S-Clarke

That goal was like a non-league goal, I've never seen anything quite as bad as that. It was 6 on 2 at one point, it was ridiculous. No one was busting a gut to get back, and that video emphasises that. I know Sulemana has won some fans in recent weeks, but that clip there is exactly why he's never going to win me over.

Surely that needs to be cancelled, as well as any 'lap of appreciation' at the final home game. 'Read the room Saints' comes to mind.

This just romance, there would be no benefit to anyone by having Nigel back. I wouldn't want his reputation here to be tarnished by the horrendous group of ''footballers' we currently have. It's light a day to the team he was able to pick back in the day.

When we lose 4-0 as tamely as that, no player comes away with any credit. Period.

As good as that day out at Wembley was, that result has created one of the worst ever seasons in my Saints supporting life. What I'd give to have lost that and be enjoying a Leeds style season now (although that wouldn't have happened, as SR own us). But anyway, this promotion was the worst thing to happen to us. The only positives we can potentially take are finances, but when SR are spending the money I don't even think that is a positive. The days under Port and Wotte were bad, really bad, those were some low days. This is a high level but it feels worse, it feels lifeless. It honestly feels like the entire club has taken a year off of football. Being as uncompetitive as this in any league is shameful and lots and lots of heads should roll in the summer, there cannot be any hiding away from the damage this year has done.

The players I consider as good players won't stay, and we'll be left with the scraps of utter shit. So, on that basis, we need to start again. It feels like we need a L1 style restart in terms of squad, build a new team of players who can grow and evolve with the club. This lot are damaged goods now.

Chelsea have been pretty poor, the fans were on their back, any competitive side would have put them to the sword. We're not competitive, so a team playing fairly poor end up thrashing us in the first half. Defensively a horror show, but what on earth do you expect? Aribo, Bree are not fucking centre backs. They never have been, never will be and should never, ever be put into this position. I feel for them, it's like we're putting those guys out to the slaughter. Some of these players will never, ever recover from this season. As a club, I fear we will struggle to recover as well. Structurally everything is wrong, everything. This is not an overnight fix.

What I have noticed with the 'press' approach is that guys like Airbo, THB/Bednarek and the full backs push high, if they miss the tackle then we are wide open. Some of the aspects of the Brighton and Brentford games reminded me of our suicidal high line we played under Ralph, at the start of the season 4 or 5 years ago. We also have zero midfield cover now, the only player offering us an ounce of physicality is Lesley. We don't have the legs or the pace to recover and it's really exposing the limitations of players such as Bree, THB, Bednarek and such. I think it should be the job of a manager to make the players feel comfortable in their own skin, understanding their limitations and not asking them to do things they simply can't do. I get that a manager will play around a bit during his first few weeks, but surely by now he should realise that Aribo and Bree are not central defenders. I fail to believe that Lutons 11 last season was better than our team this year, but first and foremost the players their manager had available were playing in roles which suited their attributes.

Think of that as a blessing!

If we do decide to switch 'again', I'd like our next appointment to be someone our fan base would look at as a no brainer - relative to the level we're at. I don't want any stupid gambles on unknown coaches or up and coming assistant managers from other clubs. I just feel we need someone all fans can agree on from the start, someone aligned with a 'project' (i hate that term though). Will that happen? Probably not. Going by SR's record up to now, they love to go for left field.

To add a genuine positive, no more VAR. Just watching the Sheff U v Leeds match, and being able to know it was a goal without waiting for check clear/check over was just refreshing. (If you haven't seen it, that was the sort of goal VAR would have spent a month checking, for various reasons)

Wasn't that in the summer we last went down? I'm sure Sheff U were strongly interested, as then a PL side (he was stalling on a contract with us too). Don't think we had any interest this summer.

It's just a normal internal coaching move around by the looks of it, nothing more to it than that from what I can see. We were a coach down after RM's cronies left. We did it with Craig Flemming and Davis under Ralph, and Carl Martin under Selles or Jones.

What a time to be alive.

That Jim Radcliffe takeover has been a total disaster for Man Utd, funny to watch it all unfold though. The Glazers have always been shit, so everyone assumed this would be better - but he's gone a bit Elon Musk on them all!

I think the £30-35m Joachim Andersen went for in the summer is a good benchmark for what we should expect for THB, with the added English tax.

To rephrase it slightly, what I meant is that he's way, way too good for us in our current guise. I agree, we needed Ramsdale level players in at CB, CM and ST to really stand any hope (the same will go for if we are ever promoted again).

I don't think he's ever been much cop to be honest, certainly had the physical attributes I thought we needed back in Ralph's days, but technically he's pretty piss poor. Add that to a genuine lack of conditioning after not playing for years, he looked pub standard. The crazy thing about him is after all of that, he'll still throw his toys out and demand a move in the summer as he'll think he's better than the Championship. Wilcox called him out last season by suggesting there are players who think they have a PL market, but don't. He's one of them.

You've picked out Ipswich as a game we dominated, but we lost it. In many ways that game highlighted the flaws of Martin's approach. Some good moments in the attacking third, but absolute nuts at the back - always giving teams a chance. That was the story of our season really, we vary rarley put teams to the sword - I can think of a handful of games at best. We gave everyone else we played a chance. We gave Huddersfield a two goal head start, we allowed Rotherham back into the game against us, we dominated a first half away at Swansea, went 3-0 up and managed to just about scrape a 3-1 from the second half. We got absolutley destroyed by Sunderland at their place, Leicester home and away. It wasn't as good a season as many try to make out. We were a bit of a oddball in how we approached games and saw them out, which is why I was really happy we got promoted but dreading how we'd cope with better teams. Alas, we haven't.

I think it's been mildly refreshing to have a goalkeeper in between the posts who is capable of making saves. We expose him so much, so he'll always let in a few, but he does actually make saves which is light and day between Bazunu who isn't capable of making saves. He's the least of our issues, but I'd say he's more of a Villa level GK than an Arsenal/City etc, but he's a very good GK and way, way, way too good for us. We'll miss him next year, trust me!

I read that, I thought it was a good article. I'd put it down to another cause though. Their core players are getting older, and their recruitment for the replacement/evolving of their roles has been really really poor by them. I don't look at their side and see any future Rodri's or De Bryune's - they're recruiting 'good' players, but not who I believe will go on to be elite level. The jury is still out on their January signings, I don't really know much about them. Their midfield has been decimated with the absence of Rodri and De Bruyne through injury over the last year, and it's hard to emphasise how important a strong and reliable '6' is when trying to control football matches. If you lose that central structure in a tiki-taka style, then the walls around it crumble. I can't imagine Barca would have done as much without Busquets or Xavi. I don't think it's the end of 'passing football' per-say, I still believe if you have good enough players then you can probably play in any way. City just haven't been good enough in the transfer market under Pep.

Absolutley, I agree. There needs to be an element of ruthlessness in the summer, I don't give a shit if so and so is good in the changing room, if they can't add to us on the pitch then they need to be dumped. Whilst the loyalty we have shown to the likes of Bazunu, Larios, Stewart etc can be seen as admirable, there comes a point where it starts to look like pure stupidity. If we are really going to change and he's going to call the shots then I'd expect to see some common-sense decisions in the summer, and none of the club mouth pieces coming out saying how good Bazunu is etc. Most people in football know he isn't, that's why his only taker in January was Standard Liege (and that's only because his former City coach works there).

Let's just revisit the Martin tenure a second. We started the Championship season terribly and were bottom half, the writing was on the wall but he got us moving again during the middle third of the season - and we flirted with the automatic spots. In the final third of the season we were shit again, losing to Stoke, Cardiff, being thrashed by Leicester etc etc. We were one of the 'top 4' because our players relative to that league were good, and lots of last min wins kept us in there. Whilst we did get promoted, I didn't feel like we were ever a promotion looking side. We were caught out by teams like Huddersfield, couldn't keep clean sheets to save our life and let in 60 odd goals. The style Martin implemented caused us more problems than solutions and our quality on the pitch, relative to the level, had to dig us out of lots of holes. I appreciate that he got us promoted, but getting promoted under him playing the same way did give me nightmares - I'm not going to lie. I had a tiny bit of hope that maybe we'd recruit better players, he'd adapt and we'd improve, but we spent the summer chasing failed PL players and Martin's mates so we were no better off, but playing the same way in a league that's 10x stronger. We were always going to struggle. Martin's philosophy, of all the chatter about it, had failed - and we stuck with him for too long. My argument against replacing Martin at the time was that the same people were in charge, so whilst it needed to happen it probably won't lead to a good choice. And here we are today, with another left-field oddball choice to continue where we have been under SR.

Yep, positioning, movement of feet, reading of the game, his physical presence impacting his ability to get down to corners - all absolutley critical attributes for a top level GK. They can't really be coached, so he's dead rubber.

All those extra views did was seemingly add more disgust towards the fans. As I said, weird posting style.