chiknsmack

I'd love SR to buy Sampdoria. There's already the Saints connection through Gaston/Maya/Gabbiadini having played for them in recent years. If the three teams could get back to being mid-table top flight sides, It'd be a nice intermediate step between Goztepe and Saints. I do have a Sampdoria shirt in my wardrobe, but that's besides the point. Goztepe averaged 47% possession across the season. In the 1-1 draw the week before the playoff game, against the same opposition, they had 46%.

Both, please. CB and DM are the big holes in our projected squad for next season, and they are both options for both spots (I know "Stephens at DM" is a meme, but Lyanco playing a bit further forward were he could use his technical skills on the ball more and where his defensive shenanigans wouldn't be such a liability would be fun). Plus if we're looking to have CBs who are comfortable on the ball, they'd be better than most. ------------ Onuachu to Luton would be a win-win for all parties. If they're going to attack the Prem with the same game plan as the Championship, he's exactly what they want up front. If we could get half our money back on him that'd be miles better than we did with Carrillo.

Depends what you mean by "made the breakthrough". Kevin Danso played for us on loan at age 21 and didn't look to be much. He's now starting at age 24 for Lens - currently 2nd in Ligue 1 with two games to go - and being talked up for a move to a Champions League club. Nathan Tella couldn't establish himself in the starting XI or even the squad a year or two ago when he was 21/22. At 23 he's made the Championship TotY. I'm glad the club didn't sell him for buttons last year because he hadn't broken through by 22. Some players are good enough for the Prem at 21. Some aren't, but might get there by 25. If a player is 25 and on loan in L2, we should cut ties. But 23 and proven capable at Champ or L1 level?

He came in at the start of last season after SR decided to replace everyone bar Ralph.

https://www.southamptonfc.com/news/2023-05-09/loan-watch-southampton-football-club-9th-may-2023 Tella and Smallbone have had successful seasons at Championship level, and will walk right back into the squad (and probably the XI, depending on who leaves) if they want to. Watts, Olaigbe, Chauke, and Simeu look borderline Champ/L1. There are a handful of U20/U18 kids who will be looking for senior football somewhere too. It all depends on who leaves and what the new manager is looking for. For example, if we lose Adams and Onuachu and the new manager wants two up front, there's room for a couple more strikers in the squad. If we keep our current four strikers and the new manager wants to play one up top in a 4-3-3, there isn't. We also need to add some strength, experience, and leadership to the side somewhere. That would push some youngsters down the pecking order.

If you have the chance to watch today's match again, there are a few moments when you can look at Brighton doing what we could be looking to do next year in a possession-based system under Martin. 23:30 is the stereotypical Brighton play. The CBs slow the game right down and virtually stand on the ball until Aribo gets bored and presses. His press forces the players behind him to follow, at which point Brighton play a couple of quick passes to get on the attack. The first minute of the second half is the same thing; the CBs passing the ball back and forth when not being pressed, slowing moving up the pitch, then eventually playing a forward pass to a wide player. 60:30 is the best example. 30 seconds of “boring pointless possession for possession’s sake” before the Saints press invites three quick passes to get into the Saints box.

We already have a bloated squad. And there are a handful of Swansea players who are looking to leave and would be great pickups for us. I'm not massively excited by Martin, but if he brings Piroe and one or two others with him I'll be happy.

Because when the club dropped to League 1 the academy became a lot less attractive for kids and their parents. Bugger-all decent prospects joining the academy system ten or twelve years ago means now, when those kids would now be hitting 20 and ready to try out senior football, we don't have much (certainly no PL-ready prospects) coming through. We do have some outstanding 16-18yos coming through (from when we got promoted back to the PL and so the academy became more attractive again), but they're not ready for the PL yet. So we needed to buy in 18-21yos who were possibly ready to take the step up as Livramento/Lavia did. The plan was that once Livramento/Lavia/Edozie/Larios/Mara have proven themselves to be good enough for a top ten club, we could sell them on for a profit and replace them with the Ballard/Doyle/Edwards/Dibling/Payne/Merry generation as they turn 21 and return from Championship/L1 loans. Keep the club in the prem, keep the good young kids entering the academy, keep churning out PL-quality players. Drop out of the prem and the production line suffers, and you have to buy players to fill the gap where production fell off.

He shouldn't be a striker. He should be at the top of a midfield diamond, with Lavia at the base and Alcaraz and JWP at the corners. Get the ball, play it central to Che, he can hold it up for Alcaraz or JWP to run past him or turn and play the early ball through to the two pacey wingers/strikers playing ahead of him. He's similar to Joelinton; a shit striker who flourished when dropped deeper and used to link up the play instead of shooting. He's big, strong, covers ground, can pick a pass, and can't shoot to save his life.

I've said it before, but if these three don't stay then I hope they are only loaned out. It'd be nice to have them on the books if we bounce straight back to the Premier League and, even if we don't, them having another year of PL experience would only help their market value. ABK would want to put himself in the frame for a spot at the Euros, so wouldn't want to be in the Championship next year. Sulemana and Alcaraz are recent additions I wouldn't want to sell unless we would make a profit on them; there's no need for a fire sale and even if there was they'd be the last players I'd want to see go cheap.

Shouldn't play again this season. He's earned an early release for good behaviour.

Kiwi here in the same situation. Fan since 1997-98 when I got my first FIFA game on Playstation, started following more closely in League 1 (staying up into the wee small hours of the morning, refreshing for text updates on the club site or some British newspaper website). I've read enough about 1996-96 and 1998-99 to know that the club has a history of fighting their way out of trouble late in the season, so I kept the faith until today.

We're talking about playing in the Championship or playing in the B team. I genuinely cannot see a situation where a player would want to play for Saints B until he's 27 when he could play in the Championship - where he made team of the year the year before - and try to get Saints back to the PL to earn himself PL football, and wages.

He brought Livramento, Simeu, Small, and most of the kids who came from other clubs into our youth system (both from bigger clubs to our U18s, and younger kids into our U14s/15s). He also would've known all about - and had some involvement in the recruiting of - non-English youth players (ie. Broja, Lavia). He was involved in our academy for seven years from 2006, before moving to the FA to be in charge of the youth pipeline for the FA (so everything to do with England U15s to U20s, including guiding the development of all the players and coaches) for another seven years. He came back to us three years ago and spearheaded the "playbook" (basically having a set way of developing, training, and playing for all teams at the club from the kids to the seniors). If you told me the club had to sack everybody but one person and start from scratch, I'd keep Crocker. Make him "Director of Everything" (basically the role he's taking at the USFF) and let him do whatever he wants.

I haven't seen much of Harry Wilson this season but he's played nearly the full 90 in each of the past two matches and scored in both. He looked very good today, as did the Fulham attack as a whole (particularly Robinson and Willian down the left). Though they did only put two past Leeds. Those Forest long throws caused Liverpool a whole heap of problems. Maybe we should consider something similar ourselves?

Onuachu showed less energy when defending than even Aribo would've. If Armstrong had to come off I'd have almost rather seen McCarthy come on as a striker than Onuachu. (Though the real question is where were Mara and Djenepo, who also would've been clearly better options than Onuachu when the job was to close down Odergard and Partey while offering some pace on the break.)

The owners merrily chucked in 150m this year. Sales of Lavia/JWP/KWP/Salisu/ABK/Adams/Tella would net similar (40+40+5 lots of 15 is a reasonable rough estimate; if you think I'm short then sell Bednarek/Lyanco/Orsic/DCC/Alcaraz/Sulemana/Onuachu/Stu/whoever else too). Expiring contracts for Walcott and Elyounoussi will fall off the wage bill. There will still be a big chunk of change coming in from being in the PL this year. Unless you think Dragan is going to throw in the towel, pocket the sales money to get back the money put in, then try to squeeze his original 100m out of the club somehow too, there are no financial pressures this summer. If I'm wrong about the sales (we keep everyone bar Lavia and Salisu) then there's obviously some financial pressure, but also an obvious commitment from the owners to risk their money for a quick return to the PL. We'd need a striker (we already have a stack of promising kids and a few options who are proven to be high-quality at this level), a defensive mid or two, maybe a CB (ABK+Bednarek+DCC+Stephens+Lyanco+Simeu would be enough in this extreme "sell no-one" scenario; in reality the first three will probably go and in doing so fund a replacement or two) and a manager.

Either one made sense in the context of the comments, but I also thought it was Vieira.

They've scored five goals this year - in twelve games - so you'd think they would struggle to beat anyone. That said, their final ten includes matches with all eight teams currently below them on the table. They picked up 16 points in the reverse fixtures. I haven't been a Saints fan for as long as some on here, but I know enough to know that relegation battles and final-day escapes are in the club's blood. And I've seen enough under Selles to be hopeful that this lot can stay up. The fightback and that whole "actually scoring goals from open play" thing they did on the weekend are the clearest signs yet. But as poor as Palace have been recently, they're the last team I could realistically entertain Saints finishing above.

If you're a player for a team which gets relegated either you were playing a lot and are somewhat to blame for the relegation, or you weren't good enough to get into the side and still partly to blame for not being able to push your way into the side and keep the club up. The relegation clause in contracts should be "if we go down it's your fault and your responsibility to get us back up, and you have to take a pay cut too because we make less money in the Championship". That said, having the out of "if the club gets relegated I can leave" is a perk that means we can sign some players we otherwise couldn't. No-one wants to leave a Champions League or Europa League side to play in the Championship, even if the pay is better and it's the sixth-strongest league in the world. If we go down, I'd like to see the club pushing very hard to loan out players like ABK/Sulemana (young and with long contracts) rather than selling. A one-year loan to a premier league side covering 100% (or even 50%) of the wages would mean they could return if we were to bounce straight back up. And if we didn't we'd still have the players under contract and could sell them next summer rather than this, possibly even for more money after they have another year of PL experience.

I think he feels the same.

OldNick was talking about Brighton owner Tony Bloom, who "is an English sports bettor, poker player, entrepreneur, owner and chairman of Premier League football club Brighton & Hove Albion". Not Dragan.

"Chances Created" is binary; it's either a chance or it isn't. "Expected Assists" (xA) are probabilistic; what is the percentage chance that making this pass to an average player results in that player scoring a goal? It's like using xG instead of shots taken/shots on target to predict goalscoring; one is a cut-and-dried observation that doesn't have a clear relationship with whether you'll score goals (shot volume alone doesn't matter that much if they're all shots from 30+ yards, quality matters too) while the other adjusts for the quality of the chance.

- Soccer has been relatively late to analytics, particularly when compared to baseball. Why do you think that is? It definitely lagged behind. A bunch of people in the book and a bunch of other people that I spoke to read Moneyball [when it came out] and they were like, “Whoa, you can do this? I could look at soccer this way?” That was a not uncommon response across other sports as well. It definitely lagged behind for structural reasons. It’s really fucking hard to measure soccer. It’s probably impossible to create a “wins above replacement” metric. I think you could maybe create it for your own team—if, that is, you’re committed to playing in a particular style. But that’s useless for the Moneyball idea of finding undervalued players! That’s one big reason. But there are also all of the cultural reasons. The first baseball and soccer leagues are a little more than a hundred years old at this point. To me, that’s really not that old. The National League was immediately a closed system—a cartel system. They had like eight teams and knew they were getting all the money for themselves. The big question was, How do we make more money? In England, it was always an open system. Anyone could create a team; anyone could go up and down the ladder. The relegation and promotion system, that’s a competitive lever. But it’s more of a symbol. These teams are a community trust. You grow up rooting for them. There might have been a former butcher running the team in the 1920s, whereas the baseball teams were immediately businesses. When you’re a business you’re naturally searching for ways to cut costs and find value. It’s unsurprising that the first closed sports league in the world was the first one to be taken over by data valuations. In soccer, these teams weren’t created to be these efficient, moneymaking, win-seeking vehicles. That only happened once the Premier League was officially founded in 1992. That’s the biggest reason. The other thing is that soccer’s brain center is in Europe and there’s just less osmosis with ideas than there [was] in American sports. In England, soccer has mainly been a working-class game. The people who run the teams have until recently mostly been guys who barely went to high school because of the academy system. All those things come together to cause this lag. Source: https://newrepublic.com/article/169757/ryan-ohanlon-soccer-analytics-messi

Juanmi was quality, as we've seen at Betis. He just didn't settle in England. Carrillo was an Argentinian signed from France. Our new Spain & Portugal scout will struggle to find one of those (thankfully).