saint1977

Hopefully this is wrong, and probably is https://www.modernghana.com/sports/1216406/newcastle-united-interested-in-15m-rated-ghana.html

Yes, and beyond if Stephens does go to Bournemouth on a perm. Tella possibly to Burnley if the clubs can agree a fee. Adams linked with Forest. DCC will be moving on I’d think. For Alcaraz and Sulemana it’ll need to be substantial offers to shift the club as the above dozen will raise plenty, bar Salisu who allegedly only has a £15m release fee. KWP plenty of suitors, Lavia too which pushes prices up even with relegation. JWP will have buyers. Martin will have funds to rebuild, Manning would be very welcome as an addition. Nathan Wood May be beyond us already. DC, MC and strikers areas to strengthen. The likes of Ballard, Payne, Doyle et al look like they could be breaking through next season on the bench at least. So it’s about top-2 calibre signings through the spine.

Agree on the abuse. Their fans have seen them win the PL and FA cup under those owners and the Chairman’s father died in their car park in the helicopter crash. Get the frustrations now but they’ve seen success that may not be ever seen again at a mid-sized club (winning the PL). In terms of it being more difficult next season, their wage bill is or was the 7th highest in the PL. SFC’s was 14th. So the level of restructuring in players and staff and extent will be huge. Potentially less raised via star player sales with two out of contract and another with only a year left. Still players other clubs will want but likes of Daka have only been so-so.

Expensive business, xenophobia https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/may/24/brexit-food-trade-barriers-have-cost-uk-households-7bn-report-finds

He’d be a bit safer at Staplewood now Rupert Lowe isn’t at the club. Could be an option, he’s upset their fans by saying he only went there as a springboard to England. Obvious really but no need to say it. Morelos and Kent released from Rangers, although they may get PL interest https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-12115089/Rangers-RELEASE-five-players-including-Alfredo-Morelos-Ryan-Kent-Allan-McGregor.html

I thought Semmens did a decent job until this season. That said, he was also a complete cock at the summer fans forum. SR now fully on the reins, it’s their shitshow to sort out. At least Dragan being more hands on might mitigate Rasmus’s worst impulses unless they have been subject to some critical thinking and expertise first.

Which amongst all of the current Swansea players we are discussing Martin May want to bring to SMS, there’s one who would be most needed at CM and on Saints long list since he was at Celtic - Olivier Ntcham. Nathan Wood has the sort of profile at CB SR would also like but may be out of our range with top six clubs sniffing. Manning would be great but Burnley keen.

I’m coming around to it, and do remember how he dealt with Obafemi seemingly taking the unprofessional SFC behaviour from the post-2017 period to Swansea and rooting it out. Hoping that the two out of contract defenders, especially Manning, might re-join him and Piroe also very welcome. It’s a good point others make about leadership, I felt Ralph had to do too much on his own and if Martin can bring some staff in who care and set the standards/enforce them, then great.

Brentford I’d have thought would mix and match one permanent affordable striker (Che only has a year left on his contract) with a quality loan one, like Broja was for us. That will tie them over with Toney perhaps match fit March onwards. In terms of the squad after all of the dozens of departures, I hope SR go quality over quantity this time and some of the u18s need opportunities that they wouldn’t have got yet at PL level unless they were a Shaw or Rooney type exception. Good experienced keeper for that level needed as an essential.

Lavia will likely go for £40-50m and lots of CL club competition before City’s buyback kicked in 2024. JWP harder to say but ought to be £35-40m Salisu apparently has £15m release clause, W Ham want him, Everton if they stay up KWP in demand, Villa and Spurs said to be interested (Levy rued selling him for £12m), possibly Chelsea and Man U. If so, could push price to £25-30m Alcaraz - hope he doesn’t go but Brighton, AC Milan, Benfica apparently keen Tella - should be looking for £20m but would be happy to keep him if we can ABK - top six would be interested to ration his games and let his body settle down next couple of seasons. Rumoured Saints looking for £20-25m. Perraud seemingly going - get the £11m back possibly? If Martin could bring Ryan Manning with him that’s cash to re-invest elsewhere in the squad’s spine. Che - Brentford option to replace Toney? £15m say. McCarthy might even raise small fee + losing wages, and Theo/Ely OOC Martin should have a very good budget for that level to work with.

I wouldn’t say it’s bed wetting, it’s just not excitement either, and our fan base has lacked that for 6 poxy years bar RH’s first season and Project Re-start. It’s a neutral appointment, could surprise us but could be the bobbing around mid-table flirting with the play-offs that a lot of us think it will be. It isn’t Man City and Keegan early 2000s, attack minded, invest in players above that level and blow the league out of the water, Nuno and Wolves or Kompany and Burnley. It seems to be saying that we may be a long-term fixture at that level. Which when 38 out of my 45 years alive the club has been in the top flight doesn’t inspire me.

Hard to know what to make of this appointment. Hasn’t really either failed or succeeded as a manager in quite a small sample size so far. Remember him as a senior player at Norwich so perhaps that’s more of a reference point. Less ambitious hire than Adkins was (just got 2 promotions in 3 years and we were a division below Scunny at the time) but not another internal cheapie either (Selles, Gray, Wigley) or an obvious wrong fit (Jones). Therefore, I struggle to see how he’s going to attract the standout type of player to finish top two next year even with a better budget than Swansea so I guess SR’s plan next year is to stabilise in mid-table in the first season and look to finish in the play-offs the next year perhaps better the year after with a good wind. It doesn’t scream balls out for promotion next year either. Steve Cooper - if available, that would have been ambitious. Martin temperament-wise seems better suited than Jones but Nathan’s record is miles better. The parachute money has run out at Swansea but Robins at Coventry and Luton never had any and are miles past this bloke. Hard to guess and depends what SR want. Kompany was clearly more ambitious as an appointment for Burnley and more likely to unite the fans and club. I don’t think that’s SR, they just go with their view of the data regardless.

John Turner is supposed to be sharp and growing in pace, let’s see how he gets on today. The early runout is a bonus after Hants bowled out for 367.

If the club don’t inject pace, physical strength and leadership throughout the spine of the squad over the summer and shed the sluggish weaklings signed over the last few windows it’ll be a battle to survive in the Championship.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-65612295 Following on from Honda - one of the big Thatcher successes - ‘Brexit was the straw that broke the camel’s back’ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-57987601

The latest dodgy overseas donor. These are the people pulling really pulling the strings post-Brexit in their party, representing working people my arse. No wonder Penny is a Tory minister, another organisation in blue with a history of very shady funding https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-61264369

Cardiff as well. Started well at Man U but when the legend player sentiment ran out the wheels came off big time.

Someone needs to point out to her that as historically recently as the 1950s groups of people used to come out to Kent in summer and early autumn to pick hops as part of a holiday away from the East End which had suffered from WW2. https://londonsroyaldocks.com/forgotten-stories-hop-picking-fields-kent/ What a fucking idiot and the biggest freak at today’s freak show, which is incredible when Rees Mogg was there (posts above about his ignorance as well). Our garden in August and September has a lot in common with today’s conference in terms of the sheer volume of plums. I’d rather turn Suella, Rees Mogg and the ERG into glue rather than jam as they’d taste horribly sour (more like rotten Damsons) unlike our jam batch from last year which still tastes great. Still, the local ex-Tory councillors are welcome to help pick our fruit if they’ve nothing else to do. As for HGVs, that is a rather more skilled occupation - when todays lot had a shot at power for 45 days or however long it was, they crashed the economy on the scale of 100 HGVs on the M1. Yet they and their paid cheerleaders at the Mail, Telegraph and Sun want another go. Fuck off. Rishi has basically said ‘talk to the hand’ - rightly so. Him and Hunt are clearing the carnage from last summer and autumn. We cannot afford another tax cut from public borrowing for James Dyson.

I’ll go further - add in the £20m for Carrillo, and £18m for Ely in 2018 and that’s another genuine quality player signed instead for £25-40m who scores/makes/stops goals and adds momentum, and prize money. We’ve had to suffer Ely this season so relevant to today. Meant players are being paid off rather than turning profits as the club was before 2016. £80m in total wasted, and jury still out on likes of Mara and Bazanu clearly nowhere PL level for foreseeable. Boufal left on a free, another £16m. This policy of not really spending over £20m has meant a bloated squad of so-so players.

This is exactly who should on the shortlist. Cooper #1, Benitez #2, Vieira/Henry #3, Marsch decent option but club fucked that up I suspect. Instead, the shortlist is probably the 30 year old at Reims, a 34 year old from the Belgian League, John Mousinho, Steven Schumacher (just for retro effect eg Sturrock) or the Cowley Bros.

That article is spot on from what we’ve witnessed. The concerning thing is that the club is potentially in a very strong position to bounce back with an experienced manager at the helm - Benitez say to get back up and stay up first season back - but Wilcox is already speaking SR bullshit and seemingly wanting a 25 year old who has experience of playing Football Manager. I exaggerate for comedy value but you do need some depth football experience in the blend. This season should be a sobering lesson for the club hierarchy but I don’t get any sense it will be. It also settles once and for all any arguments which a small number of dickheads were making on here on about it being the fans fault for wanting Ralph gone etc. It was clear from the walking around, non-contact/nom-effort and shambolic performances Villa away onwards last March that Ralph had lost the dressing room. Replacing him with Jones was the crazy bit. As Saint Gifford says above, we had the same nonsense on a far smaller budget under Lowe et al, a demise which also stemmed from arrogance. Perhaps to really learn it’s lessons the club needs to be relegated further down the pyramid than it was in 2005 and 2009 to rid the boardroom forever of the arrogance which the club has a legacy of, and get the hunger back for continuous improvement? I hope it doesn’t but as a support base we have to find of challenging these people more proactively and effectively until they respect the club heritage and the wider fanbase eg ticketing issues, £99 seats, away fans everywhere, Block 1 debacle. It’s the football, stupid. I’ve stopped going to home games and it’d not be a surprise to see less than 20k Saints fans actually in the ground today to send a clear, unignorable message. Leave the Liverpool game for the day trippers and true fans boycott. The club has the power to change all of the above, get some football experience in to challenge the bullshit and re-engage the fanbase, getting the product on the pitch right.

So Priti Useless is going to say at today’s freak show in Bournemouth that the local election result is down to the Tory grassroots being ignored. Nothing to do with the dire failure of Brexit, economic catastrophe, record costs of living, broken housing system with record levels of full time working homelessness, broken NHS and 1990s levels of corruption and elite Tory donor incest. No, surely not. Last time we listened to that band of 100000 or so swivel-eyed freaks, ex-UKIP and BNP ‘fruitcakes and closet racists’ (Cameron), we got Liz Truss, a crashed economy and global humiliation. Don’t want them any more than I want Momentum with Corbyn and Abbott et al.

50% correct so far, let’s see what tomorrow brings with the bat!

Or the rump of that party which evicted most of the long-standing MPs out of it and grabbed power based purely on lies (Boris). All of them lie to some extent, whatever the rosette but Boris is exceptional at that aspect even so. The Disneyland promised to the most ardent Brexiteers was never realistic and promoting Moggy to a cabinet position when he’s only ever looking to make a few quid for the family firm and fuck the economy and country was only ever to end in tears. Badenoch is mini Braverman, and only slightly less likely to behave herself in vaguely polite company. Glad Hoyle put her back in her box and let the post GE wilderness do the rest. Well done Speaker for setting some basic standards of elected representation. You are accountable to us, the electorate, not your servants in the press or your puppet masters in Tufton St. No way any administrative system could conduct that amount of complex technical change in a few months - but then the Brexiteers have never understood that about the whole process anyway. The disruption for those of us working for a living and trading international goods and services has already been appalling without Mogg’s utter stupidity on top. Nice to see also Alicia Kearns, the Chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, calling out Liz Truss for her reckless and unnecessary trip to Taiwan. Truss is narcissist as well as fucking useless and dim. Looked at Kearns profile and building tidy portfolio. Rutland MP so must have succeeded Alan Duncan https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-65556086 Cant wait to get these Brexit twats out of any kind of responsibility and as a Lib Dem voter, I can hold my nose and work with Labour if needed.

Agree, and wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the club because Saints have a long history of that sort of thing, right back to no longer selecting Alan McLaughlin because of a final instalment clause allegedly due to Swindon. Mind you, they’d already messed him up by playing the poor bloke out of position. With Salisu, he’s a very decent one on one defender but his distribution will always be slightly short of the very top level in my view. Has many of the materials there but in a decent team that moves the ball a lot quicker, you’d see some dangerous mistakes. At his next club that can be improved but as Wenger used to say, you can improve certain aspects but not the core ball skill or raw pace. He’s quick for a CB which will attract Europa League level sides but he’d have to really evolve with ball at his feet for CL.