benjii

India have a stronger batting line up but if Pak get the right pitch their bowlers can cause havoc.

Was hoping to watch goals online but doesn't seem to be any footage, which is odd.

What?

Summary of our finances post the last season in the Champ. https://swissramble.substack.com/p/southampton-finances-202324

That's a non-starter because the tariffs are raising so much money that they are abolishing income tax. Remember?!

To be fair, those guys all handled the playoffs very well, with plenty of bottle. Although this season has been shite, let's not go into next with unnecessary doom.

Ian?

My reply was in response to your comment that we had good games in which strikers missed chances and defenders made mistakes. That happens to everyone. Now you're banging on about Nathan Wood.

Same for every bottom half team ever.

Arsenal have gone from several seasons of finishing outside CL places at the end of Wenger / start of Arteta to finishing 2nd three years in a row. I think they will be happy with that for now. Pressure will come if Man City and Chelsea get their act together and Liverpool maintain their form and Arsenal drop down next season.

And, of course, a lot of it stoked / funded / fomented by Farage's pals in Russia.

You think 11 points is the best we could have done? You don't think we could have matched the mighty Luton with a less idiotic approach?

I'll take it.

We got promoted with reliance on a highly ingrained, intensively coached system based on the side of football where you have the ball. Despite the success of getting promoted, we were crap off the ball and conceded an embarrassingly high number of goals. If you want to succeed in PL and don't have the top players, you make your success largely by what you do when you DON'T have the ball. Poch showed us this. And Ralph, before it ground him down. Bournemouth did this season. And Forest. Forest play very basic football in possession. [I don't mention Koeman, because we had Pelle, Mane and Tadic - three of the best players in Europe at the time.... those were the days.] You organise and press aggressively, and fight for everything, giving the opponent no time. Or you sit off, pack the defence and focus on rapid counters. We haven't had a coherent strategy out of possession since Ralph left. It's extremely important at top level, where the other side won't just surrender you the ball or mess up their attacking positions.

Stephens is one of those players who got very lucky to have the career that he did with multiple years on PL wages. He could easily have played League One/Champ his entire career earning a fraction of what he has.