Following the expectations of getting to UEFA Cup my Southampton started the new season. The first fixture with Derby was really disappointing and I started thinking that the team misses their sold leader Georginio Wijnaldum... But afterwards there happened very confident series of matches against Blackburn, Reading, Portsmouth, Newcastle, Fulham, Arsenal. Due to the results of these matches Southampton came to be on the 3rd position in the Premier League table.

Then some kind of unintelligible breakdown happened. It belongs to the second half of the matches at the picture below.

Strange 1:1 draw against Everton, crazy League Cup match versus Arsenal when they scored the 3rd decisive goal during extra time... Ok, loss to Man City was fair - it's really hard to win away games against them. Manchester City became a really strong football club to this 6th season in FM 2008.

Home 2:4 disaster with Middlesbrough (the team on the 19th position in the table at that moment!) - that was the one I cannot understand at all . The Rivers used very attacking 3-4-3 tactics and unfortunately my defence couldn't cope with it . But just right after this terrible game Southampton performed fantastically against my former club Wigan getting the biggest win to the club's history of records .

My new main forward Jelle Vossen scored beautiful hat-trick and confirmed that there is no place in the first squad now for our slow old star - Marius Niculae.

After all aforementioned on the picture matches Southampton appeared on the 9th position which is unsatisfactorily. The board is disappointed due to this fact and early League Cup knockout. Of course, it was a bad draw for us to have Arsenal on so early stage (by the way my first drawn opponent in FA cup is Man City :) ) but they do not mind about that . The board needs just result.

But the good thing is that we are very near Champions League zone (not only UEFA cup). Top half teams are very tightly located in the table...

And some player stats for you:

Here you can see that few of transferred players can be congratulated with successful debut. First of all - Jelle Vossen. Brilliant striker, master of the first touch scoring and making ball pick ups in the opposition's area! Ismael Bangura showed himself as consistent performer and good dribbler. Though he doesn't score goals for a while. Victor Dobresku became useful winger coming from substitution. He has feeling of goal and likes very much to dribble an opponent player :)

The best old players are Dmytro Chygrynskyi (simply the best defender of Southampton), Massimo Donati (because main assister after Wijnaldum's depature), Daniel De Ridder (I use him as MC with forward arrow).

The current first squad on the tactics screen looks in the following way now:

Normally Dobresku is on the substitution bench, Nicolae Mitea - AML, Bangoura - AMR. But now Mitea is injured for 4 months...