Gorgiesaint

If a first team coach isn't having much influence on the team, then why are we employing him?

This may have already been answered as just going through the thread but the answer is because our 2 centre mids who played were our best 2 players - Hoj got MotM and Romeu wasn't far behind.

Not strictly relevent to January, but a player who was linked with Saints last summer, Yann Karamoh, has just come on for the last 5 minutes of Inter's game at home to Chievo. Should have scored with in a couple of minutes, nice touch to make space in the box but just pulls it wide. Already shown moe movement than Redmond did in an entire half against Bournemouth.

Pellegrino needs to use this to our advantage. Pep has given Redmond a massive kick up the backside, something which it appears he's not had by our coaching staff, and needs to respond. I expect him to start against Bournemouth, and hopefully, run them ragged.

Hopefully today's performance will provide a bit of a blueprint about how to take things forward. Cast your minds back to 2001 when Strachan forst arrived. He started by trying to play 3 central defenders, a formation which he abandoned because, accroding to own admission, he didn't have players with the capability of playing anything other than 4-4-2. The record under those first 6 games under Strachan, 5 losses & 1 draw. Having changed, we then won 6 out of our next 9 games. Now maybe it's taken Pellegrino a few more games to work things out but hopefully he has. And maybe some of the fanbase could spend as much energy supporting the team as they have calling for the managers head over the last few weeks.

Torres comes off the bench for Athletico and creates a chance for Kevin Gameiro within 5 minutes.

Italian journalist Tancredi Palmeri on Twitter saying that Sky Italia are reporting that West Ham were rejected by Ancelotti, Koeman, Dyche & Paulo Sousa before agreeing a deal with Moyes.

I know its the trendy thing to hammer FF and our goalkeeping coach, but have you seen the catalogue of mistakes that Gazzaniga made whilst on loan at Rayo Vallecano last season? You can't blame Dave Watson for those. I've said this before on here, I think that injury to FF was a bad one not only in physical terms but also psychological (sp?) terms as well, I believe that its had a massive effect on his confidence. If he isn't, then he should be working with a sports psychologist.

Gazzaniga in a nutshell. Played well so far, made a couple of good saves and kicked very well. Then hesitates coming out for a ball and lets Zaha round him, who should have scored. There is always a mistake there waiting to happen, usually it was more than one. Let's not re-write his history with Saints, He wasn't good enough with us and showed little signs of improvement.

Hardly a defector, but an ex-Saint, Gaston Ramirez has scored his first goal for Sampdoria tonight in the local derby against Genoa. Showed a bit of strength and resilience that was sasly lacking his time at St Marys in chasing a flick on whilst holding off the defender and a composed flick over the keeper to finish.

You weren't the only one...

Not seen those comments, do you have a link? Weren't Spurs linked with Shaw fairly recently - so is it papers making it up because Poch used to manage him at Saints, Poch distancing himself as he really thinks Shaw isn't that good, or is he just making the first move to beat down the price? And right now £30m looks a pretty good bit of business, certainly one that we've had the better of.

Will he want Eric Black as his assistant?

Interesting article on the BBC website regarding the decline of the two Milan clubs. Both now Chinese owned and one paragraph deals with the ownership. Of particular interest to Saints was the comment So in the context of Saints, what will be the Gao's endgame? Repatriating funds to China or a trade/infrastructure deal? http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/41558125

I see Steve de Ridder has scored for Lokeren tonight against Zulte-Waregem.

Not seen much of him this season (because of not seen much of Saints rather than he's been stuck on the bench) but from what I saw last season, his movement is excellent. The reason he can't play up on his own is he drops deep too often. However, he is the quality striker in our ranks so to solve the lack of goals problem, you have to work out how to get the best out of Gabbi. I would like to see us go 3 at the back to allow us to play a second striker, something like: .............Forster.............. ....Yoshi.....VvD....Hoedt.... Cedric.......................Bertrand ..............Romeu............. ....Lemina..........Boufal/Davis..... ...............Gabbi.............. ...............Long............... I've put Boufal/Davis as I would play Boufal at home, but Davis away (and home to the top 6) where his work rate is needed in the middle of the park

To be fair, sacking Gary Rowett and replacing him with Gianfranco Zola was a pretty stupid decision. Getting him in to save them from relegation last season was possibly not the worst decision in the world, but then sanctioning 14 signings this summer just shows they've lost control and let Harry run riot. No sympathy for any club that employs him.

How do you know that they were 'his' signings at Alaves?

Didn't he do that when they bought the 80% stake and made a statement. It's business as usual. The new strategy is the old strategy except that we're not a selling club any more, although that would have changed anyway because the influx of money was from TV income rather than from the owners. I prefer the owners to stay quiet and not be noticed, that way they're doing nothing bad. Rather that than the chuckle brothers at West Ham.

Breaking News: Virgil staying at Saints on SSN

Yann Karamoh reported to be having a medical at Inter Milan this morning although the deal with Caen has not yet been finalised. It's been reported that his lawyer is still in France negotiating with the club.

Brilliant spoof on Twitter tonight from Boring James Milner.

He's either going to be an inspired signing (even at a £2m loan fee) or he'll have 3 red cards by the end of the season. My money is on the latter.

I think it's very difficult to criticise Les & Ralph for the stance they've taken under extreme circumstances. I do believe (and I'm not itk) that they intended to keep VvD and intergrate him into the squad after 1st Sept and the close of the transfer window. However, the behaviour of VvD prompted by his agents has made this impossible, and so I think that selling him is now the only option. His alleged behaviour in returning from his injury last season gives an insight into what we would look forward to if we kept him. I think that's a pretty easy one to answer. It seems well known that Cedric and Ryan Bertrand will not happy about VvD getting a move and will have also agitated for a move themsleves. The club had to take a stand to try and move perception away from us being a selling club. Moving forward, I hope the club stay professional in public and stay quiet about what has happened, but I hope they brief the press off the record about VvD & his agents behaviour so that every gets to know what a d!ck he has been.

Interesting the perspective that people have on other clubs signings. £15m for a player with one season at Championship level only making 25 appearances, before basically sitting on the bench in Germany for a season. Was a great prospect, and may well turn out to be a great signing but a bit of risk I would think. Imagine the uproar on here if Saints had signed someone of that profile. To compare with Redmond, who is 2 years older but had 174 appearances for Birmingham & Norwich, and we only paid £10m for him.