gio1saints

I thought KWP looked strangely withdrawn on Saturday. He seemed to get his mojo back after a while and managed a few good movements but he looked a bit funny to me. Wether that means he’s leaving or staying who knows. IF Tino and KWP leave this window then it’s odds on we will add another attacking FB. If Aaron’s is available why not.

Classic moneyball buy. Let’s hope he’s another Sir Rickie.

I’m taking my car with three empty spaces from SO18 Bitterne Triangle so get back to me anyone wants to car share there and back.

The “ staying over to watch Eastleigh at Solihull but” made me feel proud to be a Southerner! 😁

Do you work in logistics? Great itinerary !

I last went to Hillsboro in 1984 for our FA cup quarter final - a 0-0 draw and we won the replay as you will all know. Went with travel club coach and was not a bad journey though the game was meh. I’d be quite happy to see similar result tbh. Promoted teams are always feisty early doors at home though, especially as it will be full house 40,000+ there again I would imagine.

Bought two tickets for £23 on the ST holder deal so my daughter and her boyfriend can help fill up St Mary’s for this important match.

I’m going and have up to three places in my car for the trip to Gillingham. Live in SO18 near Bitterne Triangle so if anyone nearby is going and looking at transport give me a shout. saintly regards Giordano

My only ambition from the remaining games we have left is that JWP equals- and then breaks- the Beckham record for direct free kick goals. Whilst a Saints player. JWP beating the record next season in any other shirt is still a great achievement and I’d be proud. But it’s not the same. James knows it, we all do, please do it for the long term Saints fans who deserve a tiny little bit of happiness from this awful season…

And here we are at it again..z

By my extremely subjective and easy to argue against criteria he is. By objective criteria such as International caps, honours, goals, awards etc of course he's not. Can anybody really argue he is better than the current European Player of the year Kevin Keegan for instance or respectively Worlds most expensive players Bale and Van Dyke? Or runner up African player of the year Mane? Or England heroes Mick Channon Peter Shilton or Alan Shearer. Maybe not even young english player of the year Steve Moran! No, of course not. He's not even the nastiest or hardest. oh but yeah actually he was better than Stevie Moran tbf. But JWP has played away in Division one at on a wet Tuesday night. And at Wembley and everywhere in-between And worked his legs off every single game he has ever played for us. He plays to the fullest extent of his ability EVERY match. He is not the fastest the strongest most vocal inspirational cleverest or the most creative and apart from hitting a stationary ball and running further than everyone else every match his stats are otherwise (relatively- please in context) unremarkable. And yet he represents the best of Saints to me as our Captain. He makes the best of what he's got and always tries his hardest. He is not graet but he busts a gut every time and is a brilliant role for making up with hard work what he lacks in other areas. That's why he my second best SFC player of last 40 years.

If we go down JWP deserves to play wherever he wants. He is certainly one player I say gives his utmost for the club badge, every time. He is already a legend in my eyes. In the last forty years MLT is his only rival as the overall "best" SFC player though id have to defer to MLT simply because he did not have the luxury of a dead ball to kick for many of his goals so not only did he have shooting but he had dribbling and ball control. Neither had any pace of course. Our speediest player of last forty years was Danny Wallace btw. Not Theo. Not Bale. Not Mane. IMO of course. Our best ever Centre back of last forty years was Virgil. Our best goalie was of last forty years Shilts. Don't know where that came from but feel free to disagree.

I'm getting rather bored of Saints players scoring at the wrong end. Please stop it. I've not done research but it seems we are in a bit of an OG goal psychological situation at present. The more we know we must not score in our own goal the more likely it is that we will do it. Surely our saints sports psychology shrink can unhitch that particularly unhelpful negative belief from our players heads? I don't know our all time highest own goal scorer but I think a look at the charts would be interesting. We have to be good at something and at least we seem to know where the back of our net is 😉 Indeed i can see them in training now putting an OG away every time and Nathan on MOTD stating that the lads look good in training and if only we could get that goal-scoring prowess going when it matters match day on the pitch , oh, and in the opponents net. then we will be fine. I've just moved back to Bitterne from Surrey so I am sure that, shortly, if i'm not there, I will be able to discern the difference between an OG cheer and a normal cheer if i walk up a bit closer. Yes its got that desperate. At least next year we can win a few more games in the Championship.

I am pro the appointment and will support him and saints whatever. Win or lose. Youngish but passionate and principled no name unpretentious manager from lower leagues suits me right down to the ground. If NJ gets the job it should be made clear that IF we get relegated he is still in charge for next season. That is on the proviso that we are attempting to play saintly football and players are always giving 100%. If that is made clear then it should be a plus to the squad and support to have that certainty and reduces chances of players or support not trying for unknown manager syndrome, or indeed players looking to leave cost they don't fancy him. My personal fear is that last point- i feel we have a squad with excellent potential - but not a winning team - yet. I would love NJ to keep playing our young players here and to develop them - not just to offload to other EPL clubs in a mass evacuation this winter and next summer as might potentially happen in that circumstance..

That's a fair enough point. I do not think anyone would disagree that the output has been disappointing. BUT: if we had played exactly the same way but Che scored a goal or two more and we are sitting in 8th spot on 18 points do you still think he should be sacked? Its such fine margins between dross and happy days. If we beat Palace and go four unbeaten are we doing well? This season two goals and we are 8th - success, this season we don't score those goals - failure - to paraphrase and badly plagiarise Charles Dickens. I'm so unclear that i dont feel we are able to just sack RH and go for it. Risk is very high. I dont know if getting a Ralph mk2 ( younger potential manager) or a Ralph style but upgrade (Tuchel?) or an older experienced pro with a patchy management record (Steven Gerrard) or a Portugese/Spanish/Italian/German/ Eastern European coach (cos they are always pretty good - and cheap) is the right answer for this squad. None guarantee points. Its out of fashion to go for a manager "who knows how to get the team scrapping for points" or "avoid relegation specialist" I believe and its more about "the project". Who is doing well in championship or foreign leagues and is young and gettable? Zerbi is taken. SR are clear on our recruitment policy IF the project is to continue they will need a certain type of coach that gets with the buy cheap sell high programme. So do not expect great change in playing personnel short term. Whoever gets the opportunity and privilege to manage the team is on a hiding to nothing. Expected to win by the fans, and win playing well, playing young players - but not too many. It a no win job frankly.

Our whole system of play is predicated upon the assumption that out main strikers will run their bollx off all match to provide extra cover. Its not based on the premise that our main strikers will have a decent conversion rate on scoring chancers. If your strikers CR is better then the team does not need to work so hard so often. All that running in defence of a lead is useful./ But when you are losing you need to score- we do not score enough of our chances. Transfer priority should be a high conversion rate striker, ideally from few chances. A few more goals go in the team and manager look like football geniuses. Look at SA goal v Arse. Cosmic football.

I agree that with one more win - 3 points - we are exactly that - a mid table team. I do not agree that Ralph is an incompetent manager though. I think he is very good to excellent - for Saints. I think our criteria must vary. MY criteria are that we have assembled possibly the highest potential squad I've seen for decades. One of Ralphs job is to take a beer money player and get champagne quality play out of him He is NOT incompetent at that. The opposite. Very effective. BETTER RESULTS, - which is what we all want, will follow squad maturity. Or not life suks that way sometimes. Between now and then - win or lose - we have inevitable transition pain. Its a bxtch huh? There is no definitive "WHEN BY" date with this. Transition to player and squad maturity to psychological resilience , will take time and that means variable results and performances. Its part of process. Progress is never linear. Especially at Saints . To enlarge on that point : Who can deny Baz is worth more, SAL, ABK, LIV, KWP, LAV etc than pre purchase? And there are other's like Edozie and Mara too. That's over half a team of outstanding talent. We are so close... We know how hard is that to take young potential and blood it at the highest level in domestic world football - The EPL - and stay alive let alone prosper. The last time we were realistically this close - our potential current quality v the rest of the EPL squads - was early 1980's IMO. Since then our average league position is ...stattos please help but i'm guessing its not mid table EPL taking relegations into account... its probably exactly where we are right now. Yet, we could be on the brink of a wonderful era of young fluid home grown players dominating in the EPL -for US- for once rather than all sold off . Please take a deep breath and get some context. IF Ralph is not good enough to tale the next step with the talent we have assembled - i'm listening to that argument and its valid- he has not got a great track record of actually winning silverware. But is he incompetent at his current job? No. Sorry that's simply not true.

There are more than a few neurodiverse saints on this forum. Many of us live in the autistic spectrum but not all are as lucky to be Saints fans! 😇

Well said! Very good work the recruitment team that got us all these exciting talents. Obviously headed by Mr. Shields but the analysts and collective including Ralph and the new coaches must all have contributed. Credit where credit is due. Well done non playing Saints team.

Can you make the font bigger? I can't quite make out the words. :-)

Isnt it more the case that even if the mother club does not need the player s in the examples above they can still take him back if his open market value is greater than the buyback value and just tehn sell him on - or more likely negotiate a fee with us to not enforce the buy back clause? That's assuming a buyback price is set at outset of course and its not just "first refusal" on whatever price we set or a % of sell on.

I hear you- but lets have a little faith. The ones we got so far have been brilliant. Mara might be amazing. Edozi might be amazing. They are both attackers. If only one of them is as good and as immediately impactful as Lavia or BK in there respective position we are in dreamland. Oh and PS. Adam Armstrong is like having a new player up front. I do not recognise this version to the one so anonymous all last year..hes way better.

I only just saw the Edozie vid. He looks an exciting player. Well brought up at City. Left footed attacking winger. Like Cody but even younger, and notably way cheaper. We might just have got ourselves another special one at a fraction of the cost and wages.

Yes fair summation. His value hardly went down scoring a hat-trick whilst the world was watching him last night. He will still be a hot property post world cup.