gecko

Massive deja vu for a second when talking about last year's "trauma" - If he'd mentioned "scar tissue" I might have lost it

iirc, Still likes a lot of crosses into the box too. And for all Sugawara's obvious shortcomings defensively, he did seem to put a decent ball into the box consistently. Nothing against Bree, but I'd be surprised to see Sugawara be the one that goes

agreed. Although thinking of it another way, it's not much more than what we've sold Tall Paul for, and I'd wager this guy looks better suited to the systems we expect to be seeing from Still (and Spors) guess we'll have to wait and see

I'd just written out the exact same thing, but longer, without checking the replies. I like the simplicity of the original suggestion, but there's no way to know how these guys will perform until they actually start playing. So it's all just a guess for me Would be nice to see someone close to a dead certainty for goals coming in - like we've not really had since Lambert joined - but I don't see that happening, and since we're apparently shopping in the unknown section for now, I suspect "on paper" most of us will end up thinking we look worse than our rivals.

I've seen a few tenuous Piroe -> Saints links floating around, but none of them looked particularly reliable - do you know something that others dont?

The comparison of the two players, based purely on "time spent at medical" should be at least one reason to prefer to hold onto Armstrong. The guy is almost always available and always gives his all. I appreciate the numerous arguments others have made for him to go, but I can't see him going anywhere other than to another Champ team because that's his level. And likely the only people to afford him will be in direct competition with us. So it just doesn't seem worth it to me. He's about as reliable at this level as you can get, so if we're keen to offload I just can't agree that it should be this summer. I don't care for the "motivation" argument myself, I think he'd give it all regardless.

I'm always nervous when old names come out of the woodwork, but having looked at his stats... https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/dusan-tadic/leistungsdatendetails/spieler/36139 He's 36.... but he's still playing ~45 games a season (across all comp's) and contributing 10-15 goals, and 15-20 assists. Fine, the Superlig isn't great, and I guess those stats don't really show how good he is at "pressing" these days, but I'm confident that Still would be pragmatic enough to make him work I'd have him back.

Final day performance. Wasn't the 4-4 Liverpool game the last of the season too? Looked decent in that one as well iirc

Happy if that's the case, as long as we end up with a manager who prefers even the most half-hearted of presses... 6 points incoming.

SKY blog still doubling down on Still being the main target (for now at least) - https://www.skysports.com/football/live-blog/31771/12476234/transfer-centre-live-football-transfers-news-updates-and-rumours Seems a bit cruel of you to post this, with no context, and then just bugger off. I was just starting to like the idea of Still instead of Rohl, so hoping this is just WUM behaviour.

I definitely see what you mean; he's not exactly the born leader you'd come to expect at that position. I'm sure plenty of players, as with the fans, make their mind up immediately. However, I think it's possible for him to get them on side if he turns up at training and actually does that properly, i.e. not like Jones, who you could tell the players thought/knew he was a total simpleton from minute one of the training. Perhaps a Lallana type, recent retiree, as a coach is enough to help on-board him and keep the player mutterings to minimum to at least give this guy a good shot. From a team perspective, he seems to me to be relatively adaptable, as shown through losing multiple important players and still just about getting results. Although he admits that you can only lose so many of those calibre players before your results start to show it. If he wants to be here, and Spors wants him, then I'd be happy to see what he can do in the Champ.

I don't think they should/would either. But he was rumoured to be of interest to them only a month ago since Marco Rose's departure, all hearsay of course.

I think we're an excellent prospect for someone like Rohl - we're clearly not good enough for the prem at the moment, sure, but we are likely to be one of the auto-promotion candidates for sure. A promotion on the CV always looks good, regardless of whether it was "expected" - and we're a better chance than most to get one. It also (arguably) looks better than taking some mid-table German lot to.... mid table again? You might be right though. The call of a Leipzig (or similar) may well carry other importance to him.

Totally agree. Interesting that people have generally come to the realisation that players like Mane/Van Dijk (and soon to be Dibling/Fernandes) are basically too good for us to keep long term. And we seem to appreciate that the longer term situation with players is that we simply need to be successful in replacing those that we lose to the higher-ups. It's whats Brighton, Brentford, B'Mouth etc have done well at in recent seasons. Now counter that with how quite a few people seem to be talking about hiring an excellent manager, that we'll probably lose in the near future; kinda weird isn't it. Same thing applies here imo, managers need replacing and replacing well, just like players. And that means pre-emptive scouting so we're not completely sunk/scrambling when the inevitable happens.

I admire your optimism, but I would have very real doubts about him getting you or anybody promoted again. I'd go so far as to say there'd be a very good chance with your squad, but I would fully expect that if he did manage it, that it would be far less comfortable than last time. Lots of needless goals conceded; lots of unnecessary points dropped against crap opposition. We can certainly agree on the following relegation though :-D