James

If we can get Larios, Edozie, AMN and Gakpo in before the window shuts then its fair to say we have had an absolutely magnificent window. Come on Saints, get it done and we could be onto something special here.

Forest close to signing Aouar. Great signing - he's a really good player.

Almost as if playing the best players in a decent formation yields better results than dicking around. Question is whether Ralph can learn.

Does Ralph just pull names out of a hat when picking the attacking mids. Absolutely no reason to drop Aribo…

If it is then it is going to potentially make the Mara signing look a little bit weird. I love the idea of signing super talented 18 year olds but in the position we are in you’ve got to wonder whether spending a little extra on a player we know can make an instant impact is money better spent.

I wish Ralph would keep it simple - no Stuart Armstrong up front, Valery in a back three or Romeu at No.10 - that’s all too complicated when you are in a bad run and down the bottom (we don’t have the personnel for all these crazy formations anyway). Just play our best team, round pegs in round holes for a 5-10 game stretch and then we can see where we are. It’s difficult to judge how good the team we have actually is or could be as they are being asked to do things which are unnecessarily complicated. Given he’s stuck around all pre-season (I wouldn’t have been disappointed had SR pulled the trigger after Leicester) we probably do need to give him a bit of time but if he’s going to mess about with the team/the formation rather than focusing on getting the basics right first then he is going to have to go at some point I think.

If true that is absolute insanity. Can you imagine any other club loaning, let alone selling, their best striker to a potential relegation rival? My genuine concern is that those at the club don’t see us as being down the wrong end of the table this season and so are taking the view that, in the long term, it’ll be fine to ship Che out to Everton. When Les et al were here there was an air of arrogance that they knew best even when the moves they were making made no sense and led to ostensibly bad outcomes on the pitch. I hope that has changed under SR and they have a proven goal scorer (or two) up their sleeve because at the moment, and looking at our starting XI on Saturday, we are far short of what’s going to be required to stay in this league.

If ABK is worse than what we had last time you really do have to wonder whether he was a sensible signing given our position…

Difficulty is - on paper and no matter how you dress it up - our first XI is very weak in comparison to the rest of the league. There is nothing at all wrong with buying talented youngsters and hoping for future return but in terms of immediate improvement on last season there was none and hard to argue we’ve gone backwards (AA a massive downgrade on Broja, Yan in a back three etc.). We’ve made an encouraging amount of signings this summer but when Stephens is getting on ahead of ABK and Mara isn’t even on the bench it’s a bit of a concern given how bad we were last year. A first team striker before the window is an absolute must otherwise it’s going to be an almighty slog.

Redmond is just not a footballer.

Redmond is not a Premier League player. End of.

Given that the main criticism of Ralph is that he is unable to recognise when things aren’t working/adapt accordingly you’ve got to hand it to him for really nailing the stereotype. A heavy defeat and surely serious questions will need to be asked.

Same team as last time. Wow, was not expecting that after last week’s shambles. Ralph must watch a different game to the rest of us.

Cheers Macca. That was absolutely awful again.

Yep. Dreadful.

Dreadful from Salisu and McCarthy there

This is the worrying thing. This kind of performance has been all too regular this year. Can blame injuries and bad luck but the way we implode like this is surely the manager’s responsibility. Ralph is lucky we are skint - almost every other club in the league would have sacked him by now.

Honestly can’t wait for the season to be over. The way this team has bottled 2021 is really something. Absolutely shocking.

Can’t wait for the turgid follow-up on Wednesday. Team of bottlejobs. Pathetic.

After West Brom it is absolutely shameful that we saved ourselves for that performance. Ralph has to go I’m afraid. Tactically incapable.

For me Ralph looks like a man who is totally bereft of ideas. We’ve been playing with this degree of lethargy for weeks and despite us now playing with the strongest team we are going to have available the rest of the year we are making the same mistakes and playing with the same stupid tactics. The idea of selling some of the Crown Jewels in the summer and replacing them with players from the South American leagues in the £10 million bracket is frightening frankly.

Shudder to think how many Leicester will put past us playing like this.

This is trash. No chance in the semi playing like this. Jesus.

Crap again. Forster should have saved that.

Pretty dumb challenge by KWP there. Can’t blame Ralph when players make stupid decisions like that.