gap. Last year I would have said we were a better side than the likes of WHU, Swansea, Palace, Newcastle, Stoke, WBA & Villa. I now think there's little between us and all of those teams. Hopefully Ronald and the boys will prove me wrong.

Exactly!

I'll reserve judgement until I've seen who else we bring in. As things stand I think we're in worse shape than we were last season. We lost 50% of our back 4 and a defensive midfielder who is pretty much irreplaceable. Our back 4 undoubtedly played a massive part in achieving the position that we did. Has it improved? No. Whilst I think Caulker is a good signing, he's not in the same league as Alderwiereld. Our performance against Newcastle demonstrated exactly what we need. 2 quality additions.

We need to sign 2 players, preferably this week. Yes, we look like we're a threat up front but we've got to tighten up at the back. It's where we excelled last year and we won't finish top 10 with performances like today. Bertrand coming back will help but we desperately need a quality CB and another defensive midfield player. Until that happens I'd be inclined to bring in Caulker & play Yoshida at LB. Targett looked like out worst player today. Newcastle are average. A decent team would have put 3 or 4 past us today and that's worrying.

Great couple of days in Amsterdam. Bumped into a few Saints fans but not as many as I thought I would. The highlight was seeing the Rapid Vienna fans getting a police escort through the centre of town on Tuesday evening. Great atmosphere. Amazing support. A real example of how to make your make your presence felt when you're playing away in Europe.

Champions - Man Utd although I fancy Liverpool could be a good outside shout. Saints to finish 14th. Everton to narrowly avoid relegation.

I think it's the best away kit we've ever had.

Dutch press are reporting that Celtic have rejected our bid and value him at €15m!!!

I think it'll be more interesting to see how Jay-Rod and Juanmi link up.

Not particularly bothered by it. I'm convinced it will only have a negative effect on our league form as it has every other English club who've played in it. I also believe that football should be played at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon. Having to move games to a Sunday as a result of playing in the Europa league doesn't work. You can't take two young children to an away game at the other end of the country with a 4pm kick off on a Sunday when they've got to be in school on Monday morning.

Just watched this again. You don't think the cheeky grin was because it's Lovren coming back on loan?

I didn't see this but on Monday a mate said 'you're getting two defenders this week, one on loan and one permanent'. I thought he was taking the ****... and then Caulker signed. Lucky guess I'd say. We're very good at keeping our transfer dealings very quiet these days.

Early reports suggest he'll be out of action for 2 -3 months.

I'd start Jay-Rod.

Out for 8-12 weeks. ;-)

He's going to WBA.