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The most culpable of all? Give it a rest. Again, he is worthy of some criticism but he's put his money into the club.

It doesn't absolve him of criticism but it definitely absolves him of some criticism. He's not exactly a Rupert Lowe character using dodgy reverse takeovers to line his pockets at the expense of the club.

I think we can stop looking up the table. Only 9 points above the relegation zone which will no doubt be less by the time we lose at Fratton (guaranteed with our mentally weak team). Its pretty dire right now. Do I think somebody else could take the job and get us playing better and win more games than TE? Yes, but then the worry is we have another short term fix situation (like we did with Mark Hughes) and we'll be looking for their replacement this time next season at best. Unless we can appoint a manager who has the credentials to get us promoted next season (and I dont trust SR to get it right), we're likely stuck with TE for the season. Need to just hope he can get enough results for us to stay in the league. Embarrassing that it has come to this.

That was dire. We are going to end up somewhere around 12th-14th. With the resources at our disposal, that is a complete, total and utter failure. Tbh, squeaking into the play-offs in 6th place on goal difference would be - on any sensible metric - a very poor season indeed. And we look very unlikely to get close to even making that.

Or he came to Southampton with a chip on his shoulder that he didn't get the credit he deserved or because they weren't listening to his ideas.

I think he's brought in Rasmus and co because he knows he doesn't understand football. He's backed them financially. He's continued backing them despite last season. And, you can argue that's a good thing as, we did get promoted back up and he has trusted them to fix their mistakes. Which you want to an extent. The problem becomes one of being ruthless versus the sunk cost fallacy. At a certain point you'd have to think you've spent enough on players and changed managers enough that maybe the problem lies elsewhere. But then, Tonda genuinely seemed to be happy with our football in the first half. And I seriously doubt Mr Football's board updates bear much resemblance to reality. Solak will be hampered by the people he trusted to run this for him sharing selectively. Without another line of information he's going to reliant on those that are the problem. Which is the problem with being rich and going into a business you know nothing about with people who talk a good game. Or so they tell me.

I agree. Completely incapable of putting an effective management team in place and seemed to be sucked in by Ankersen and Kraft’s bullshit. He’s the most culpable of all. God knows how he built his media company.

We've been outplayed by most of the teams we've faced under Eckert, with the exception of Wednesday (who are a car crash), and injury ravaged Charlton (former league 1 side), and Leicester (who i suspect would have been right in that game without 10men). So yes, as it stands, we are bad enough to be looking over our shoulder. At his worst, this guy is another Southgate - his tactics are to hit it to a couple of dribblers / fast players to try and run at the opposition side on the counter, and then to try and park the bus and try to sit deep and defend whatever he's got. Originally i was saying he failed his only real challenge (Millwall) and wasn't convincing vs the likes of Brum and WBA etc... but actually its so bad now that you can look at it objectively and say the likes of Oxford and Norwich were relatively untroubled by us. If we keep him much longer and something doesn't radically change, we could certainly slide right back into the mire. We're lucky perhaps that Sheffield Wednesday are taking one of the three spots for certain this year. Form wise, we are comfortably a bottom 3 side at the moment - and that includes losses to Norwich and oxford - and we're certainly a long way off promotion contention playing like this. Worth noting, that our lucky stint of wins under eckert included WBA, and then before he got the job we also lost to Blackburn and failed to beat portsmouth or swansea (3 of those were home games vs sides below us - will we get better results away? or worse?). Next 3 matches are Hull (h), Sheffield Utd (h), skates (a) and stoke (a)... a promotion side would be looking at those targeting no losses and a minimum of 2 wins... who is confident we'll get more than 3-4 points playing as we are? As bad as we are, you'd still think we should be fine.... but....

I'm not convinced the "yeah, but he's put a lot of money in" mantra absolves him of maximum criticism. The fact he's spaffed so much money up the wall due to his poor judgement of business partners makes him less, rather than more, credible in my eyes.

Hoard

Having spent over 20 years in Product Management, this quote winds me up something chronic every time it appears. I would love to sit down with this guy and argue this point. If it works, why are you breaking it? What problem are you trying to solve? How are you making someone's life better and crucially, how are you maximising revenue? But what winds me up even more is HOW THE FK DOES THIS APPLY TO FOOTBALL? You have one objective, win, get 3 points. If you don't win, you look at why, how can you solve the problem of not winning? In our case it's glaring fking obvious ... buy a defence, get a goalie, don't play 5 at the back at home, have a midfield etc etc. There is always a problem to solve. I want to score more, I want to concede fewer goals, I want to get 3 points, I want more paying customers to turn up. Don't break anything, solve the problems. ARGH! Ted talk over.

Its a tad harsh on the promotion side to label them as "constant failure". But i support the general sentiment 😄🤣

He is demonstrably better than the other wankers running the club. He has a share of the blame for sure but it's just not correct to say he is no better than the others.

Don’t worry, Bazunu will drag us to where he belongs.

I left at 75 minutes, as I was driving from London. Doing so meant I beat the traffic and saved me probably 1 hour. I feel for those poor souls who are still on the coach on the way back. We should all get a refund.

Indeed. I was looking out for his demeanor after each goal and, unless my eyes were deceiving me, each time he just sloped back to the half way line ready to kick off again. No geeing up or admonishing the players. The least we can do is give the armband to the one and only player that seems to care rather than the shrug-shoulders brigade... #scienza

Exudes smugness

But one the guy got his show away, I did enjoy Baz being able to curve his arm and hand around the trajectory of the ball so that he managed to completely avoid touching it with any part of his limb, and allowing it to hit its desired target. Incredible skill to not get a hand on that, you can’t teach that.

He earns a fucking fortune and has regularly conceded goals left right and centre for 4 bloody years now, from being an absolutely fucking terrible shot stopper. People are sick of his relentless underperformance and looking like a fucking lost child in goal. There are others also at fault yes but he’s the longest serving failure of the lot , he needs to fuck off asap

“Not good enough,” Armstrong reflected. “I’ve touched on it before in a few interviews; first half we have to punish. “That’s where we’re at; we need a bit of luck on our side at the minute and we have to go in front early doors. When you don’t do that in this league, you get punished. “Second half was just flat. We didn’t come out going for them or anything, and then it’s a sloppy goal for the first one – a lack of communication, switching off, and their guy gets a free hit at goal. The way we reacted to that wasn’t good enough all over the pitch, myself included. “It’s a tough one to take because we’ve had a lot of games come up recently, we’ve taken every game to the best of our ability to go and put it on to the pitch, but today we weren’t good enough. We have to go again.” I see Armstrong is also pushing the not good enough after we conceded nonsense. A classic example of the Saints mindset right now. Pretend to take responsibility while bemoaning bad luck like we were on top in the first half rather than under self indicted siege. What does doing better look like Adam? It sounds like you're saying it wasn't good enough but we were unlucky and did our best. Make your mind up. Also, saying you have to score first is just bollocks. You deal with what happens rather than shrugging and downing tools because something doesn't go your way. If you were captain why didn't you try, you know, captaining? The armband isn't just there to keep your fucking arm warm.

I went to that travesty of a game today. We had five very good chances until the 55th minute, but don't let that fool you. We were still playing Russball out of the back with CBs and Manning who are singularly ill-suited to play that style, we were slow and ponderous and trying long balls up to Arma, who is barely taller than the grass. But that was nothing compared to the second half utter capitulation. At least I was able to leave on 75 minutes and beat the traffic. Cold comfort. Bazunu is poor, 5 at the back is a joke, we are too slow and too small. Leo's performance has also tailed off. All in all, avoiding relegation surely now has to be the aim - but I am not confident we can achieve it.

Id take someone like Alex Neil at Millwall tbh knows how to set up a team properly even without having a bunch of stars.. double his wages and get him in

The bloke shot straight in the middle of the goal. AM saves that every day of the week. Had he been playing behind the exact same players it wouldn’t have been 4, I’m convinced of that. The first one he had his legs so far open I thought Bonnie Blue was in the nets, the second one was easily saveable and the 4th was down to him and his weak parry. Even the third one he dived in completely the wrong direction…He’s a clown…

It was more than 3!