Patches O Houlihan

Plus I thought he did pretty well last night. There were times when he was receiving the ball from the defence with an opponent tight to him, and he was able to turn them and play a forward ball. This is a key skill, that will have been taught at Man City. Even JWP used to struggle with it. He's not the finished article, but he seems to be a good egg, and seems to be improving. Realistically we don't have the funds to stump up for a spare 6 in case Flynn eats Chicken gizzards again. Fingers crossed Shea pushes on.

Perplexity AI - I took a leaf out of your book! 😁

Yes. They've done OK too even if they have hair designed in Denmark 😉

Charlie Taylor 😁

1) June-August 2024: Going OK 2) Jan 2024: Loaned Brooks (Good) & Rothwell (OK ish), Loaned out Charley to Juve (could have worked). Mason Holgate returned to Everton (Ideal) 3) During the Summer 2023 transfer window, Southampton FC made several signings, sales, and loans: Signings Shea Charles - Signed from Manchester City U21 for £10.78 million. (OK) Ross Stewart - Signed from Sunderland AFC for £8.184 million. (Unlucky with 2nd injury, would have been twice the price without injury and unaffordable) Ryan Manning - Joined on a free transfer from Swansea City. (Good for free, if only to teach our players how to play Russball) Joe Lumley - Joined on a free transfer from Middlesbrough FC. (meh) Taylor Harwood-Bellis - Arrived on loan from Manchester City. (Astounding and completely unexpected bearing in mind how much of a hole we were in) Mason Holgate - Joined on loan from Everton FC. (Woeful) Flynn Downes - Joined on loan from West Ham United. ("A cheat code for the Championship" RM) Ryan Fraser - Joined on loan from Newcastle United. (Excellent) Samuel Amo-Ameyaw - Promoted from Southampton FC U18. (Good) Departures James Ward-Prowse - Transferred to West Ham United for £30 million. (Maybe we could have got £35m but who would the buyer have been?) Roméo Lavia - Transferred to Chelsea FC for £54.648 million. (This was our return after Man City's cut. sale was ~£70m) Tino Livramento - Transferred to Newcastle United for £32.736 million. (Pretty good considering injury history, contract length and purchase price) Mislav Orsic - Transferred to Trabzonspor. (Deadwood moved out) Mohamed Elyounoussi - Transferred to FC Copenhagen. (Deadwood moved out) Ibrahima Diallo - Transferred to Al-Duhail SC. (Deadwood moved out) Theo Walcott - Released. Willy Caballero - Retired. Nathan Tella - Transferred to Bayer Leverkusen. (£25m. Ideally we wouldn't;t have sold him, but at least they got a good price: Better than Burnley would have paid) Mohammed Salisu - Transferred to Monaco. (Didn't want to be here. Judging by Adam Blackmore's comments may well have been a troublemaker) Moussa Djenepo - Transferred to Standard Liege. (Deadwood moved out) Southampton's net transfer balance for the 2023/24 season was £137.94 million, with a total of £18.964 million spent on player purchases and £156.904 million received from player sales Those are the windows I was suggesting have seen an improvement

We got promoted via the play offs. , If Bazunu a had got injured mid season, or had been dropped; as he should have been. We would have been top two. Wilcox joined in January 2023; , a disaster window as I recall. , The players Saints sold for a profit were mainly already here long before he rocked up. Was it him keeping Bazunu a in goal? Because any sensible manager would have dropped his sorry arse. , Basically, if it was on target it was in. , Can you imagine how many he would have let in - say playing for Rotherham? , 150 + !! , Sorry for me no loss. This isn't me taking the piss (well not much) But read back those two passages. Which is easier to read? Which better communicates your argument? I recognise that we all post quickly and perfect grammar isn't always there. But full stops and capitals don't seem too much to ask. [Genuinely meant in the best spirit]

I agree there have definitely been some serious f**k ups; particularly Jan 2023. But as time has progressed the transfers have improved. Judge them on the last 2 or 3 windows and things look better - they appear to be learning. It would be lovely if they were faultless out of the gate, but it would have been a big ask.

For every Bazunu there's a Lavia We kept KWP and Bednarek in the Championship. Have loaned and then signed Flynn and THB. Edwards at £3m looks like a huge bargain. Sugawara is a player that looks like he will fit right in. Stuart Taylor is doing OK so far, and arrived early like the others, and didn't cost the earth either. Honestly some of our fans want the moon on a stick. IN CASE YOU HADN'T REALISED REAL LIFE ISN'T FAIR, AND DOING OUTSTANDINGLY WELL AT IT IS MUCH HARDER THAN FOOTBALL MANAGER. If you haven't absolutely smashed your career personally perhaps be a little more charitable to those who have made it to compete in the upper echelons, against similar high achievers.

As I understand it Wilcox was partly hired to completely reorganise our football structures. Presumably still carrying elements of Ralph's 'Playbook' structure, which would have been teaching our kids to press high up and win the ball in 'the red zone'. But also find our two centre backs completely over run when our press is broken... Having had 10 years at Man City running their academy he will have seen what a world leading structure for teaching possession based football looks like. By all accounts he worked hard to set up those structures, and you would imagine that the lion's share of that work would have been done by the time he was headhunted. It sucks that we keep having great staff poached. But it would seem that we did get benefit from his time here, and perhaps that was where his expertise lay. Now that he is gone we can divide the other roles around to capable people, and leave in place that Man City style academy training structure, along with a best practice guide that you imagine would have been part of it. We may get a new DoF in time, but I don't see the urgency unless we find ourselves winless by December. Of course all of this is conjecture on my part based on what I have read. Only those in the building and working in those departments will know the real story.

Watching a bit of Olympics coverage this morning: Apparently heptathlete Katerina Johnson Thompson did her achilles tendon in 2019 and recovered to become World Champion in 2023. Difficult to imagine a many bigger tests for the body than performing in a Heptathlon over two days in 7 different events. So recovery to the highest level can be done, and we saw Ross on the pitch for us at the end of the Championship season. Clearly he's not going to be ready for the start of the season, but I don't think we should be writing off his chances of ever playing for us again either.

Stephens as a false nine. He'd probably do better than Mara is at present, and with Arma and BBD either side of him he'd just need to lay it off to them... 🤔🤣

I'm loving the fact that one of the dirtiest games played at St Mary's in the last few years was contested by teams wearing bright yellow and hot pink 😁 That early first half tackle on Ronnie Edwards down in the RB position was a nasty one. There had already been a bit of a midfield tussle, and from then on it seemed likely that it would kick off at some point; particularly bearing in mind the minimal consequences. I seem to remember Russell Martin in an interview being pleased after the team were standing up for each other, so Alcaraz wouldn't normally have got into too much bother, but on this occasion he definitely saw red in more ways than one. Mara was trying harder than usual but just always seems to be second to every ball. There were some lovely forward balls cut through the midfield from central defence in the second half and a couple of nice breaks too. I suspect Dibling will get 15-20 mins vs Newcastle. He's earned it. I thought Shea Charles had a good evening. McCarthy was hopeless at times, and we could have let in 3 or 4 in the second half had it been a contested PL game. In fairness though there are definitely times when he gets passed the ball unnecessarily, by a defender who really ought to be taking more responsibility for playing the only fractionally harder ball to a local outfield player (Like we saw in the playoffs and at Wembley) BBD's goal was lovely, and great for him to score early at St Mary's so hopefully he doesn't get the first season goal drought that Che had. If BBD had been in some of the positions Edozie had the ball second half I feel sure he would have scored a 2nd. We really need a target man up front. Things might be so different if Ross Stewart had been able to play the second half of the Championship...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0jgp36d Whole thing is worth a listen. ABK chat from 2:10

I'm sure some of what you're saying is worth reading. The trouble is that without any capitals or punctuation it is too much of a ball ache to bother reading. Plus I immediately dismiss the opinion of anyone who after 26 months and 73 appearances cannot spell the name of our first choice keeper (even if that choice is questionable) Meant as constructive criticism, but no doubt given your username I will now get an earful back.

Bearing in mind that statistical analysis above: touches in the box by a midfielder (oh er missus! etc) Do you really think we were the only club that had spotted MoR's potential? Do you think that if we had offered £25m off the bat Celtic would have said "No worries, carry on nipper."

But in fairness we already had the downward momentum from Feb 2022, and arguably after Koeman left. BUT if they had moved on Ralph in the summer of 2022 things might have been different. (Or not hired mad Nate or promoted Selles)

I think this might leave our team in better shape than loaning Shea Charles. Dibling could be our stand in 10, whereas we'd have to buy/loan a stand in 6 and they tend to be pricey nowadays.

I think maybe we as fans have got the BBD transfer wrong. I think Russell Martin sees him as a replacement for Stu: "He's got great hair. He's clever. You can see that already, he gets it quickly. He's got a good football brain. He's a good character and I think he's going to help us a lot." RM

⬆️ Read the last 10 posts. He has a contract until June 2026. If Dusic is correct we have an option of another year, which surely we would exercise.

I went looking for info on NUFC sniffing for transfer info. Callum Wilson: Has missed 84 of the last 152 games Newcastle have played. "Hamstring made of wet paper". Apparently has just hit the injury list again as needs a back operation so won't be fit for our game. Now 33. Really don't see him being sensible for us. Wee Man: Found this video from March 2022 of him discussing Newcastle v Brighton. Firstly it's a coherent interesting post match interview which lasts 6 minutes! (unheard of!). But secondly apparently he was nominated for Premier League Player of the Month Feb 2022 after ASM got injured and he was moved from right wing to left wing. For those saying Fraser isn't a PL standard player this might be an eye opener, although saying that maybe it was an odd month as there was another familiar face in the running. Ryan is still only 30 and has played 173 Premier League games. Eddie Howe turned RF's career around when he took over from Steve Bruce, but clearly there has been another fall out, and has him training with the under 21s...

And I'm saying we have 3 experienced centre backs; Stephens (on a new contract), Taylor (on a new contract), THB (on a new contract) & Bednarek. Yes Jan only has a 1 yr contract. But RM is one of the key recruitment team, and he seems confident that he will stay, otherwise why would he have been straight back into the team for the Spanish friendlies? (unlike KWP who is in the same position)

This guy looks handy, has all the attributes you state. BUT he still looks slow to get down to his left; which we know is a problem traditionally suffered by Saints keepers...

Aren't they further along in their pre-season?

Charlie Taylor is experienced and played LCB alongside THB for Burnley in their promotion season. Plus we have Jack Stephens of course. Megahoma looks to be on his way out, but that would still leave Larios and Manning as LB & LWB options (& KWP if finances allow 🤞) . Also maybe Wee Man if Eddie Howe pulls his head out of his arse.

So I take it you must be one of those fans who is happy for us to drop to the lower half of the Championship, as our funding dwindles relative to other clubs? No need to increase the stadium capacity because the population of Southampton isn’t growing significantly quicker than the rate of inflation. So not enough new people to be able to afford a ticket. No need to grow the clubs finances by encouraging interest from abroad. Also it would appear you have never driven out of the city if you think Yeovil and Bournemouth are an easier drive from east Wiltshire. Not every fan grows up in a part of the world with a proper club, or with parents that will take them to one. Some adopt a club having developed an affinity; either by connections with the city, living there or working there, or maybe just a style of play or a particular player if they are based abroad. Markus Liebherr developed an affinity with Saints because he sold cranes to the docks: I bet you’d have been happy if he’d have invested in his local Swiss club instead? These clearly aren’t your view points - but maybe you can connect the dots and work out why some fans might feel your comments are unnecessarily divisive. COYR (wherever you hail from)