gecko

One thing I've noticed since Tonda took over, thinking mostly Charlton and Leicester games, is that we seem to make some really long passes along the floor through the middle. Maybe it's better positioning being coached into them, or that Arma has been dropping deep or wide players stretching the opposition to create the space. But it's been great to watch a single pass take us 50 yards up the pitch and immediately look like we're going to score. I'm sure it'll be something future opposition will start taking note of, and it's kind of a risky strategy if the pass goes astray and turns over. But for now I'm very impressed with what Tonda has achieved in such a short space of time, absolutely remarkable that this is the same bunch of player who struggled so much in a very similar formation under Still. Addendum to that, was that last night the wide guys were also excellent. Fellows absolutely ruined his man. And pretty much every man-to-man match up was won by us. Shout out to Jander as others have said, ran the midfield. Excellent save by Baz early on to stop what could have been a turning point - but otherwise, at no point was that result ever in doubt. Feels nice. I've been very much on the fence with whether to offer him the permanent job yet. "[Four] swallows do not make a summer" etc etc, but this actually looks like a total transformation so far, and I would be happy enough to see him get the job.

This is about as comfortable a watch as I've ever experienced as a Saints fan. Magnificent

Where the hell has this team been all season!?

I think it's fair to say that if he does win 5 or 6 on the bounce, fans will be less concerned about potentially announcing him full time. I think the overwhelming belief here is that 2 awful wins against seriously crap teams is not enough to go suggest he'll win the next 3/4. Furthermore, he seems to play a very similar style to what we have been playing under Still (which hasn't worked yet). There's obvious skepticism that playing the same way under a different manager will make a lot of difference. Experience says that 5 or 6 wins is pretty unlikely to happen though, and fans are understandably expecting the worst from a completely unproven manager.

SR playing an absolute blinder on this one. Float GON to really wind up the fan base, then float the completely inexperienced interim u21s guys to get the fan base even more worried We'll all be well and truly blindsided when they pull someone decent out of a nowhere in a couple of days. It's genius (I hope), and almost certain to happen

I'm genuinely astounded that he's even being talked about as a potential replacement. I couldn't stand him when he was at Liverpool - took credit for everything that went well; always excuses for everything else. Would have him here in a heartbeat though - no way would he be allowing a player led revolt to undermine him to the rest of the leadership (supposedly) I just can't see it happening. Very happy to be proven wrong, but I don't believe that a) our owners are that clever b) he would stoop this low

This was my thoughts exactly. The guy had 2 days to prep for a match we seriously needed a win from; he was never going to be overhauling anything. If he's still in charge throughout the international break, and then comes back with the same setup that clearly doesn't work, then maybe he'd deserve some flak. I think it's probably fair game to slate some of the player choices though. Formation is harder to change on a whim, but the ability of the personnel (or lack thereof) is painfully obvious to us as fans. So it's hard to watch the new guy bring back players, some of whom have years of being terrible as proof that they shouldn't be starters.

Bit of a kick in the nuts, that. Come on against Norwich, score a worldie, then get shipped off elsewhere He'd be a capable backup to Azaz from what I've seen in preseason. Would rather have him around than not.

Careful, or this will be hailed as another "10/10 window" - we're only just shifting the last of the previous 10/10 purchases

To get an assist, someone has to put it in the net... on the current showing from our strikers, we're more than likely about to ruin these new guys' stats. Jokes aside, this transfer window has finally got interesting.

Incomings notwithstanding, if we actually manage to bin all of those players, when you consider which personnel we've already ditched, it'd be a pretty successful attempt at "getting rid of the dead wood" Just need to replace all those players with fewer, better quality players and we'll be golden. Piece of piss.

Did I miss the "monumental" part of that article? It's lots of words to say his agents are talking with West Ham (who'd have thought it given they'd made a bid) and nothing more as far as I could see, and I'm not re-reading that tripe to verify.

Yeah my immediate thought was Boufal 2.0 - a load of spins and tricks w/ very little to show for it. I notice most of the clips show him beating his man (fair play, he looked pretty good at this) but the clips cut after that, so one can only assume he ended up passing it to nowhere.

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.