Ted Bates Statue

I know we're only supposed to talk about the calendar year table when we're really shit, but we've just gone unbeaten against the top 3 sides of 2021 - the Manchester Clubs and West Ham(!)... I didn't see this coming but it's interesting to see this side evolving into a team that's hard to beat, for the first time since Puel left.

I can smell their chips on shoulders all the way over here. Imagine if we were in a title fight and our manager asked us to come down and make some noise, I doubt we'd get so upset amid the vertigo. They've obviously changed since the days of filling Maine Road in League One.

Juanmi scored twice against Celtic this evening in Europa. I read an interview with Hugo Scheckter a few months ago about a former Saints player whose Spanish wife settled so poorly in England that the club were forced to let the player leave for a lot less than his market value. No name was given but I presumed he was referring to Juanmi as the only Spanish player to leave in recent years, although I don't keep tabs on the nationality of player's spouses so it could have been someone else. There I was thinking it was that he wasn't really suited to English football.

I had dismissed it as a pre-prepared slow news day story, but the name is a bit too random. Allardyce or Pardew would be a more obvious name for a hack article. Either Crocker thinks that Hasenhuttl is underperforming, considering the newcomers to the squad, or Steve Cooper's agent is touting him for a new job and putting pressure on other clubs to sign him up. I believe that Hasenhuttl will get until the end of October to justify his continued presence and he's doing ok for now, so my guess is that it's the agent.

Totally agree - just like Gordon Strachan and Lawrie Mac, all were proven to be absolute frauds on the basis of their records after leaving us. If only we had competent managers in charge. But thanks to those buffoons, we will never truly know whether we could have benefitted from the delights of promotion, European qualification or even the occasional final.

That would about be as likely as Clive Woodward ending up in club football... oh.

It could well be a fairly ugly start for a few weeks, but I think we will finish comfortably above the relegation places and achieve a magnificent record-breaking 13th place trophy to silence all the doubters.

...I don't know.

Did anyone watch the game last night? Grateful that the drain-circling racism analysis has been moved to a new thread.

All this serves to reinforce the sense that a club lives and dies on its scouting department. They're unsung heroes, rarely made up of household names and others take the glory when they do their job well. You can talk as much as you like about fancy facilities, black box, 443 throughout the club, managerial philosophies, attitudes and playbook, but without the keen eye of the sort of people like Georges Prost or those individuals who warned Les Reed not to sign Guido Carillo, it all falls apart like a pack of cards. Same with the academy - if we are having problems in that area now, then you have to look back a number of years to identify where things went wrong.

Think the last time they posted they were dropping heavy hints that Flores was going to be our next manager. Honourable mention to EricB and LeG. Also SKD for quite a while.

Please score this.

Never mind this week's result, losing 7-1 and simultaneously blowing a 4 goal lead? Lawrie Mac must GO for the good of the football club.

I've had enough of other teams' players making history against us. Happy for him to give us a miss.

Interesting anecdote and to revisit the background on the original thread, I didn't know about any of that. I only recall he struggled for injury with us. Seems a bit shocking but not entirely surprising, tough decisions have to be made sometimes and we let go a lot of decent performers as we went up the divisions. In the strikers department alone we also showed the door to Barnard and Sharp despite all of them providing useful contributions in their short times here. Can't blame him if it left a bitter taste in the mouth though.

I'll take that as long as we aren't one of them. 4 PL teams guaranteed to be knocked out before the next round - can only be a good thing.

That would be unbelievably charmless, so maybe some of the Man Utd support then with memories like a goldfish after the weekend game. Looks like Bayern Munich have overshadowed us tonight anyway, they won 0-12 in their cup competition.

I'll take a draw TBF

It's usually at our lowest ebbs that we get pleasantly surprising results that give us all hope until the next battering.

We're not supposed to be able to hold onto our best players. FFS how can I use this as a stick to beat the club with now???

2009, come off it. It's autumn 2018... 😬

Neither did Livramento until 5th August 😂

Agreed, same happened with Jay Rod. It's a lot of money for us but we have to be patient - Adam and Adams are the starting goal threat for us now, with Broja and Tella in backup. I don't know why we gave Long a two year contract extension, surely he will see it out entirely on loan.

Very bandwagon, very modern art. Not my thing but as it's weird enough to fit in at the Tate Modern, hopefully each shirt is priced at £1M so that our marketing team can close the #commercialincomegap on all the other teams in our league.

Matty Targett to Villa, Jay Rod to West Brom, Jose Fonte to West Ham, Jack Cork to Swansea. You see, we just can't hold onto our best players.