itchen

Yes, a last minute panic buy might have got us all excited. But I'd rather we continued our long-term planning and thorough scouting. It's worked pretty well (Osvaldo excepted) for the last few years. And you can't calculate net spend by subtracting fees out from fees in. You have to include wages over the length of each contract and Saints have signed up our key players to longer, and more expensive, contracts. Quite apart from the rules imposed by financial (un) fair play, I don't want to see our club throwing money about just so a few fans can feel better that it spent more than Stoke.

According to the Guardian's Rumour Mill column. http://www.theguardian.com/football/2016/aug/26/football-transfer-rumours-marquinhos-chelsea-manchester-united?

Shame. I thought he was better than that.

No.

Scoreline flattered us a bit and Forster had to make at least 3 good saves. But who cares? Woo-hoo!

How very PG Wodehouse.

A comfortable win. Even when they eventually scored it never looked like they could catch us or that we couldn't go and score another one if necessary. I don't understand all the criticism of Clasie and set pieces. We had loads of corners from the Kingsland/Northam corner which he whipped into the six yard box with real pace. I was surprised nobody really got on the end of one of them.

We were poor. Our strikers are clearly lacking confidence but their keeper made two or three great saves to keep us out (as did Forster at our end). I thought Martina had a good game and so did Bertrand on the whole. Tadic was frustrating and Mane is clearly out of sorts. Pelle held the ball up well, cut out the backheels, but never looked like scoring. VVD and Rome our two best players. I thought the ref was awful but he was right to send Fonte off. It was a poor game between two poor sides. I'm looking forward to the return of Long. (and maybe Austin too). It's frustrating as we know we can play better than the last week.weekly

You do, apparently, if you're a self-respecting bloke. Not only that, you should be given a medal. Presumably, you can wear it alongside those you won when you picked up your previous banning order. Makes you proud, doesn't it?

That's impressive. I wonder how many Saints fans could sing "We are Southampton" in Dutch.

I feel your pain. It must be a real shock to the system to realise that some other people support a different football team. Is there any way you could seek compensation?

Did you listen to the programme? It's mainly about spotting slight deformities (common in the whole population) and devising regimes to avoid their exacerbation and eventual long-term health problems. Our under 18 captain left Arsenal's academy because he could not move freely owing to hip problems. He is now pain free. Listen, it's very interesting.

Driving home this evening I listened to the Radio 4 programme "Inside Health". It had a long feature on the work done at Staplewood to minimise hip and groin injuries throughout all levels of the club. This has apparently resulted in both injuries becoming rare and also led to a faster recovery rate from hamstring problems than other clubs. We are apparently working with Oxford University to study the effects of intensive sport on young people. It seems that many people have slight abnormalities with their hip joints that sport at a high level will exacerbate resulting in injuries and an increased risk of arthritis. It was a very interesting feature. I would post a link but it doesn't seem to be on iPlayer yet.

Oh, for goodness' sake. I've seen some nonsense on here but this takes the trophy. Nobody, ever, discounts the possibility of relegation. Nobody, even in the Lowe era, allowed it to happen by taking our position for granted. Do you not remember all those years where we finished just above the relegation places, sometimes only surviving on the last day? It finally happened because we did not have the players capable of keeping us up and did not have the means or the will to bring in better ones (and, of course, there was the Redknapp effect). The difference nowadays is that our owners invest in the team when necessary so that we do our best to avoid it and are looking up the table rather than down. Yes, we could still get relegated. But, if it does happen, it won't be because of complacency.

This is a golden thread to look back on. Yes, we had a few weeks when it seemed we couldn't buy a win (except against Arsenal) but anybody who watched us could see we were not playing particularly badly. We were just losing by the odd goal (except against Liverpool!). I never worried about relegation, just that we wouldn't match the heights of last season. Now it looks like we might. But we might still go on another run of bad results or get another three wins in a row. That is football. Of course, the board has shown a total lack of ambition by buying Austin for only £4 million. They could have shown real intent by buying Austin for £15 million...

So, having moved my shifts once to take account of the move to Monday, I may have to move them again (which won't be possible) if the game moves back to its original day. Isn't modern football Wonderful?

I confess I was disappointed to see Wanyama in the starting lineup. But he played well, although not as many forward balls as I would have liked, and I don't remember him giving away any fouls. Seems we have strength in depth.

Yep.

*Targett * bloody auto correct.

Everyone put a good shift in today in awful conditions. Watford were dreadful - how can they be in the top half? Their defence was all over the place. But that doesn't detract from our completely dominant performance. Special praise for the superhuman Shane Long and for Matt Targets who was the best I've ever seen him.

*do that*!

I gave my son the use of my season ticket tonight. Looks like I should dominated more often.

We started well. #lookingforpositives

That should say point eight!

Well a neutral observer seems to rate him (see point http://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2015/nov/02/premier-league-10-talking-points-weekend