tajjuk

I find it odd people think we will lose to West Ham away, they are very poor at home, not in good form and we are very good away. They just let a 2 goal lead slip to goal shy Brighton. Plus they have away to City and away to Pool before they play us, so they are unlikely to have picked up any points and potentially might have got smashed. That is probably our most likely win in that list. Looking at their fixture list they are really in trouble, City away, Liverpool away, Us at home, Arsenal away, Wolves home, Spurs away, Chelsea home, they really could be struggling to win any of those.

Man City should be winning and that looks like a penalty to me on Sterling, Lloris doesn't get the ball and there is contact, this is the problem with all the inconsistency if players stay on their feet they don't get pens so they go down easily when there is and then it looks weird.

Zlatan and Cristiano Ronaldo are both top pros, very driven and apparently very good influence on the younger players, arrogant yes (though i think zlatan somewhat plays up to a meme of himself) but understandable arrogance as they back it up. Keane definitely, what pr*ck he was to haaland going on the pitch to basically ruin his career, its at the end of the day a game and to do that is despicable.

8-10 maybe, all winnable of course but 3 of those teams will park the bus at home which we struggle with. I actually think more points might come from the next 5 after that, as those teams are more likely to try to play, i think we might more likely beat teams like Arsenal, Everton and Man Utd, than Burnley and Newcastle, but we'll see. Honestly we could easily though get 2 points a game average for the rest of the season IMO.

It is January and we are where we are now, what has gone before is completely irrelevant. And no Ralph has not been 'saying that for weeks' he said that ONCE before we even got to the Jan window and has subsequently said since (and several times) that the performance of the team and the performance of the youngsters has altered their plans and made their less of a need to rush replacements in and that they didn't want to block the development route of the young players. But hey you don't want to listen to our own manager, because you somehow know better. Also it being a 'fact' doesn't not make it a dumb comment, its an irrelevant fact as I showed you, it means nothing because loads of those clubs are doing worse than use which shows how meaningless it is, West Ham spent over £100 million in the summer and bought a player for £45 million, but they are 8 points behind us and deep in a relegation battle. SO who cares if other clubs have bigger transfer records than us, it doesn't mean anything, the fee of a player is irrelevant if you don't recruit properly. Even with our crap record of recent signings we have shown that transfer is meaningless as we have got more value out of cheap transfer fees like Armstrong and Bednerak than we have the people we have spent more on, so you banging on about what other clubs do is dumb, especially when the table literally embarrasses you.

Very true but many here don't want to hear that inconvenient truth. They somehow expect the club to go spend £30 million in the window on some random foreign player, even when January is notoriously not a good time to recruit, when barely anyone else has bought quality defenders, when we already have a load of flop big name signings crippling the wage bill. The fuss being made about Yoshida is kind of baffling as well, its like people have forgotten his performances this season and that is why he has barely played since the 9-0, because he is simply not good enough for the league anymore and wasn't in Ralph's plans.

As a counter to this, Tranmere are 21st in league 1, so maybe this manager is not the best judge of talent. Also don;t really know much about the guy but maybe this guy is more of a playmaker/attacking mid and they just don't play players like that or play more like a Pulis team, you just don't know. As someone above said it's interesting we have this guy at the same time Crocker has just appeared and he was heavily involved with the England youth set ups. Seems like a no loss situation to me, we get to look at him, he might have talent that has been overlooked/badly used and get a bonus good youngster, if not what have we lost?

He is clearly not above Vestergaard in Ralph's eyes because Vestergaard played at Palace, I think after Leicester Ralpha has written him off. Not seeing the issue with numbers, centre backs we have Bednerak, Stephens, Vestergaard and Danso. Right back we have KWP and Valery, Left back we have Bertrand, KWP and Vokins. JWP can also play right back if needed as he's shown multiple times. We have basically swapped KWP for Cedric, Yoshida was never in the picture. We need to strengthen the defence not with numbers but with quality and that is hard enough to do in January anyway and even harder to do when you have a bloated squad of useless players on high wages. More squad filler seems a bit pointless to me, we only have 14 games left of the season, 1 maybe more in the cup, and the vast majority of those games are against bottom half teams. We haven't strengthened it but I don't think we have weakened it either and clearly its an early start on the clear out we need. Maybe them going early will allow us to get a signing in earlier in the window?

There were some worried about him, but who knows, Bertrand was poor at Villa and was a worry when we signed him but has turned out amazingly. Sometimes players need to find the right home and the right manager to give them confidence to perform. The bigger worry is that he does well and then Spurs want £30 million for him.

Seemed a nice guy, always put effort in, but ultimately was not a very good player, average at best.

LOL 'valuable'? Yoshida hasn't played in the league since October, and he was awful in those games. I wonder if any of you lot realise that maybe, just maybe, some of these players actually want to leave and not sit around being 4th choice, I am sure when Yoshida would take it as great comfort that he can;t go because Saintsweb demand he be here incase we have 4 centre-back injuries...... No minutes in over 2 months aside the FA Cup, out of contract in the summer, was awful in the games he has this season and really has never been anything more than a squad player at his best. Struggling to see 'valuable'

Yeh so still no recognition of your dumb comment, shocking. Key positions like centre back?, cos that is an easy position of fill in January............. I mean Arsenal and Man City with all their millions have done so well there haven't they. We have two centre-backs who seem to have formed a solid partnership and are playing well, doesn't seem very glaring to me. Based on your dumb comments - i.e 'OMEGRD TRANSFER RECORDS', I don't think it is my football knowledge that is questionable. Expert opinion is that transfers in January windows are hard to do, clubs often over pay and they end up making very little difference to the team's performance for the rest of the season. Which would then suggest that a settled team, playing well, for a club that a large wage bill that needs trimming and has a recent history of making poor big money signings, NOT spending money in January is pretty sensible. But hey what do football experts know and history is irrelevant right, when we have the saintsweb experts who clearly know better

None of which responds to any of the points I made, congrats, your comment on record transfers was dumb, yet you repeat it, its meaningless as I showed beyond some sort of box ticking exercise to spend money for spending moneys sake. Also 'brief run of good form' is nonsense, since Ralph has taken over we have largely been in top 10 form, aside for a little run of poor form so if anything our poor start of the season was a brief run of poor form whilst we had a very tough run of fixtures, it is the anomaly not the other way round. Our record under Ralph amounts to about 1.3 points per game or about 50 points. We have played enough games now to have a good sample and that record shows we are basically a mid table team with a mid table squad. Where are the 'glaring holes in our squad' exactly? We have a decent first 11 eleven as shown by them being 9th in the league currently and only 3 points from 5th place, with one of the easiest run ins of anyone in the league. We also have decent cover now for most positions, we are not even in Europe and have pretty much a league game every week to deal with, what the hell do we need a massive squad for? We have players like Boufal, Djenepo, Adams, Vestergaard, Gunn etc. barely getting any minutes on the pitch but apparently our squad is oh so woefully thin? LOL. Also how hard is to get that the problem is not transfer fees, its wages, we have to shift players off the wages. We have players who are amongst our highest earners either not at the club or barely making the bench. like 30% of our entire wage budget is being spent on players making no footballing impact for the football club. We made sh*t signings, we know that, the club knows that and the people responsible for that are gone and a new team is coming in, those sh*t signings are on big wages and we need to clear some of them to sign new players, not sure how hard that is to get and that is unlikely to happen until the summer. In the meantime we have a decent squad, playing well and a not very challenging fixture list neither in terms of number/frequency of games or quality of opponents so the panic and moaning going on in these threads is frank'y absurd.

Because we made money out of it and there is more chance of KWP being here longer term than Cedric who had no intention of staying and signing a new contract and has wanted out for he last year plus.

It's not, look at Liverpool they have had very few injuries to their key players. They don't even really have back up full backs, don;t have many centre-mid options and only have Origi and Shaqiri to cover the front 3, yet they are winning the PL at a canter, are in the Champions league and have played world club cup as well. People making a massive fuss about our squad depth when we have just the PL and the FA Cup to play, yet we probably have as much depth (in relative quality) to Liverpool. Man City have had only one left back for like the last two years and have had to play a midfielder there.

And West Ham spent over £100 million this season alone, including £45 million on one player, who has a massive 6 goals this season. Yet they are below us and Burnley. Man Utd have a bigger record transfer several times than Man City, that is not working out very well for them. Liverpool sold a player for £150 million and used that to fund Van Dijk and Allison, which has worked out massively well for them whilst Coutinho flopped for Barcelona and is out on loan. A huge amount of our fans thought we paid far too much for Danny Ings, but he now is pretty much our best signing in years and one of the best striker buys in the PL of recent times. Transfer fees are meaningless if you don't recruit properly. As out near £100 million in outlay for players that currently are either out on loan or are bench regulars show, whilst two of our relative cheap buys of recent times in Bednerak and Armstrong have become important first teamers, yet they cost barely half what we paid for Carillo. Our current starting Keeper cost £3.5 million, our centre-back £5 million, the other centre-back was £150k and our left back was £10 million, and Cedric was £4 million. So our entire back 5 cost much less than we have paid for two centre-backs in recent times. What is the point in looking at other clubs transfer fees? To see they have big money failings like us, or even bigger failings? Newcastle and West Ham alone have spent nearly £90 million this year on strikers who combined have less than HALF Danny Ings' goal tally. But wohoo they broke their record transfer, so that is something right?

Exactly, the only signings that have really been successful from the last 3 windows are Ings, Bednerak, and Armstrong, and the latter two were relatively cheap. Hopefully Djenepo will work out well as well and has certainly shown promise. Same with Adams not going to write him off yet and seems to be in Ralphs plan. We are hamstrung by poor signings. Hoedt, Carrillo and Elyounoussi have pretty much been disasters, Lemina was decent but has a poor attitude, Forster was oddly given a new contract on high wages when he wasn't in great form and then continued to decline. Vestergaard has been average at best. Boufal has shown glimpses of talent but never nailed down a starting spot. Those 6 players alone represent an outlay of nearly £100 million in transfer fees, but also add in Forster as well, we are probably looking at £450k a week in wages on 5 players that are out on loan and 2 players that are bit part. That is the big problem, we have the transfer funds I reckon but not room on the wage budget. Those players out on loan are getting around £20 - 22 million a year, when our whole wage bill for the year is only around £50 million. Hopefully with Cedric's wages going, Yoshida's wages going, maybe Long as well, that frees up some wages. Then Elynoussi and Forster doing well at Celtic should make them relatively easy to shift. Hopefully clearing the deadwood this year should be a little easier.

Exactly. I wouldn't be surprised if their wage budget was less than half ours.

Are we? We currently have 3 right backs, one wants to leave and is on high wages, we are going to save wages and get money for Cedric going, plus Walker Peters can play both sides, so we have better cover for Bertrand now as well. It doesn't seem a massive problem to me.

They have a very cheaply assembled squad from the championship on championship wages, and now pretty much have guaranteed two years worth of PL TV money, so they will have plenty of room in the budget for signings. We don't because we have a squad on PL wages. Once/IF they stay in the PL for like 4-5 years then they will likely be the same as they will have new contracts and new players demanding £70k plus a week because of the PL money.

LOL, as said above the club have said the contracts will be done once we know we are in the league, its fricking January, calm down ffs. Where is it confirmed we will let any of the players run down their contract or they intend to do that? And who says we must sell to even loan?

Why are we assuming so many people are leaving? I reckon Long will get a new contract so I doubt with Ings, Obafemi, Adams and Long we will sign a striker. Yoshida and Cedric are leaving, so we will need a new starting right back and another centre-back, hopefully an upgrade. We need a back up left back. And we need another centre-mid to challenge Hojberg and JWP. So that is what? LB CB RB CM Not too hard, if other people do go, like Romeu, Hojberg, Boufal or Vestergaard for example then we'll see from there, but no point making assumptions based on very little. As people have said Bertrand has supposedly been leaving for years. I don't think we will have much issue shifting Forster and Mo considering their performances at Celtic this season, Boufal also impressed at Vigo last year and can see suitors for him if he wants to leave for first team football. Hoedt and Carrillo will be harder, but I reckon we'll have potential to maybe spend £50 million plus £15-30 million raised through sales from those on loan. Lemina is a bit of a mystery. Who knows maybe a bit of humble pie being on loan in Turkey will improve his attitude and he might come back and want to play, he has the potential to be very good under Ralph, if not I am sure someone in Italy or similar will pick him up. So maybe around £70 - 80 million to spend for 4 players, 2 of whom are essentially being signed as back ups, so we could go out and spend like £25 million on the centre-back and right back each, then another £20 million on the squad players. Not sure what the panic is about, we have a good first 11 now, we need to fill the right back slot as Cedric is going and hopefully we can upgrade there and hopefully we can sign a centre-back as an upgrade as well. We have several players out on loan doing well who shouldn't be hard to shift and they will free up wages and add transfer fees. Really if no one leaves we actually only need 1 first teamer and some squad depth, but hopefully will get 3-4 in that will improve the first 11.

He was dire for about two years, clearly his heart was not in and he was not enjoying his football despite his talent and has found a new home in Holland that has reinvigorated him, though I imagine playing against league 1 level defences most games helps with the confidence and goal scoring. It was not a mistake to sell him because he was never going to capture that form here, probably not ever in the PL.

Haller was £45 million and has 6 in 19. Tosun was £27 million (2 years ago) and has a record of 10 in 47 in the PL. Joelinton was £40 million and has 1 goal in 22 so far. Batshuayi was £33 million (4 years ago) and 8 in 46 for Chelsea, (and 5 in 11 for Palace) Slimani was £28 million (4 years ago again) and has 8 in 35 for Leicester, and then 0 in 4 for Newcastle. Benteke was £32 million (4 years ago again) and has 19 in 97 for Palace, and only 4 goals in his last 60 games as well. Wesley was £22 million and has 5 in 21 for Villa (and now is out injured for 9 months) Solanke was £19 million and currently has zero goals for Bournemouth and only 1 career goal outside 7 goals scored in the Dutch league. Spending big money on striker is a risky and often unsuccessful business, the only scorers in the top 10 scorers in the league this year that haven't been in the league for quite a while are Jimenez and Pukki. Jimenez initially came on loan and Pukki is pretty much a journeyman striker who had has carried on an excellent championship seasons. If you look at the rest there are lots of English players in there - Ings, Vardy, Sterling, Kane, Abrahams, Rashford, several of them through the academy of those clubs, and there are people who have been here a good 3/4 years at least like Aguero, Salah, Aubameyang etc. Ings is probably one of the most successful striker signings of recent PL history. It would clearly be hard for us to go out and spend £30, even £40 million and get a regular goalscorer in the PL, even with that sort of money you have to lucky and it would probably take the player a while to get used to the league. That Leeds were apparently willing to spend over £20 million as Championship club to buy a striker with no PL goals probably highlights the problem.

Would love to be the first team to beat them this season, think most world football fans would love us as well, but highly unlikely. A few things in our favour, them playing today so having less rest and Mane being likely out, but still a massive ask. I think we will give them trouble, we have shown we are a dangerous away team but I reckon they'll either fluke a goal, or get a wonder goal or some favourable VARing to get a 2-1 win.