Agree on the whole but:

A) so throwing Ward-Prowse in at Man City is different than throwing Shaw in at Aresenal? How?

In truth its easier for a youngster to come in to a team the further up field he plays, but in defence or goal its particularly harder

We wouldn't want Shaw to have a lapse in concentration and gift a goal to the opposition in the last ten minutes of a game would we?

No we wouldnt, and we also wouldnt want a promising young talent ruined because he his skinned by Arsenal on his league debut just because people that have never seen him play reckon he is ready

I would not be surprised to see Shaw start given the recent deficiencies at left back plus NA's habit of making these decisions. It has to happen sooner or later as Fox is clearly not the long term answer and the lack of a signing indicates that Shaw will be given his chance. Sooner the better as far as I am concerned.

Nick, your comments are pretty flimsy. Centre mid is a much more influential position than left back. There is no reason why he couldn't fit in as well as JWP has. Secondly, we aren't a charity. Our current LB is a liability so we should try Shaw. Not playing him because it might not work out is ridiculous. He should be given a run to see what happens. He can't be any worse than Fox right now and if nothing else it will give DF a kick up the arse should he need to return.
Whilst we ate at it, I would also want Gazzaniga to be given a run. He's a year older than Butland, so there is no reason why he can't do better than Davis, who I see as another big liability. Joe Hart was playing for City at his age.

Whilst I understand where StSaint is coming from to be fair Davis is a liability who has saved penalties from two of the best players in the world already this season. If he can sort out his distribution I still think he can do a decent job.
Similarly while I am not one of Fox's greatest admirers I think he has been more solid than I expected this season. Our problems stem from poor marking at set pieces (Ferdinand's header) and a central defensive pairing that lacks pace, decision making ability ( 2 soft penalties conceded) and is prone to panic. Hopefully the new signing can sort some of this out.

Oh for a blond leftback with wristbands!

Davis isn't good enough for the Premiership, he had a good season in the Championship last season and deserved to be one of at least two competing for the goalie slot. If Gazzaniga is good enough to sit on the bench (bearing in mind that in the past NA has often not named a goalie sub on the bench) then he should be good enough to play and given a chance.

OK perhaps that is risky, but playing KD is risky too; If Gazzaniga isn't good enough to replace KD (and I hope he is) why did we buy him rather than going for a more experienced player. The club's position makes no sense!

Danny fox's replacement in the scotland match got man of the match. He was also a uy supposed to be out of his depth at that level. Anyway, Shaw looked very comfortable against ajax. Unfortunately when I saw him on tour in france/switz, he was playing left wing. But I'd still rather have shaw up against walcott than fox any day and actually I think fox is a decent player.. Just not against a pacey winger.

The actual liabilities in defence are the centre halves rather than the left back, yet its always Fox who is slagged off as being the problem defensively, what I find incredulous about the whole situation is that in the main most people who are demanding Shaw in the team have never actually seen him play a competitive match, they are demanding his inclusion based only on the fact that they are told he is a great left back.

No one has actually picked me up on the fact that I said that he played against Coventry last season in the article when it was actually Millwall, I wondered if anyone would mention this, no one did, I can also assume that you all dont know that he played his 13 minutes in that game on the left of midfield and not in defence.

Fox seems to be the scapegoat for many, the real scapegoats are those that failed to sign Buttner or a quality replacement for Fox, last season it was all about In Nigel we trust, well so far Nigel seems to think Shaw isnt ready yet otherwise he would have thrown him on as a sub left winger against United

Judging by some of the comments on this site you might think that some Saints' fans have lost their sense of perspective. Surely it's a little too early to be pressing the panic button.

Danny Fox was definitely one of the weaker links against Man Utd and was a clear culprit for the City third goal, but does he deserve quite the stick he's got? And the rest of the defence too? We haven't exactly got drubbed this season yet and Man Utd and Man City aren't exactly benchmark teams for us this season. I agree we need to bolster the centre of defence and have more competition in that area, but we have that now so let's just see how the Japanese lad does.

Also, is there anyone out there who realistically thinks we've have picked up any more points if we’d had a different keeper? Admittedly Kelvin needs to work on his kicking, but he hasn't really made any terrible mistakes which have cost us. I personally can’t think of any Adam Federici moments. Are the same fans that are calling for a change the same ones that were calling for Bart to get his chance prior to the Blackpool game?

As for Shaw I agree with Nick, why the massive call for an unproven player to come into a defence who are currently under scrutiny, just so he might have a memorable debut for all the wrong reasons. JPW understandably looked a little nervous on his debut, but if Shaw gets the jitters there's no-one going to be there to fill in behind him. I think we all just need to trust the manager to get us through this testing start and then see how we fair against teams we'd be expected to beat based on our last 'big game' performances with our new personnel.

I agree with bstokesaint for the most part. However it's not just in the last couple of games that Fox has been iffy. In the latter part of last season he developed a habit of drifting in and leaving too much space for the right winger making it easy for opposition sides to attack down the right and get crosses in which in turn puts extra pressure on the central defenders. Look at the Man U game. How many times was Valencia on his own and receiving the ball in plenty of space and it was that which allowed him to cross for the first Man U goal.

Fox started really well last season but he developed bad habits which haven't been bashed out of his game.

I'm a bit worried that the only natural replacement is Shaw but if you're good enough, you're old enough. Look at Bale, Walcott and Ox in recent years.