Tom & Gerry

9/1 equal second favourite according to the Echo. Alex Crook says the board have noted his impressive work at Coventry but he is focused on their promotion push at present.

Frank Lampard is being muted and I know his record isn't great, but he's the type that does well here. Like Ball, Hoddle and Keoman he would have the respect of the players as an ex top player. Like nearly all our best managers he's had failures at other clubs but I think he could do a good job here.

Saints have a habit in recent seasons of having prolonged bad spells followed by prolonged good spells so I'm hoping we will now see an improvement. Of course it wouldn't take much to be better and it's got to the stage where any win we get is a shock win. Still it would be nice to take a few unexpected scalps even if staying up is beyond us.

If we can't afford a Championship manager how about we look a little lower. Kelvin your time has come ( again). Or how about Jimmy Ball , fighting relegation would be in his DNA, and we know the tactics- just give it to Tyler at every opportunity.

He has started for another Premier league team and did very well as I recall.

I don't mind us conceding a few daft goals if we score enough of the brilliant goals we did last season. What is enough? Well one in three games obviously isn't. Enough to win us the 12 games or so to keep us up is, for this season. RM needs to concentrate on getting the attacking side right and to some extent the defence will take care of it's self.

I think after a few more zeros the penny will drop with some that with a great goalkeeper you can't win many matches unless you score some goals. It takes good players to score goals whilst average players can defend if disciplined and well organised.

If we sign a new goalkeeper he will hopefully cut down on the number of errors playing out from the back, but don't expect them to be eliminated altogether. There is no super keeper that makes no errors. As Downes said, it's the way we play. If Ramsdale, for instance was so good at playing out from the back he'd be in the Arsenal team. The hardest thing in the Premier league is scoring goals as we saw yesterday when the goalkeeping mistake shouldn't have been crucial. Getting that right should be our number 1 priority.

Fair enough. Some people on here express their fears, others their hopes. Today the fears won, that's football.

A coach shouldn't ask a player to do something he can't do. Martin didn't last season so there's no reason to believe he will this. Martin may be stubborn but he isn't stupid. He wants to win the game whatever he might say about playing a certain way.

Is this the same McCarthy that was so sound at the end of last season that everyone is rubbishing or have we signed another one? People seem to have been spooked because in a few practice matches he practiced doing a few things he's not very good at and found he's not very good at them which is what practice matches are for, I thought. So he won't do them in a league game, I hope.

I don't think that's fair. He has all the attributes, but we've had players before from George Lawrence to Michael Obefemi who had all the attributes to be a great player but weren't.

I think I've laboured the point enough, but all I'm saying is that to call us the 4th best team in the league is not particularly relevant to how we will do this season. By the end of the season our form was on a par with the other 2 teams behind Leicester who also had some bad results. I think we were a better team by the end of the season than at the start, that's all.

They were better over the course of the season, but by the end of the season there was not much in it. It's the direction of travel. If 2 teams finish level in the table and 1 starts well and then levels off and the other starts badly but finishes well, the team that finishes well is going to feel better about it's future prospects.

There's an argument for 2nd. I know we lost at Ipswich but we were by far the better team.