POST-MATCH THREAD: Southampton v Charlton Athletic: Saturday 21st February 2026: KO 15:00

CaptainRobbo said:

peterreeves said:

Can anyone tell me who made that brilliant goal line clearance in the first few minutes of the Sky highlights..

After taking a vote on it.
Well done Collins for the goal line clearance. 👏👏👏

And for scoring the equaliser.

elbiglad said:

Glad to read that most are happy with the point. Don’t quite understand the few that expected us to play any differently away at one of the form teams in the Championship.

A Premier League team last year with a starting eleven the cost more than £70million… it would’ve been football suicide to play any other way. Maybe one day soon, but for now we have to be aware of our position in the food chain. 

The general theme that we’re not playing exciting football confuses me a little. The only thing that matters for us is points. I enjoyed watching Arsenal play some nice stuff this afternoon as a neutral. But when it comes to my team I don’t care if Charlton imitate early 90’s Wimbledon if it means we stay up.

Think it was Lloyd Jones...😉

DOUCHER said:

Good solid performance after tuesday's flop - pompey have clearly had a great window coz they ruined us tuesday night and seems like they did similar to smallwall so i cannot see them getting dragged back down - problem now is wba are one of the teams we r relying on to finish above - this season we haven't shown up for most of the 6 pointers so glad its away as think that will do the team a favour. Teams who battle and fight are our enemy - we can stifle the ballers but when we come up against teams that match our work rate and fight we struggle. We can grind our way to safety but are far from comfortable yet. Stay up and get Lloyd Jones signed up in the summer and make him the highest paid player at the club and captain. Bring somebody in in recruitment asap who knows what a footballer looks like and get what we can for tanto, kelman, knibbs and apter and completely overhaul the midfield and attack for next year - not sure our current set up recognize anything other than a good defender, which, to be fair, they have excelled at.   

Doucher, on the subject of recruitment, I heard recently that you paid similar for Kelman what we paid for Coburn?… roughly 3 to 3.5 million up front, climbing to 5 million with add ons? 

DOUCHER said:

Good solid performance after tuesday's flop - pompey have clearly had a great window coz they ruined us tuesday night and seems like they did similar to smallwall so i cannot see them getting dragged back down - problem now is wba are one of the teams we r relying on to finish above - this season we haven't shown up for most of the 6 pointers so glad its away as think that will do the team a favour. Teams who battle and fight are our enemy - we can stifle the ballers but when we come up against teams that match our work rate and fight we struggle. We can grind our way to safety but are far from comfortable yet. Stay up and get Lloyd Jones signed up in the summer and make him the highest paid player at the club and captain. Bring somebody in in recruitment asap who knows what a footballer looks like and get what we can for tanto, kelman, knibbs and apter and completely overhaul the midfield and attack for next year - not sure our current set up recognize anything other than a good defender, which, to be fair, they have excelled at.   

Personally I think Kelman is worth pursuing.  His season has been flat but he picked up that hamstring injury just after scoring his first goal, showed a bit of promise on his return by finding that bit of skill to unlock Oxford, got 2 up at Blackburn then got lost in the shuffle again when it all went a bit wobbly in the new year.  I know he looked flat after coming on y’day and his goal return isn’t great, but that’s a team issue in as much his.  33 goals all season is woeful and it’s why we’re going to be huffing and puffing to hopefully staying up.

I agree with you re: Tanto and Apter.  Apter is all in all a bemusing signing and Tanto just isn’t going to make the step up.  Undecided on Knibbs purely on the lack of game time.  Perhaps that tells its own story, but as good as Docherty is and was y’day off the ball, he’s very poor on it, so I think Knibbs may get another chance 

We absolutely need to overhaul the midfield and attack if we do stay up, particularly the midfield 3 if we’re playing the same formation.  Need much more power, pace and skill in there.  Getting very far ahead of myself talking about next season, by I shudder to think how hard it will be unless we bring in some real quality, if we’re still in this division 

Bod said:

Fantastic from the lads , of course it begs the question that if you can mix it with a good side like Southampton how can you turn in such a limp one against a relatively poor side like Portsmouth?? 

Portsmouth were not ‘relatively poor’ last Tuesday. They played very well I thought.

Laddick01 said:

In context that is a great point. They are bang in form and have a lot of quality

Sichenje started slow, but defintely has something there based on that second half. Naby Sarr on the ball he is not though.

Leaburn second half of the season has been a monster. 45 minutes each for him an Dykes each game would be perfect.

Funnily enough, them scoring when they did probably did us a favour. Made us put a bit of pressure on and showed we can hold our own at this level if we play with confidence.

Lloyd Jones - Monster. Pay him whatever he wants.

All I ask from the team is that they battle. Today they did that. Pleasing.

Monster is more than a bit strong.

We set ourselves up to be compact and basically have ten men behind the ball and rely on Campbell's pace to try and nick a goal on the break - but that only really came off about three times in the match.

We gave possession away too easily on a number of occasions and were asking Dykes to basically play two centre halves by himself which meant we had very little attacking possession.

Our goal was really quite bizarre, ball played across their box into Doherty who plays a sideways ball to Carey who is not marked and bangs it in, very poor goal to concede at this level.

I have to say that I find Kelman a very strange player at times, I don't understand what he was thinking when he had their centre half 1:1 late on and instead of knocking it past him and going for goal he stopped and let the defence re-set - very poor option.

I know he is not a pace merchant but their two centre halves are big lumps and you'd have to back yourself to at least draw a foul close to their box, rather than allowing the defence to reset.

cabbles said:

DOUCHER said:

Good solid performance after tuesday's flop - pompey have clearly had a great window coz they ruined us tuesday night and seems like they did similar to smallwall so i cannot see them getting dragged back down - problem now is wba are one of the teams we r relying on to finish above - this season we haven't shown up for most of the 6 pointers so glad its away as think that will do the team a favour. Teams who battle and fight are our enemy - we can stifle the ballers but when we come up against teams that match our work rate and fight we struggle. We can grind our way to safety but are far from comfortable yet. Stay up and get Lloyd Jones signed up in the summer and make him the highest paid player at the club and captain. Bring somebody in in recruitment asap who knows what a footballer looks like and get what we can for tanto, kelman, knibbs and apter and completely overhaul the midfield and attack for next year - not sure our current set up recognize anything other than a good defender, which, to be fair, they have excelled at.   

Personally I think Kelman is worth pursuing.  His season has been flat but he picked up that hamstring injury just after scoring his first goal, showed a bit of promise on his return by finding that bit of skill to unlock Oxford, got 2 up at Blackburn then got lost in the shuffle again when it all went a bit wobbly in the new year.  I know he looked flat after coming on y’day and his goal return isn’t great, but that’s a team issue in as much his.  33 goals all season is woeful and it’s why we’re going to be huffing and puffing to hopefully staying up.

I agree with you re: Tanto and Apter.  Apter is all in all a bemusing signing and Tanto just isn’t going to make the step up.  Undecided on Knibbs purely on the lack of game time.  Perhaps that tells its own story, but as good as Docherty is and was y’day off the ball, he’s very poor on it, so I think Knibbs may get another chance 

We absolutely need to overhaul the midfield and attack if we do stay up, particularly the midfield 3 if we’re playing the same formation.  Need much more power, pace and skill in there.  Getting very far ahead of myself talking about next season, by I shudder to think how hard it will be unless we bring in some real quality, if we’re still in this division 

For me Tanto is the only one I'd say really is a bit of a write-off, and that's because of his age. Thought he was OK in parts but not ready for the step up yet and at 26 for £1.5m you'd say it doesn't look great.

Apter has bags of potential and is young, if he can be brought back into the fold when we are set up to play more openly I think he could be excellent. Knibbs has shown what he can bring in flashes, without injuries and Carey's form I think he could have had a decent season, similar to Carey's.

I really don't agree with the write off of our forwards, Kelman in particular. If he was missing chances then fine, but it just seems so clear that he isn't the problem. We aren't set up to feed him and again you have to think that will change as the team grows, particularly with a much needed overhaul of the midfield. Everyone thought Godden would be the answer when he came back but he's faced the same issues. Kelman has the quality and age profile to come very good. 

Anyone actually slagging off any of our forwards is an idiot, end of story.

With the way we are set up you could have Haaland up front and he still wouldn't score that many more than our current lot, we are designed to have men behind the ball, meaning our strikers are isolated and easy to mark.