Lawrie: I've always thought David Moyes was good at his job

Looking back, Saints have played three, but only produced two points so far. So a win is obviously much-needed.

Unfortunately, the team we play against this afternoon, West Ham, we have not beaten in our last seven attempts, losing six of them.

I’ve always thought David Moyes was good at his job and I remember defending him after his first spell at West Ham when, for some reason, they moved him on.

But amazingly, 18 months later, he was brought back in again. And I think in some ways that has helped him get results even more, to prove the people he was working with then, wrong.

They have played three this season, winning two and drawing one.

West Ham was always made famous of course after the World Cup win when the captain of England Bobby Moore, the hat-trick scorer Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters were all from that one London club.

They are rarely mentioned as being the main London club, as the likes of Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea tend to get the headlines. So they have got lots of things to prove people wrong with.

But I’m sure Ralph and his players will realise it is not an easy fixture. St Mary’s I am sure will be full. Getting out of the house to football games is even more attractive now, with the virus still affecting people’s jobs etcetera.

And also, the interesting thing is not just to see Ralph trying to get the first win, but to potentially see the new signings Lyanco and Thierry Small, who, with due respect, many people may not have heard of. That is the general situation these days with Premier League teams often signing players from all over the world.

But the followers are not really bothered I suppose where the players are from or where they’ve been, it’s what they do now. The normal good thing about a two-week break is the opportunity for the manager or head coaches to introduce the new signings into the training sessions and sort out the best system to be using. But we have to remember, being in the Premier League means that a lot of your players are not with you in that period, because they are off playing international football.

With so many different nationalities off the pitch, lots have been to different parts of the world. Hopefully they have not been injured or not been too far away to be worn out with the long distance travels. But the same will apply to both teams on Saturday.

Let’s hope we can break West Ham’s unbeaten run against Saints and with of course Manchester City coming up, Ralph will definitely be wanting the three points today.

Aside from Moyes, West Ham also now have Stuart Pearce on their coaching staff.

He will be remembered by many people for his 78 games for England, some of which came when I was working with Graham Taylor.

He had an aggressive type of nature playing at full-back on the pitch. I’ve often over the years compared the likes of Franny Benali to Stuart, when I would say off the pitch you couldn’t find nicer gentlemen, on the pitch for 90 minutes, they would actually kick their granny if necessary!

Thanks for reading

I’m not very well trained at modern day iPads etcetera, but I have found how to see my column online. And there are comments often underneath. It’s interesting just to hear what supporters think.

Last week there was only a couple, but one was from a gentleman called Joel who was saying how he sees the column each week, but the interesting thing was he is based in western Canada.

He mentioned his dad, Alan, who I seem to remember was a scout at Saints many, many years ago. So thank you for reading from so far away and for your support. It is interesting to know how the Echo can be read with modern technology all around the world.