Hello my dear readers! I'm still playing Football Manager 2008 in spite of FM09 demo comes out very soon at the nearest weekend. And here the results of The Saints that I manage 7th season in Premier League:

I have already described all tremendous events of Champions League including the last very, very disappointing round. So now it's only about national competitions: Premier League and League Cup. My guys feel themselves very confident in the League Cup reaching Semi Final (Wigan will be our opponent). I used rotation principle allowing second squad players to perform and they were fantastic in the 5:0 match with Everton and 3:0 with Preston.

Difficult task for Premier League of winning title still remains. Southampton can do that I believe. You can be reassured in that just looking to the results. There are only 3 draws and 1 loss in the all Premiership matches on the screen above. Especially good results were shown during "winter rush" face-offs with Aston Villa, Man Utd and Everton.

Nevertheless the table isn't looking so optimistic:

Chelsea is absolutely fantastic in this season . Their pair of forwards Andy Carroll and Goran Pandev score goals as crazy ones! And, of course, The Blues have the strongest defence led by John Terry with Petr Cech behind... Therefore they have been performing almost perfectly during the first half of season resulting in 6 points of advantage over my club.

Among my players I want to single out two central midfielders: Steven Defour and Demy de Zeeuw. They both are on the top of ratings:

Defour won competition for the first squad place against Massimo Donati (the best assister of the last season) by the way.

In the end - small screen shot:

Fiorentina wants me . This is very pretty football club for me. I managed them twice in the previous versions of Football Manager and rather successfully, I must notice. So it was a bit tempting for me, but, of course, I rejected invitation and am staying dedicated to the Saints. Till the end of the week at least, taking into consideration the latest news about FM09 demo