saintant

Good post with many excellent points.

Would Dragan continue to employ people in key positions at his telecom company if they showed the same levels of incompetence we've seen from those at SR? The answer is quite obviously he wouldn't so I don't understand why he isn't insisting a competent Director of Football is appointed and, if I was him, I'd be taking a hands on approach plus advice from someone outside of SR to get the right person.

A nice Freudian slip 🙂

Thought I'd bump this just ahead of the new transfer window. Clearly Ivan Juric is going to want to bring in new players and is likely to have some in mind who he knows from previous managerial stints. Are there any rumours the CoT can share at the moment along with the cryptic picture clues? I always look forward to trying to crack them.

The two sides relegated with us will both be stronger than us. Add the top four or five Championship sides who miss out on promotion and will be looking to put that right plus another couple of surprise packages and a swift return to the Premier League looks anything but straightforward. Will we be ready for another punishing stint in the Premier League anyway? Maybe it's time to take stock, regroup and build a team that is more ready and better equipped for our next battles in the top league.

Nope and nor would anyone else unless more chances are created.

They need to get out of our club. That's the only way this gets sorted because they are completely clueless.

There is little point being better funded if those spending the money have no clue what they are doing. Semmens due diligence should have included a deep dive into the competence of those running SR. I'm pretty sure he'd have found little to suggest they had the experience to run a Premier League football club or why are we in such a complete and utter shambles now?

Not sure why getting players forward means we have to use the first 20 minutes against Spurs as a blueprint. It's up to Ivan Juric to strike the right balance and I get he has to be careful because he's come to a team that was shipping goals for fun thanks to RM. Plenty of sides including all the decent ones get players forward to support attacks - if you don't all attacks will inevitably just peter out and you're back defending again. When we lose the ball we have to learn to win it back much quicker - you won't do that if there is always a huge gap between your attack and midfield which is one of our major problems. I know that our squad is not the best but we can do better with what we have. Early days for IJ and we've at least been close to getting something from his first two games in charge. I'm sure he's learning a lot and will continue fine tuning and hopefully get one or two additions in the January window to help.

Making us harder to score against is a good starting point but he's going to need to get us scoring goals and that can only happen if you get more players forward. It's a delicate balancing act but we must not get sucked into a team set up to defend at the expense of everything else.

If you sit back and invite the opposition on to you guess what - they'll say thank you very much for making our life easy and help themselves. Not to worry, let's just camp in our own half and expect to win football matches shall we. Doesn't work and never will.

Put him in a decent side and you'd see. As it is he is always one of our better players and most times he's our MotM. If we're criticising Fernandes it speaks volumes for the rest.

It doesn't have to be a hopeful ball down the channel - what I'm advocating is getting more players forward. The mindset of the majority seems to be to stay back in case the opponents win the ball and attack us. At some stage we are going to have to take a more risky approach because we seem afraid to cross the half way line.

They don't need to say it because it is blatantly obvious to everyone.

What has Charlie Taylor done? A left back with Premier League experience and yet he doesn't get a look in.

Yeah and I'm sure a certain person did very nicely when they bought our club.

I've been banging on about this for ages. These days you get nowhere unless you have some big athletic players who can look after themselves, don't get knocked off the ball and get up and down the pitch - our squad is full of powderpuff players.

Are stupid people still wasting their money on his ridiculous books?

It beggars belief that the clowns presiding over this shit show are still being allowed to continue throwing good money after bad. I wonder what Dragan would make of this list and your comments which, in the main, few could argue with. Clearly we will never progress under the current regime because they are not going to suddenly have a lightbulb moment and start signing decent players who might actually improve us. The whole structure of the club needs ripping out and we need a complete overhaul and reset because currently we are on a steep nose dive into oblivion.

We are in a hopeless position so I don't get how timid we are and seemingly so afraid to commit players to attack. Maybe players are still trying to shake off the ingrained notion that they must not give the ball away so backwards and sideways is safer than forwards. It matters not a jot how many games we lose so we may as well go for the jugular and attempt to create some chances and hopefully score a few more goals. Take the handbrake off and risk throwing more players forward and to hell with the consequences. We are just so tepid and content to sit back with the comfort blanket of everybody defending from the front. This won't win us games. Let's at least have a go and if a few thrashings come our way but we win some games surely that's better than the negative way we've played all season.

Martin Semmens has much to answer for after selling our club to this bunch of chancers. Seems he failed to do due diligence on them. SR has completely ruined our football club and made the life of a Saints fan an absolute misery. Through their incompetence they have wasted millions and the more they spend the worse we become. What do we need to do to get rid of them.

When Mike fucking Dean agrees that a goal against us should be ruled out for a foul you know 100% the referee has made an absolute howler.

Surely if he is good enough he should be starting games not just to help us but to put him in the shop window for when we sell him. Ideally he plays well, helps us to gain more points and we get a decent price for him - we'll get less if he isn't playing that's for sure.

Well he's certainly improved the number of goals we concede. 3 in 2 games is fortress like compared with 10 in 2 home games under Russell.

Complete lack of elite level fitness caused by the previous manager and his coaches.