Dangermouth

I see no reason for him to apologise: I wouldn't care if he thought I was the biggest C()nut on the planet.

Claridge is good. You can tell he likes football and he thinks about it. Haven't heard enough of Vickery, but he can string two words together so that's a big positive. I was quite impressed with Clinton Morrison, but I'll have to listen again as he's universally castigated so maybe I got his youtube show reel. I liked Ruud Gullit. Most of them don't have anything that makes me think they have any idea about anything to say. I'm unimpressed by Jenas: I think he tries very hard but only sounds like he's trying to keep everyone happy. Maybe Nevin's improved. I thought he should be very good but he did seem to spout platitudes and have a bias towards the teams he played for. Sutton can be interesting.

Burnley - well-rested and difficult to play against. Draw. Villa - minds elsewhere. Win. West Ham. They have City then the scousers before us and a couple of days' less rest. I reckon a win/draw. Newcastle - Should win. Norwich. A draw, I reckon. 9-11 points overall, I'd say.

So what you're saying is that the loan is abroad because it's hoped he might pick up on the different way of life and be kept away from temptation? Bit like Shaw, but without the Nando's effect?

Time to get rid of Bednarek. He is too slow, out of position, isn't especially good at defending and can't start attacks. I probably would still get rid of all our CBs and start again as even though Stephens has improved he still lacks in a number of areas. If we could put him and Bednarek together as one player, I'd keep that one. Attempt to get rid of the dead wood. I would let Long go. I think we need to change the front a bit and Adams and Obamfemi will have to learn to do a bit of his work. Actually, if I could I'd probably still get rid of a lot of them but keep McCarthy, Bertrand, Valery, Stephens (just), JWP (which is a first), probably Romeu over PEH, Armstrong, Adams, Obafemi, Djenepo, Ings, possibly Boufal, Gunn, Redmond. I think we probably need 3 windows to address the weaknesses in this squad fully.

He probably won't go abroad, but he should go to the US. He'd play for years and probably score a lot more too. BWP mark II.

Logged in to like that.

My view of Bowen is that's he's equally limited. Think Snodgrass. Once Adams gets going he'll be alright. 8-10 a season at this level.

Good.

Ditto.

Quote Originally Posted by jawillwill View Post Doesn't that just give credit to the argument that the Premier League is quite competitive between all teams, rather than teams being inconsistent? No. It means that most teams are inconsistent because they're crap so that makes it appear competitve. Yes. There is a reason why it's the most popular and most watched league in the world. It's not only highly competitive and exciting but every team in it gets an income of more than £100 million every year, which means they can buy many of the best players in the world. I don't remember many Saints fans whingeing about it when we finished 6th in 2016 and I don't think you'll find many Leicester, Sheffield United or Wolves fans whingeing about it now. The argument that a club like Saints can't hope to compete against the top six is just defeatism. We're having a bad season now but that can happen in the Championship too: ask Bolton and Sunderland fans. The game where Saints looked most evenly matched against an opponent this season was Liverpool, where we deserved at least a point. Except we most teams don't actually seem to. For the most part I wouldn't say even the better players in the better teams are especially good. And then of course we spend fortunes on the likes of ... I'll leave you to name them all. I don't think we did deserve a point against Liverpool. We lost and that's because they scored more goals than us. Playing well doesn't mean you 'deserve' anything.

I think he's practising his free kicks.

I like that bit. Surely by now everyone must see there won't be any real improvement and it's time to cash in on him? Packet of Monster Munch, anyone? Look at what Chris Wilder is doing at Sheff Utd with a bunch of players who journeymen and a large number of players who have played in League One/Division 3.

And he still had his brain farts and he was involved in the masterclass of defending that was a 5-5 draw with Sheffield Utd (prob on Youtube if you want a look).

-- Agree with the final two.

I think we need a clear out from top to bottom. Alas that will probably be with relegation and us maybe in a few years makiing our way back as strugglers. I'll think about RH but I am now starting to lean towards getting in someone else. Probably BFS on the basis that we might actually do more with him and slowly rebuild. I think this club hasn't got what it takes to bounce back easily so staying up is more important for us than e.g. Norwich.

Also, given the obvious similarity between 'Gao' and 'go' (as well as 'goa') why not: "Gao away", "Gao now", "Be-gaone", "Gao back to Goa" (most people aren't too fussed with geographical peculiarities), etc?? Alternatively can't someone just burn a flag of him and the Chinese Flag together on television? I would have thought that would have meant he would leave in about 3 seconds flat although it might backfire and you'd need a fire extinguisher nearby for safety reasons. There must be a multitude of ways to get him to sell to an American owner who wants a franchise abroad. These days I don't see any decent prosepective owners anywhere, I'm afraid.

I have to plead ignorance and ask the reason for it having to be Winnie the Pooh. Then I think it's honey pots all round, yes.

One of the reasons I'm not keen on Fleming/Jaidi. The players look 'coached', but robotic. That's no good in football. Secondly they don't say anything e.g. they often say 'learning experience', 'put into place the lessons/gameplan', 'that's not the way we play' etc. They sound like they don't have a clue, no technical or tactical nous at all. The under 18s seem to have a few pretty good kids e.g. Bellis (I think) who has good feet. But he got nicked from Man City anyway. So the only good kids seem to be the ones we buy in with talent; we don't seem to be able to make the kids that have been here a long time and who should be natural footballers any good.

OldKnow? Nah, got it straight off.

Why only now? The last decent youth team set up we had was with Prost et al .... Can we get rid of Fleming, Davis and Watson as well please?

I think we're putting him in the shop window, along with Hoj and a few others and hoping that if they have a good 'enough' season we can sell them. I don't see either of those two improving (and I've always been scathing of JWP) so I'd like to get rid of them and see if we can get someone in who can play football.

I've just seen the line up. That's it: see what the score is at the end of the day.

They had more skill, movement, poise, and understanding of the game than we did by far. We looked 'coached' as if we were playing by numbers and we really didn't work in groups. We just looked robotic.

Final thought on this. Did Roy Castle visit Southampton on Friday? It's still surprisingly unpleasant to think of this, but I don't think it'll get worse. It was a bizarre game: almost like a training game or one of professionals against amateurs. Well we are where we are so we'd better get on with it.