Simon3737

Is there any coverage anywhere? Radio or stream? No link on official site. Radio Solent on BBC sounds is playing music…

Maybe the story isn’t true….🤷🏻‍♂️

Bring back the Barclaycard Premiership and On The Ball with Barry Venison! 🤪

The Peter Rodrigues piece makes up for the blatant bias in commentary! I was a foetus in 1976 so memory not the best 🤪

Thanks as ever for keeping this thread up to date! I’ve noticed that (as things stand with contract expiries), 6 months from now our entire list of goalkeepers will be Jack Bycroft and Adli Mohamed (17 year old scholar). Unless we have a load of world class 15 year old goalkeepers about to break through, this seems a pretty big problem! I don’t think any of our goalkeepers are good enough to be in the first team squad next season, but if we let all these contracts run out, we’ll need to buy about 6 keepers this summer (across age ranges). I’m guessing this is the reason behind Alex McCarthy’s rumoured contract extension offer. I’m not sure he’d deserve one otherwise.

What a thoroughly decent young man! Fascinating to hear who the supportive older players are. “Shush their fans”. Brilliant!

I think he’d be great managing the U23s/B-team. We’re clearly struggling there and I’m sure he’d build confidence and help young players develop. I assume he wouldn’t have much say on tactics due to Ralph’s Playbook, but I think his main skill is motivation, team-building and development anyway - so could be a perfect fit. I’m not sure if he’d be interested, but I think it could certainly be argued that a Premier League U23 manager in a team prioritising youth pathways to the first team is equivalent status to a League One manager.

Is the Alex McCarthy contract extension official yet?

I was thinking that too. If he’s taken a pay cut in exchange for more job security, this will have reduced our (immediate) wage bill and might not be as mad as it seems. I assume Theo made the same job security call this summer (and didn’t fancy moving his family abroad to Dubai Rovers or Las Vegas Albion or wherever). Having said that, I’d have preferred us to ‘take the risk’ of letting both goalkeepers leave next summer. Finally, I agree with those who’ve pointed out that the Club have to say he’ll be number one next season in this announcement. They’d hardly say Alex agrees he’s not the best and will step back to reserve next season.

Sack him! 🤪

He clearly appreciates our friendly kitchen staff more! 😀

I’m no expert on our finances, but would we pay £7 million for a 4th choice CB? My guess would be that they expect him to be good enough to play (at least to be in contention for the first team)

Exclusive: Alex McCarthy has been giving the motivational half-time team talks. Here he was last Saturday…. https://www.southamptonfc.com/news/2020-06-04/presidents-lounge-private-message

I disagree. It seems pretty clear to me that VVD bitterly regretted signing the extension with us. He got a pay rise for a few months after which he embarrassed himself going on strike etc. Clearly his ego was big enough to quickly recover though!! He could have gone to Liverp**l for £50m, all sorted quickly and we’d have had £25m less in the bank. Financially, his extension was good for Saints (* if we hadn’t then wasted all the money) and made it harder for VVD to leave us. JWP’s extension is undoubtedly good news. Worse case is we’ll get more cash if he’s sold.

I’d go dull, solid and hardworking for this one… Forster KWP Bednarek Salisu Perraud Romeu Diallo JWP S.Armstrong Adams A.Armstrong

Whoop! 🤪

He’s an inspirational speaker… 🤪

46 points and a cup (semi) final! 🤪

3-3 written all over this! 🤪

To be positive, that’s 6 points from 11 games. If we were to keep that form up for the remaining 15 games we’d get 8 more points (6x15/11) and finish with 37. Pretty sure we’d stay up on that this season. I think we’ll get over this blip though and finish much better than that.

Sounds like he’s expecting Minamino to return from this loan having grown taller. 😀

I agree we should go for Theo and Armstrong as first choice in our ‘narrow winger’ positions. They both prefer the right side though. Are either of them comfortable on the left? I’ve always seen Redmond as a budget Theo Walcott and (although he’s improved) I still do really. Better to go with the real thing. And if Redmond improves and earns his place back, great!

Thanks as always! I notice that the 3 over 21s who you’ve listed as B Team on your opening post (Latham, Johnson and McQueen) are now the only 3 players missing from the official site Teams pages (1st Team or B Team). Not sure if this means they’re all out of favour or just bad website maintenance. We didn’t name any of those 3 players in the official 25 man squad announced at the start of the season either, so maybe they’ll stick with just 17 over 21s in the official squad. I seem to remember that Marcus Barnes was over 21 and excluded from the list last season (although that might be because we had one to many over 21s).

The worst age to be in modern football is 22-24! 22 is too old for the 25 man squad (not a problem for Saints, but is for most teams) and then 24 is too old for the under 23s. Too lightweight for us, but I expect he’ll advance beyond Crawley.

Best case scenario: he has a great season, Stoke get to the playoffs and lose. Then we have a ready made sweeper keeper type who can stop goals too.