tajjuk

Yes it would be nice to win the game in hand and be looking at the upper half of the table not the bottom for a bit. I think if we can get some form and confidence back, looking at our fixtures we could go on a bit of a run. I mean win tomorrow, despite our terrible form we are only 7 points off Liverpool in 6th!

I can only presume on what he has done in training, plus he got his audition in the cup and it's not like this is a guy from the academy with no senior football, he was playing regularly last year putting in performances against people like Messi.

If Ings goes we will need a striker and that will become priority number one. If he doesn't we'll still need a second, could be someone like Minamino, I reckon Liverpool will want to raise funds to refresh their team after this clearly poor season for them (where they could even fail to make top 4) and they'll see him a sellable asset I reckon despite what Klopp says about 'developing him'. A no. 10 upgrade is needed IMO. And full back cover is also essential. I'd like to see a new no.1 keeper but I doubt that will happen. 2-3 in I reckon, 3-4 out, hopefully some of the loans like Lemina, Mo, Hoedt will get turned into permanent moves even if the fees relatively small.

We also just haven't turned into a bad team overnight, we had a bad run of injuries, at the same time as some tough fixtures and some horrible refereeing decisions in there as well (notable Villa and Wolves), which all came together to really knock the team's confidence. Some actual competent refereeing and we'd be level with Spurs in the top 10 right now and 4 points of 6/7th with easier games to come. I think minimum we'll get another 5-6 wins out of the last 14.

Can we just highlight our fixtures, we still have to play Sheff Utd, Brighton, Burnley, West Brom, Palace, Fulham, West Ham, Leeds twice. Man City, Liverpool and Leicester are our only really difficult games. We've had a bad run but its also important to note those fixtures have included Leicester, Liverpool, Man Utd, Chelsea, Arsenal, Wolves in the last 8 so not exactly 'easy' fixtures either.

Hmmmn where is all the silly questioning of players mentality? All these 'weak' players lacking leaders surely should have folded in that second half according to the 'wisdom' of many on here..... When we don't get screwed over by the officials we start getting the points we more deserve, as we did today. Though I will say for all their millions and millions spent Chelsea still look pretty average, all Tuchel seems to have done is make them a bit more solid but more blunt as an attacking force. Should give us some confidence now, stopped the losing streak, got off 29 points, onwards to Leeds, which could be a very unpredictable game.

Except Celtic wanted him and have clearly looked worse this year without him.

We were good first half, we weren't as terrible second half as people are making out IMO. We were good the whole game against Villa. We weren't terrible at Newcastle but made some horrible horrible errors that made it easy for them. The Man Utd game was a storm of everything going wrong. We played decently in both cup games. I think the team is doing ok, we are of course not hitting the heights of earlier in the season in terms of performance but nor do I think performances are bad enough for 6 defeats in a row. Like you say a happy and confident team makes these decisions a non-issue and still picks up points, but they are not a confident team, they are losing games and have had several weeks where key decisions are going against them time and time again, coupled with an unlucky run of injuries before that. Mentally its going to have a big impact. There are fine margins in PL games, most of the teams are not that far apart in ability and things like form, fitness, tiredness, confidence and luck can have a big impact on games.

Thing is McCarthy is only really good at shot stopping and he's not doing that, so what else does he bring? Not very much, his distribution is poor (and often creates opportunities for the opposition or slows us down or just gives the oppo the ball back) and his communication/leadership at the back does not seem great either, he seems rather quiet for a keeper IMO. Forster on the other hand, from recent games seems rather more of a commanding presence and seems to have better distribution as well. Plus he's a giant lump who tends to make himself big so even if his shot stopping might not be up to in an form McCarthy he often just makes up for it by just getting in the way. And McCarthy is not in form, his shot stopping is not up there, McCarthy from the summer saves that shot today IMO, but I also think probably Forster in current state (certainly at peak state) does as well and even if he doesn't its more likely to hit him. Neither of them are great options, we need a better keeper, but I think of the two, I'd be inclined to give Forster the nod because he seems more back to his old confidence self and McCarthy does not seem to be confident.

100% nonsense we did. I mean we must have been so terrible that the Wolves manager mentioned how tough a game it was for them and all the pundits are talking about how bad the decision was that changed the game. Go watch the highlights package, its all Saints, except for their goals basically. It kills confidence, Wolves were crap for more than half that game and didn't create one single clear chance, they got a dodgy pen which changed the game for them and scored a wonder goal where we should have defended better. Yeh they played better second half but still did very little, the ref got them in the game and our players are struggling for confidence on a bad run of form. It's more the other way around people on here are so quick to call us terrible when we are average if not half decent, but as soon as we lose we get all these smug clueless comments about how terrible we are, honestly its utter nonsense.

^ Look at the comments, its killing them these decisions.

I think Ralph sums it up well - People going we are bad in the second half, well really were we that bad? How many actual chances did they create in that whole game? None. Why were they in the game at all? Because of a terrible refereeing decision. You can see in the Ralph reply how gutting and confidence destroying it must be for them. Like I said they must feel they play against 12 men every week, do you think you could do you job to a top level under those sort of conditions?

No they didn't, not over the whole of that game, they only got back into the game through a terrible refereeing decision (in fact two as we should have had a pen as well), from that point on how the game goes its unknown. A competent ref we are 2-0 up with like 30 mins or something left. Goals change games, especially for teams a little low on confidence which is what both teams are as neither is in great form. At key moments this team is consistently being let down by the officiating. Could we play better? Yeh sure, but loads of teams win and draw games when they don't play well, especially against other teams not playing well, but at the moment we are on of those teams who is playing decently to average and are losing games not because we are massively outplayed, but because the referees are gifting our opponents free goals or taking goals away from us.

We are 1-0 up against a team who has barely done much all game after what 60 mins? And then they get a pen for the ball hitting our defender from like 2-3 yards away with his arm tucked against his body and they get a goal back giving them renewed confidence, meanwhile their defender sticks out a blatant arm in the box and we get nothing. We are vastly the better team against Villa, more chances, more shots, more possession, we have a stonewall pen where the defender saves the ball like he is a gk and we get no pen, they score from basically the only thing they did all game, and then an equalising goal is ruled off side because of cms after they take the frame AFTER the ball is played, robbing the team again. The 9-0, an injury ravaged team with teenagers playing, that then loses a player after 2 minutes, gets battered with bad decision after bad decision, resulting in another record loss. The team is in not great form and confidence, but a large part of that reason is we have consistently over those games been screwed over by referees, destroying the players confidence further. These decisions are so terrible that they cannot be ignored imo.

What people don't realise is confidence is going to be fragile in this team and we are basically going week in and week out to decisions that screw that team over, how do you think they feel when basically every time they play, the ref is giving the opposition a goal or taking one of those away in a blunder. They have basically been playing against 12 men every week. And goals change games, Wolves don't get that absurd pen, they are not back in the game.

At least we are back at a point where there is some debate about who should be starting, as opposed to just getting the 11 bodies on there.

Based on raw attributes and age, I kind of agree with what the club has been saying, long term you'd think Salisu would be first choice centre-back for a long while. I mean pacey and powerful centre-backs are not common and even less so are ones with a left foot for that added balance, so you'd think he'd be pushing probably Bednerak out of the team next season (unless Vestergaards form drops heavily again). This season not so sure, Bednerak's form of late has been iffy (though he has been a tad unlucky as well) but seemed prior to that have formed a good partnership with Vestergaard and often players who work well in a combo can be more than the sum of their parts so I think we'll see those two for a while this season.

Except on recent form McCarthy would have conceded 2/3 goals from those 4 shots, something like 60% of the shots on target in recent games have gone in......

100% this, whilst a European spot might be tricky, if we put together a run who knows with the inconsistency in the league, hardly like those team above us are all going to keep wining, plus are last 10 or so games a lot are against bottom half teams IIRC and we could put together a really strong finish. At the very least we need to stop the run of poor form in the league anyway.

This end part seems contradictory to me, surely Gao wants out and wants his money, so if someone meets his asking price he'll be very unlikely to turn that down regardless of how suitable they are. The De Grossa idea sounds fine, potentially good for the club to be at the centre of a group of clubs, but City did it with huge resources not loans, that the big issue.

Neither really but McCarthy isn't really making any saves and is making mistakes, whilst Forster looks more confident than he used to. I'd personally give Forster a run as he can't really do much worse. The issue we've had is Forster completely lost his form, McCarthy was only ever supposed to be a back up and is a pure shot stopper with awful distribution who is now being asked to play out from the back more and Gunn was brought in as the young sweeper keeper who is good with his feet, but his confidence was shot and wasn't saving anything. So unless Gunn comes back with some amazing form whilst on loan (no idea how he is doing but hes relatively young and was highly rated at City), I'd look for a new keeper to push McCarthy back to no.2. and sell the other two, Forster is like one of our highest paid players and is not justifying that wage in any way. But I think with our finances GK will be low down the priorities so we'll probably have hope McCarthy starts actually saving things again to make up for him giving the opposition free goals every so often because he struggles to pass more than about 15 yards. If we can get rid of Forster some how, then a cheap option might be Romero from Utd.

We paid £20 million for Ings and we must have agreed to pay £25 million for Maddison as IIRC Leicester matched our offer and he then agreed to move there. I think for the right player we'll pay £25-30 million, but maybe not in current Covid climate, though I feel those £25 million ish players are probably like £15 million anyway at the moment. I thought that about Edouard but he's not quite kicked on as much as expected, so not sure the bigger clubs will gamble on him, but I think the talent is there and Ralph could probably do a lot with him. Kent for me is the stand out player in SPL from what I have seen, really direct, good on both feet, takes people on and wants to get into the box and take players on, always busy, think he could be the upgrade on Redmond we need.

Celtic and Rangers are still two clubs where I think some value can be found and might be available more for the £10-15 million mark, Kent, Tavernier and Barisic might be worth the gamble imo. Edouard has been highly rated as well.

Death rights are not right whatever, at the end of the day its just football, he's made mistakes but he's not endangered anyones life or anything, basically just made multi-millionaires lose a game of football so those people need to get perspective. But questions have to be asked really of the FA here that is has allowed this position to happen, he's consistently been making glaring errors, at the very least they should have been taking him out of the spotlight for a while.

Adam Armstrong, Blackburn apparently want around £15 million for him, 23, English, very quick and has 17 in 26 in the Championship this season, 16 in 46 last season, for a middling to bad championship team. But really we have to spending more on one player, especially with the Brexit issue going to cause problems.