S-Clarke

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.

Which should have been obvious before he even took the job, and even more weirdness that we chose to appoint someone with a fixed style that was the opposite of the style we were 'built' for. (not built very well mind). It's just another SR masterclass. We had Ralph here doing that exact same approach, with players more accustomed to doing it. We then spent 18 months ripping that up and building a new style, to then do a full 360 and go back to where we started but now without the players to play it. Absolutely genius.

Do you actually ever have a view on the games or the club it's self, or do you use this forum as place to voice your disgust at the fans? I'm not sure who you are, but my guess is that you're some sort of a club-bot with no fan connection. It's the only conclusion I can bring myself to your weird posting style.

Seriously, it's not like they've just made a few messes up here and there. They have continuously, 99% of the time, picked the wrong ones for Saints. That alone removes any element of confidence that anything they try next will work. What they do at Goztepe means shit.

I doubt Spors has had any input in promoting Rusk, let's be honest. He wouldn't have had a clue who he is to start with. This is just a normal internal promotion as you see across all teams. We did it with Carl Martin when he moved up from the U18's, and also Craig Fleming before him. He's certainly not being lined up to be our manager.

I must admit I know very little about Spors and I do find it quite odd how everyone is now pinning Spors as our saviour. Like you say, every big call they've made has gone south - even to the point of Wilcox and Shields as they jumped ship just months into it. They always make the wrong calls. My expectations for Spors are very, very low, either his longevity or his impact on improving us. It's all a bit desperate really.

The fact you're describing Aribo and Bree as the two centre backs is where it's all wrong. I just couldn't believe what I was seeing. They wouldn't even be capable centre backs in the lower league, I just have no words for this anymore. It's like we're being run as some sort of experiment.

This is different, the rot is deep. The ownership can't do anything right. I just don't see how we can be competitive next season going by what we see every week. The levels are different, sure, but it's hard to lose every week to then start winning every week. We're not going to be walking away with any league next season, maybe a playoff push at absolute best if everything goes right - but that requires SR making the right calls, which they obviously won't.

It's probably 60/40 or somewhere along those lines. The players recruited in the summer were poor and not at the level we required. That's on Martin as he sat at the head of all recruitment decisions in the summer. He has left us with a hopeless team at this level. He continued to persevere with an approach of playing football that was getting us in trouble last season, so it was obvious to all of us what it would do to us this season. His arrogance continued as we all expected. Juric has come in and hasn't really changed anything, yes the quality of player is very, very, very low - but any sane person should not be playing Aribo as a centre back (or Bree for that matter). At the end of the day, SR have struck again. Awful decisions and awful execution of ideas. This all leads back to them and their ownership is now severely damaging for the future of this club.

I question the sanity of anyone who feels Aribo and Bree are capable CB's at a competitive level of football.

Using Gotzepe as a reason to hold SR to any sort of regard is pretty pathetic. I couldn't give a toss about Gotzepe, I only comment on what I see in front of me happening to the team I support. The hard facts are that that they've relegated us twice, and have spent a small fortune on achieving those relegations. They have been utterly, utterly, utterly useless and every big decision they have made has been a fail. They are in the process of ruining this club for an entire generation of fans. If Gozepe finish 6th in the Turkish League it doesn't redeem them in anyway, I only care about what they're doing for my club and they're fucking turning it to rubble in front of our eyes.

This club is batshit crazy, we are broken from top to bottom. The first time they relegated us we kept a few 'PLish' players and managed to put up an attempt, although the season wasn't painless the quality saw us over the line in the end. This time we will go down and we won't be back for a very, very, very long time. There's nothing here, nothing to build from, nothing to get behind. Most of this team will be off in the summer and we simply have to start again. That will come with pain and inconsistency, and probably a few more managerial changes before we are able to mount any form of Championship effort. SR are about to complete their task of turning us into Stoke City v2, so well done to them. There's not much point talking about the match as it didn't really happen, only one team played. I will question any manager who feels it's sensible to play Bree and Aribo as centre backs though, no one, not even non-league managers would do something so daft. We surrendered at 13:45, which we have done most weeks. This season will be damaging long term to this club, let's not be naive to that. We don't just recover from a year like this and turn into beaters next season, it doesn't happen like that.

It's the same criticism as I've always had of Bazunu, you can rarely pinpoint at a critical horrendous error, but he just doesn't make saves and you're always thinking ''could he have done better there?'' There are no games you come away from thinking that the GK has won that for us. Any shot at the centre of goal goes in. It's just like having an outfield player in goal who can use the football. He will cost us shed loads of goals if he plays for us next season, guaranteed.

I can't help but feel sorry for him on a personal level as well, but taking that out of it I think the club do need to be a bit ruthless with him in the summer - just so we can move on not have him taking up wage and squad space. 2 weeks becomes 4 weeks, which becomes months for Ross - it's terrible for him, but we need to be realistic with him as well (so do the doctors around him). He's barley kicked a ball for 3 years, there is no feasible way he returns to the top level to be able to contribute in any meaningful way - his body will have lost all the conditioning and he'll always be susceptible. I genuinely think for his sake he should retire and focus on a life beyond playing football, it'll be better for his mind I'm sure. Similar has to be said of Larios too - he's a bit of a worse case because he's so, so slight in himself anyway. I just don't see how his body will ever be able to sustain professional football.

We haven't even had the ability to sort succession planning for our better players because we keep chopping and changing our managers and then in turn - our style. We totally under appreciated Romeu's role as a club and blindly went into that season with a gaping hole which he used to occupy. Clubs will have peaks and troughs when it comes to recruitment success, but to still be as bad over 8 years is pretty scathing and that alone should be a reason to scrap whatever department we have and start again - but it's imperative that the strategy aligns with clarity from the top down, otherwise it will just continue to be a disjointed mess.

The recruitment certainly has to take it's fair share of blame in terms of where we are, this is not just a 2 year thing either - we've been signing crap for many years now. Of course there will be the odd exception here and there, Fernandes, Tino, Lavia etc and you'll find certain players thrive better at other clubs. I'm still not entirely sure what the club saw in the likes of AMN, Diallo, Moussa, Hoedt, Armstrong, Ely, Aribo, Perraud, Stewart, Larios, Bazunu etc to suggest they'd be any good physically at the top level. That has been the big let down with our worst signings in my opinion and there have been a lot of them. I'd also add that our confused philosophy will screw things, we're buying players suited to one approach and then changing tact and playing a different way with players who aren't physically capable. The club need to decide on an approach and recruit for that approach, we can't keep chopping and changing like we have as we'll end up with a squad full of dribs and drabs and no real consistent theme (as we see today).

They did replace them with quality though (Some bought, some returning from loans), Solomon, Tanaka, Ramazini, Aaaronson, Rodon, Struijk etc are all top tier players for that level. Add that to the likes of James, Gnonto, Ampadu, Firpo, Gruev, Piroe who were already there. Pretty formidable outfit really, with a bit more balance this year to my eyes.

I'm surprised there's nothing about how to waste £80m.

There is a rumour going around that I heard at the game, seems as others heard the same - but Fitzhugh rebutted that and claimed he has been at the training ground and is genuinely 100% injured. We'll see I guess.

It would have been an odd signing last season, so it was even more of an odd one this year. He's a pretty low-end Championship CB, but this is the problem we lumbered ourselves with in the summer - no proper DoF, so these sorts of things were driven by Martin which shouldn't have happened. He signed a decent sized contract too, so he'll be around next year.

Out of interest, who are his two sidekicks? I haven't seen anything about staff he has brought with him. The rest of this season is going to be odd, nothing really matters and there's nothing to build on because we'll be stripped back come the summer. We're in a weird holding position and none of us really know what is going on. Juric is pretty much just a caretaker at this point. I also see Rohl as a logical shout come the summer, but SR don't do logical shouts!

I wouldn't say we just scraped into the playoffs, that's re-writing history a bit. It was a breakaway 4 really, Leicester, Ipswich ourselves and Leeds. There are players in amongst the group today who impacted at that level, some heavily. I do agree that there needs to be a bit of a clear-out though, as we've managed to accrue such a large squad of fundamentally lower league players. But I don't think it's fair to proclaim we only scraped the playoffs, I think we finished 17 points clear of 7th.

''Possession without substance'' or ''We don't just buy failures, we breed it''