Fabrice29

Yeah man, you keep dreaming of "your boys" finally playing a big part in something for us that isn't a relegation when they enter their fourth season here but write off a 19year old lad in his first because he isn't MLT. Good stuff.

Good luck trying to convince anyone sane that Onuachu and Sulemana bring more value than Dibling fella. You obviously prefer your few mazy dribbles and tap ins to cost around 40 million euros combined.

Dibling has 4 goals and 2 assists in all competitions. "Sully" has 2 goals 1 assist. Pauk 4 goals 1 assist Fernandes 2 goals 5 assists. The 19yr old isn't MLT though so he's pretty much nothing whilst two players we spent big on 2 years ago to keep us up and now face their 2nd relegation with Saints deserve their place more. Perfectly normal stuff.

He’s slightly out of form but I’d say a combination of a) being in a team that is piss poor b) a team that is no longer set up to get the best out of him c) being asked to play a disciplined role in a structure that he probably hasn’t played in all his youth career d) coming up against clubs that know him and his game more and more than they did and e) playing against established PL players for the first time are all reasons why he might be ‘a shadow of his earlier self’ personally. I’ve said on here before under Martin he was in a side which for all its faults was set up to get Dibling and Fernandes on the half turn in the middle of the pitch. We’re completely different now and they are both asked to play more disciplined roles and the team is going very direct to the lad up top. I’d be surprised if Dibling has played this way before but it’s no surprise that the more rounded, more experienced and more flexible one of the two is adapting better and more consistently and lasting longer.

No, what I’m saying is the kid is 19 and there’s probably some mitigating factors as to why he should be spared wild assumptions about effort and attitude. You don’t know him or his attitude and there’s not enough body of work to have expectations for him. The only expectation anyone should have for him is the expectation they’d have for any 19 year old in any normal situation, inconsistency and learning.

Prevent maybe not but he would really help. Exactly this. There’s people in yesterday’s team who are about to have a 2nd relegation with Southampton on their CV. Some consistently played every week of those two relegations, some considered not good enough on one or both occasions, some fell out with people during those relegations leading to them leaving and some were drafted in specifically to help us get out of relegation trouble who haven’t done so and still continue to not do so and continue to come up short of the required quality…but is there a 19yr old kid whose running style or body language I don’t like? Did he fail to do exceptional things against established PL players in the 15 minutes he was asked to play yesterday!? Yes!? Pile in on him instead and make sure everyone else is noted down as ‘busting a gut’..whatever that means.

Yeah yeah yeah, all those busting a gut and giving us something when all hands are at the pump actually failed to pick up the striker in the box again but lets blame the kid who didn't run past everyone like you wanted him too. I think you're angry at the wrong person pal.

848. Which is 200 minutes more than Mara got last season, who scored 3 goals and I don't remember people arguing he should have been given a whole season in the Championship playing to his qualities.

I think the value of him getting us back to the Prem would exceed that value and weirdly the longer Dibling and his team don't sign a new contract then better for the club because his salary outlay wont be that big so Saints will be weighing up holding out and letting him run down that contract but benefitting financially from his performances rather than a fee. Then it becomes a test of Dibling and his team and how much they want a pay rise knowing to get it they'll have to add longer to his contract. Think the club hold a lot of cards here if they frame it like that but the risk is starting next season badly and then having to cash grab on Dibling. Obviously, but the point is, I don't think clubs will care too much that he didn't settle at Chelsea considering both City and Liverpool have benefited significantly from signing players that didn't settle at Chelsea.

Some of the best players in PL history haven't settled well at Chelsea to be fair.

Think Bednarek and Stephens being considered brilliant and fine is part of the problem why we have less than zero belief we can win a game to be fair.

"All fair and I don't want to knock him too much but when we really needed a spark I looked at the kid in the team who is playing his first full season in professional football, has lost a manager he described as a second dad and has a team around him that is not only crumbling at every moment it's asked to step up but is predominantly asked to play a kick and run style that isn't totally suited to him and then I got annoyed when he didn't run with the ball past fully grown athletes like I expected him to"

There’s nothing in that post that we weren’t doing last year. The problem is the moment the head of everything left all the joined up thinking seem to dissipate and never replaced the head ‘talented person’ (Wilcox). Not sure 3 years is fair in that sense. Challenge now is to get back to where we were at the end of last season and do the equivalent of this season better with more clarity, more structure and more joined up thinking…when we get there.

In video form here for those interested

Think some of this is aimed at me because I suggested he'll manage in European football one day. Nobody was suggesting he'd be at a club like Bayern or was on the same trajectory as Kompany though, I think that was widely mocked by most including Martin himself from memory. We've got worse by almost every metric btw. This is getting really boring though, I think everyone agrees the clubs a mess. Some think the manager who got us back here did a good job and maybe completely throwing him or at least some of the principles he installed and recruited for completely away after a bad few months was a bit silly especially as it's been replaced by a whole lot of nothingness. Some think we're miles better off because of it. They'll never agree. Hopefully we can get back to some joined up thinking again in the summer, get promoted and be better next time. Not sure anyone is going to come out of this particular arguement with any grace until then at least. Anyway as we're being hot on what people were saying..this is getting a lot closer than you imagined isn't it?

At no point have I said stop posting if you don't have a link ffs You've thrown a hissy fit, started a lame twitter account and referenced this in almost every post for the last two months all because I had the audacity to wonder where you get your info from and the even bigger audacity to question it when lots of it appears to be nonsense or regurgitated from somewhere. I'd quite like you to carry on posting for your own sake please. And here's a couple of Subomi Dare links for your pleasure to get you started too. 🚨 EXCL: Understand Nigerian youngster Subomi Dare has joined the club on trial. The talented winger, was previously with Southampton and was spotted with our U21’s warming up at Stevenage on Friday night before the game vs Blackburn. 🇳🇬 Good luck @michael__dare 💙🤍 Tottenham could complete a Southampton hat-trick in the upcoming transfer window

Wrong about the game time but rest of the points stand. Suspect he's suffering from a bit of a burn out and the challenge of being a known talent now but his biggest set back is the team around him being utter shite. Either he's not playing with a striker or he's playing with one thats really bad. He's only got Fernandes to link with and unlike the previous manager the team doesn't have any patterns of play that are designed to break them into space. I find it frustrating that he's clearly spent quite a bit of time playing centrally before coming into our first team yet none of our play now is designed to get him into those areas. Totally get why he doesn't defend from there right now but he's asked to stay wide and just do his trick of running with the ball. His best stuff earlier in the season came from being asked to roam from wide positions and move centrally if he felt it was right. Now its just to stay wide, link with a 6'7 striker who barely holds up the ball, barely wins a header and barely creates space for himself. No wonder Dibling finds himself losing the ball a lot. Thought he'd stay earlier in the season even when relegated but not so confident now. Much better environments on offer I suspect.

Keep posting fella, one day you'll be right about something. I promise.

Yesterdays biggest problem was our lack of attacking threat. No formation or team selection changes that and my evidence would be pretty much every other game this season we've probably cursed the lack of quality attacking players and yet we've played various different formations and selections. You're welcome to point to evidence to suggest anyone in our current squad could make us a bigger threat depending on where the manager places them on the pitch if you like but our top scorer in the PL this season having 3 goals would suggest you'll struggle to find it. I'm in no way defending yesterdays selection or tactics btw (i actually had a pop at them during the week and suggested maybe starting without a striker at home to Wolves wouldn't be popular much to somebody on here being equally as outraged by my suggestion) and nor am I defending this manager but I'm just beyond the point of thinking changing the manager again would be anything other than shifting the blame onto someone else for a short period.

I think whatever manager we bring in results will dictate the narrative around them. You can bring in someone ‘normal’ and 3 defeats later people will be finding a stick to beat them with, whether it be playing out the back, formation, players you pick or whatever else people stumble upon. I don’t think either of our managers this season have helped themselves but at some stage a grown up will have to come along and identify that over 2 seasons in the PL and 5 managers that maybe there is something different at play. If your players are quite clearly not good enough then the inevitable bad results will happen. If people are happy to live in a world where they think it’s as simple as ‘play 4 at the back, 3 in midfield, 2 wide players and a striker’ that would suddenly turn everyone happy then good for them but I’m not as deluded as that. Specifically we’ve got the worst strike force in the league and central to that seems to be a kid in his debut season and two guys who failed to help us last time we were in this league and one of whom barely helped when we were in a lesser league. Whatever simple/complex/genius/deluded formation you think we should deploy will always be hampered by that imo. Oh and btw ‘Playing a back 4, three central midfielders (one being Fernandes getting forward), 2 threatening wide players and a central striker would provide shape, numbers in midfield and a threat. We’d lose more than we’d win, we’d go down, but we’d at least make a game of it.’ We made a game of it yesterday, as we did last week and as we have done at various times this season under different managers, tactics and philosophy’s but guess what…our lack of goals and our ability to concede them with ease has let us down each time.

Fucking hell

You're probably right to be fair. 3 managers over 1 PL season is pretty dumb and I probably wont ever not think that.

There was people on here talking about the new manager being needed to make us more competitive and less of a laughing stock. Actively being pleased that Juric was a breath of fresh air and a taskmaster. Which all sounds wonderful until you lose games on a consistent basis and now he's clueless and guess what we're still a laughing stock and not any more competitive really. We might be slightly different but we're not really any better. I'm not a massive fan of this guy and I'm not going to launch a huge defence of the bloke but it's really easy to just call managers clueless, woeful, out of their depth etc and demand we appoint a 3rd one and 6th in two PL seasons but unless anyone can convince me anything changes I don't really see the point....?

Not like you to get something wrong fella. Read it again.

Of our top 11 appearance makers in the PL this season, 4 were relegated with us previously, 2 with someone else and 4 are in their first season in the PL. Downes is the other. That also doesn't include Onuachu or Sulemana who twice now have stupidly been relied upon to get us out of trouble.