IT’S A very interesting week or two coming up for Saints and their supporters.

With the international break, it’s given managers of course the chance to get some of their injured players more time to get fit.

But it’s also an anxious time if you’ve had a few players away around the world with different countries, to see how they are when they get back.

In Saints’ case, most people are saying we’re safe from relegation now. And looking at the league table of course, I can understand that.

But one of the two bottom teams, West Brom, is who we are away to on Monday evening. Whilst it seems fairly obvious that they will get relegated, I’m sure Ralph will be reminding his team that their last game was a 5-2 win away to Chelsea.

Their manager is Sam Allardyce, who has a record of never managing a team which has got relegated and he has got lots of teams promoted. He will have been working away to keep the players in the same attitude that they were at Stamford Bridge and will no doubt be saying, ‘everybody’s written you off, but if we keep doing what we did there, who knows?’ with teams just above them like Fulham and Newcastle on a slide at the moment.

The other possible problem Ralph would have is once he has got it out the players’ minds that West Brom could be relegated, to remind them this will be much harder than they think, the week after takes us to Wembley. Certainly in my day, as I’ve said before, players from abroad, such as Ivan Golac and Ivan Katalinic when I was managing, it was their dream was to walk out at Wembley. Whether it’s the same or not, I don’t know, but it’s still a massive thing for any player to want to play there and of course then go back there for the final.

So the important thing is keep winning, get the points in the bag and I really think another three on Monday really will probably make us safe and sound. But in football you never know, and that’s of course what makes it so interesting and exciting compared to many other sports.

  • I didn’t quite catch the whole story, but I heard that a player, Kevin De Bruyne, had just done a new deal for about £300,000 or £400,000 per week at Manchester City. Apart from that being a bit of a shock, the main point the presenter on the radio made was that he did it without an agent.

I smiled at that because normally to get a deal of that size, the agent will want a fair chunk of it.

Numbers revealed recently showed English clubs across the top four divisions spent more than £317million on agents’ fees in the past 12 months, with £6.8m of that coming from Saints.

I think lots of things have changed, because apparently clubs now have got to give the agent an amount in addition to the transfer fee to the other club. And the agent no doubt gets a bit from the player as well.

When agents first came into football, it was really him sitting opposite the manager to haggle over the player’s contract and then the player had to give him some of it himself.

But apparently some of the top agents are multi-millionaires nowadays, so they would not be too happy to hear a player has done a deal himself. So good luck to him!

  • I read in the Echo recently that our manager Ralph has got a hip problem. Believe me, this is one of the areas you do not want to be out of order.

I’m a bit of an expert, as I’ve told the story many times, many, many years ago I went into a hospital in the Midlands on a Wednesday, I had my right hip done on the Thursday and my left hip done the following Thursday.

I was probably a bit of an experiment, but the surgeon that did it, Derek McMinn, who was an Irish surgeon, had invented a new method called resurfacing.

The normal one was a hip replacement. He didn’t believe in breaking the bone to put a long spike in with a small golf ball-sized thing on the top. Instead he still had to put a small spike in with a ball more the size of a snooker ball. Touch wood, I have never had any problems since.

I had a pop at tennis legend Sir Andy Murray a few years ago when he did an article saying how he had had his hip resurfaced and yet he was able to carry on a few months later at Wimbledon. He gave praise to a surgeon that had done it in America, but he said that he had invented it. Wrong, Andy. It was Mr McMinn and he was from Ireland.

So, if Ralph wants to know more about it, I’ll be delighted to help!