way down south

worst case scenario is we do a sunderland and end up in league 1 in two years, gao bolts after selling for a quarter of what he bought us for to the first bidder, and if we are lucky enough, it'll be a guy who cares and knows enough about us and football in general to help us climb back up again in afew years time. trying to be optimistic either way.

unless ralph says he's had enough and quits, we aren't about to sack him. for one thing, we can't afford to pay him off, then pay another to take charge as well. and for another, it wouldn't be the logical thing to do as despite his mind boggling decisions with lineups and subs, he's still the best manager we could hope for in our situation. and plus the players' inadequacy is more to blame for our circumstances than his tactical blunders, so whats more likely to happen is that we persist with ralph, we gather however little points we can until january and HOPEFULLY the board gathers whatever funds they can and give it to him to rectify as many problem positions as he can, namely RB, LB, CM and i don't think we'll sign an 8th cb so i guess we struggle on with the current lot. 40 - 50 mil would be needed, god knows where that kind of dosh will come from.

true that he would be playing a lot with bertrand not featuring much due to injury or suspension or otherwise, but doesn't change the fact that targett was still a slow, and barely adequate deputy to bertie while he was here, not too fussed about him getting sold, much more annoyed we don't have any fullbacks upto the standard required for ralphs "system" or the pl in general.

no mention of who or what our plans are to hire a dof in the echo as they rubbish the preston guy link, which i guess means we have either signed or are completing the signing of another. atleat i hope it does as it would be worrying if he refused us as he isn't willing to sink all the way lower than where he currently is after coming to saints, after assessing our situation.

whats the deal with all of our more promising academy players being extremely injury prone? all of obafemi, nlundulu, hesketh also smallbone cdjfu in the first team, but they all seem to spend more time injured than actually playing. is it an issue with our medical staff or something else? obafemi for example is extremely fast, strong and has decent technical skill also is a good finisher, due to the combination of his diminutive stature, speed and strength, he could be a nightmare for defenders to mark and defend against. those attributes would be useful for ralph but he can't play one game before being sidelined for weeks afterwards. same thing with nlundulu, he seems very strong, decent technique and finishing. also useful as a focal point for long balls from the defence. he's quite quick for a lad of his size as well. but, he had a major injury a while back then came back to go on a good run to the point of being tipped to make his debut, now he's injured. just what is happening is what i don't get.

agree that our reputation is at its lowest, but we still offer pl standard wages which'll be enough to turn heads of players from other leagues. but the stumbling block would be the prices we'd be asked by their clubs. an experienced CB should be available for relatively low fees, but the CM we'd need is surely out of our price range unless ofcourse we unearth a gem available at around our price range. mcginn is an example. but for that to happen, our scouting and recruitment needs to have improved massively from its current state of googling and watching youtube clips of players.

sure but that will be a big IF. how many teams can hold man city even for 45 minutes? its extremely difficult even for decent teams, which means for a team as mistake ridden and bereft of confidence and concentration as saints its impossible, thus we can't hope to just defend and rely on our shambolic defence to keep out the likes of sterling, de bruyne, aguero, jesus and silva. our defence couldn't be trusted to keep out a league one level attack as evidenced by the pompey game where they battered us early in the first half. we'd be fooling ourselves if we think we could negate one of the most talented and prolific attackers in europe. our best hope would be to field the quickest players we have in attack, and the same defence as last tuesday and hope that after absorbing their barrage of attacks, we try to run at their goal as often and as quick as possible with armstrong hopefully linking play. i hope we drop jwp and replace him with an u23. are there any decent DMs in our u23 these days? as jwp offers nothing more than running in close proximity of a player without any effort whatsoever to recover the ball, if ralph can dig up any decent academy player who can lineup alongside rom and armstrong in midfield, it would be magnificent.

i think it'll something like this mccarthy valery danso yoshi stephens hoj jwp(sadly) rom armstrong redders ings stephens is gonna get a run of games now that we've had the shoking revelation that vestergaard is extremely poor. i really hope that he's motivated and grabs his chance with both hands. also danso at CB looks an actual footballer, baffling how ralph failed to play him and instead persisted with the oaf that is vest. it'll be 11 men behind the ball in the 1st half, just like tuesday, and if we're lucky enough, we'll only be a couple goals down by half time. then we'll try to play forward a bit then if we're really lucky we grab a goal, then they pile on the pressure then we give away a goal or two so FT 4 - 1. thats as optimistic as i can get about this game.

agree with this, i said something similar before. but re. jwp his fabled workrate involves him running close to player with the ball, it doesn't involve him tackling or making any kind of effort to recover the ball. he's a timid, weak and slow player who adds nothing defensively. also he rarely passes forward, which effectively rules him out of contributing in any passage of play. in january, if we're lucky enough to get there with ralph still in charge, we need an experienced CB to play alongside bednarek or danso more preferably as i think the former is too slow, and organize the back 4. kjaer has been mentioned on here and i think someone of his type will be within our reach with ~10mil enough to get him. as for the CM we need, i don't think we'll have the budget for it as it would take upwards of 30m to get anyone decent, which is way too high for us since our "billionaire" owner allegedly doesn't have a pot to p!ss in. so i guess we'll have to crawl through to the summer with our current selection of plodders in midfield.

man city did indeed take it easy on us in the cup game, goal difference means nothing if you win the game, and they did so very very easily, the league tho is a different proposition, they'll score doublle figures if they can, and with de bruyne and sterling back i really fear for us. i mean imagine sterling running at our shambles of a defence or de bruyne carving our feeble midfield apart time and time again. i saw their game against villa last weekend and sterling tore apart their defence (miles better than ours) countless times. he could get a double hattrick against us. i for one won't be watching. ralph and the players seem to think we made it out of there with a relatively respectable defeat because we showed a "reaction". i don't believe for one second that it was our effort that kept the scoreline respectable, pep probably thought it better not to destroy our club and get the manager fired by embarrasing us so soon after the leicester game. make no mistake, ralph would've left and the club wouldn't recover if we suffered a consecutive humiliation.

maybe this is a back 3 with hoj at lwb. and jwp got picked? why? why does ralph insist we suffer through another game of JWP using his invisibility cloak to disappear for the entire 90 minutes apart from when he appears long enough to f*k up our corners or free kicks.

you know, i was hoping we ditch the hopeless plodders in the "senior" team and replace them with a few of the promising u23s, but as it turns out they lost 3 nil to the leicester u23s this weekend and their results this season have been as hopeless as the first teams. there really is no way out of this nightmare is there? atleast not until january, when we can clutch at straws all we like only to be let down yet again.

you know, i was hoping if we ditch the hopeless plodders in the "senior" team and replace them with a few of the promising u23s, but as it turns out they lost 3 nil to the leicester u23s this weekend and their results this season have been as hopeless as the first teams. there really is no way out of this nightmare is there?

correct, can't say they earned their wages that day, it could be argued they haven't earned their wages since day one of the season as they have been well below the standard required and were churning out gutless performances in every game, even the ones we won except djenepo who won us both those games. they should've been docked a months worth of wages i say owing to that utter lack of professionalism. they made this respected club the butt end of jokes for the forseeable future. that should be a criminal offence. im now avoiding my best mate who's an everton fan who i was sh@tting on about silva being clueless and his club being a sh@t show.

100 % this! if i was utterly and deeply embarassed and humiliated and made to look stupid at my work place in what i do and it was all my fault, i wouldn't cope with it, do football players have a whole different mental wiring? how can money be the only way they measure their success? how is being made to look like the amateurs they are not a disgrace to them, when they're paid in millions each year because of their supposed "professional" qualifications?

They donated ONE days wage so they must be ticked off. i think citeh need to watch their backs. also i see we've become the butt end of jokes from other leagues as well, how do the players and staff feel about themselves after that? it must take huge b*lls to show up infront of the fans, unless they're some mechanical beings who don't have feelings and emotions, they must be sh*tting themselves thinking about what might happen on tuesday.

frankly it makes no sense to talk about who plays where now, unless some radical and dramatic changes happen, I have no energy or enthusiasm to even think about anything Saints related. it's such a pain to support this club. I wish I never did, what's worse is I don't know how to not care about all the sh*t that goes down at Saints. I wish there was an emotional button you press when you don't want to follow Saints anymore.

I stopped watching after the red and we went 2 behind, it was obvious we were in for an embarrassment. I couldn't sleep then went online to see the result, for some reason I hoped we maybe fought to keep the scoreline respectable, I couldn't have been more wrong. if I was Ralph and the players, I would've submitted my resignation the next morning. atleast Ralph will do so, unimaginable to think he could turn this around. and it's man city up next, run, Ralph, run! is what he's probably thinking.

Ralph will leave on his own, as a 9 nil defeat at home to a mid table team isn't something you bounce back from. I can't see him being able to even speak to the players after that. if it was Liverpool or man city that did this to us, then it could've been argued that it was their world-class quality coupled with our lack of quality that brought about the defeat. but Leicester? no way we can argue with any decision anyone makes currently. when Ralph quits, we hire monk, and we struggle to the end of the season by which time we'll have already been relegated. we sack a few of the deadwood(coaches and players) if at all possible and look to the brightest in the academy and monk to come straight back up. best case scenario IMO.

as you may have noticed, scoring scrappy goals and digging in for the win hasn't been a usual occurance here, its usually the opposite that happens often with the opposition scoring a scrappy goal or a straight forward one and they dig in for the points, also usually succeed in grabbing another goal on the break after we commit too much of our powder puff offensive players forward. i for one would be glad if we succeeded in pulling off that strategy in the games where we are clear underdogs, which is usually the case this season even against teams comparable to ours. the likes of brighton, bompey, wet spam, leicester even everton were teams you'd usually expect us to dominate and get a win against a few seasons back, but now we need to play as a technically inferior team. which means letting them have possession, stay compact, work hard, win the ball and hit them on the break then dig deep to defend the lead and hope to inflict more damage on the counter while they get more desperate and commit forward. we seem to have the players to play on the counter as well IMO with ings, redders and boufal/djenepo all suited to running against a disorganized defence. lets hope the midfield and defence have enough steel to resist an onslaught of oppo attack for the majority of games.

“The time has come to get what I call dirty wins and make a goal and defend with everything you have and make it as nasty as possible for the opponent to get something here." those are ralphs words pre leicester game, i like the fact that he is willing to play dirty for the points just hope the players agree and are willing to show the commitment to get a nasty win. also hope we give vardy a taste of his own tricks and we sneak a nasty tackle in there and send him packing early.

Also, i had a quick look at their forum, they seem more arrogant than rodgers. they seem to have a very high opinion of themselves. reading what they have to say, you'd be forgiven for thinking you were on an established top 4/6 team's forum. here is one post from there, "We shouldn't have lost to Liverpool's first team so there's no ****ing way we're not smashing their reserves." Now im praying we are the ones who will be bringing these delusional c@nts back down to earth by giving them a good stuffing.

despite all logic pointing towards a convincing defeat for us, i feel strangely optimistic about this game. yes, we are poor at home, yes, we have inferior players in every area of the pitch, but if djenepo is able to start and we play with intensity and commitment, we could upset the odds and grab an unlikely win here. what we need is our back 3 and gunn, who despite his obvious lack of convincing performances will be selected ahead of mccarthy, to avoid costly mistakes. also ralph will need to find a way to avoid vest coming up against vardy and getting burnt. we need to play a really low block and avoid any space for rat face vardy to run in behind, the leicester midfield are going to look for those spaces behind our back line. failing that they will look to whip balls from wide areas so our wing backs will need to track and if possible prevent their wide players from getting in those crosses. if our wing backs and our back three play perfectly, i am certain the likes of ings, redmond djenepo/boufal will create and score enough to see us get the points. up the saints! lets wipe that arrogant smirk off of rodger's ugly mug.

our problem isn't winning the ball back tho is it? its what we do after we win it back. aside from ings who usually goes for goal immediately as he's got confidence now, when we win the ball back in other areas, we pass it either sideways or back to the defence which kills the momentum. hoj, rom and jwp are the biggest culprits, they win it back and either dither on the ball or pass it to the cbs in an attempt to retain possession who either lose it and we concede a goal or shot, or they don't do anything meaningful with it. ralphs whole idea was based on extremely quick transitions, usually a few seconds. i don't know why we choose to do the opposite right now. maybe its a confidence issue or its that the players don't have the vision and skill to break the lines quickly enough.

this. but still think the championship will be a struggle for him, there is high physical demands down there. moi, as weak as he is, will get eased off the ball down there which happened time and again while he was here.