Liverpool and Southampton players observe the minutes silence for the murdered schoolgirls Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman at Anfield .
Gordon Strachan delicately indicates that by getting the bloody ball up front, we may stand a chance of getting it into the net.
Utter pants would describe Saints up front yesterday. It's not the first time either. Saints seem to lack any creative knowledge in how to unlock defences, and often look a bit clueless going for goal.
On yesterday's performance Pahars is still not fully fit; Beattie looks stranded and has to receive passes which don't suit his skills; Tessem is not a striker, regardless of what he has told his manager and Fernandes must be told to actually get telling balls into the box.
Defensively, Saints were erasable, although the loss of Lundekvam was a big blow.
Marians Pahars comes up second best against Hyppia. Pahars still looks a couple of matches away form being fully fit.
Gordon Strachan replaced Pahars with Tessem despite having Brett Ormerod on the bench. Ormerod looked sharp in pre season and was Strachan's choice to replace a fit Pahars at every opportunity last season.
Yet, it's Jo Tessem who is getting the nod up front. Although he fancies himself a striker, Jo's best position has always been in the centre of midfield. At a pinch he could move out to the right flank, although Telfer should be first choice there. The only way Ormerod will improve is with first team football, so if someon has to replace Pahars, I'd much rather it was him who came on.
The Saints team stand around and watch Diouff, in order to get a few pointers about how to score themselves.
Despite the slow nature of Saints scoring this season, remember that we didn't get a goal until our fourth league game last year. We managed to finish eleventh then, so it's not all bleak. Anders Svensson looks sharp and if the players around him are able to pass the ball around a bit more creatively, then we should see some returns.
Rupert Lowe has pretty much set Saints stall out to consolidate in mid table this season. We're not going to bring in anyone better than we have, so we can't really expect a huge improvement on the park. It will all come down to how much extra Strachan can get from his squad. Anywhere between 8th and 17th is possible this season (must not entertain thoughts of the "R" word) so we can expect some disappointmenst. Saints played reasonably well against Liverpool in a lot of areas, and we can only try and build on those positives against Chelsea.