Hodgey

The WPs will be off, Walcott out of contract, Lavia Salisu and ABK as potential with prem experience. Maybe Adams. Tino will need to prove fitness so see him staying. That would leave Bazuna, McCarthy, Willy Tino, Payne Perraud, Small, Larios Bednerak, Stephens, CC, Lyanco Diallo, Smallbone Moi, Fandab, Djenepo, Aribo, Armstrong, Dibling, Tella Morgan, Armstrong, Mara, Ballard You would think we would get c £100m in sales and reinvest c £50m which added to the above (need a cf, rb and 2 dms) you would hope would have us top 6 minimum.

It’s not the way I would have gone, and I think we will go down, maybe a top manager could have kept us up. But firing him and his staff now and appointing a Dyke doesn’t make much sense. I’d love Wood here but he’s playing well for Newcastle so even with his ex manager he isn’t coming. I still think he would be a success in rebuilding when we go down, but I am worried that by then he may be past the point of no return from the fans and players. If you believe the rumours (and he was linked before) Jones has clearly been a target for a while. There MUST be a plan here, or the whole thing is beyond madness and makes no sense. So SR have to enact and communicate that plan. Jones has to be backed in this and the next window, but the board need to be clear with Jones that fans need to see a plan quickly. If that means he had to drop star players, fine, sell disruptive players, fine, buy a big cf lump from the championship fine. Then there are the players, again SR need to quickly make a decision here. Can Jones win most of them round ? What support does he need to do so ?. What a mess SR have made of this so far. The priority has to be a clear plan / style that the players and fans can understand. You can’t try 5 different tactics in one match, that reeks of desperation and a lack of faith. I do see why people want him out. I resigned myself to relegation a while back as I simply think our players aren’t good enough and SR strategy was deeply flawed, so I’m looking at how we quickly bounce back rather than stay up (which would be a massive bonus). Top quality managers won’t come to a club looking like relegation certs, who have just fired someone after 2 games. We had that chance before but chose Jones.

It would be a disaster in that we spent £50m added to a team who stayed up and still went down. Get the Stoke point, but last 3 seasons Watford, Fulham, WBA, Bompey, Norwich and Sheffield Utd have gone down. 2 of those are back in the Prem, 2 have gone up and down again, and 4 of those teams are currently in the top 5 of the Championship. So as a pc we are much more likely to be in the mix for an immediate return than wallow in mid table or worse. All that said this is Saints we are talking about so we’ll probably do a WBA/Stoke, but we clearly have a good number of championship players and a manager who knows that division, so the raw materials are there.

This is one of the positives I’m clinging on to if we go down. We seem to have a good number of players too good for the championship but not good enough for the Prem, and a manager who knows the division. Whilst we would inevitably lose ABK, JWP, Salisu, Lavia - I think we’d have the talent to go straight back up (ie Adams, Tella and Armstrong should be able to score plenty of goals) once we mentally learn to win again

Didn’t we ? Thanks Steve, I thought we did as I so clearly stated in my post, which you clearly read and understood. I’m glad you are around to aggressively steer me right. Boy do I feel silly - better take my dumb ass off this forum

I’m predicting that Jones will be a success, although maybe not immediately. I’m hoping that he gets a good year minimum - even if we go down, so im going to try and hold judgement. Im also hoping he gets the freedom to bring his own strategy (ie not have to follow Ralfs playbook) and hopefully the types of players he needs (so not just young potential types). Patience and support required here from all (esp the board) or this was a silly appointment.

They should not be, and are not, really happy. This is a PR article to appease the fans, behind the scenes there will be blamestorming and finger pointing galore. they have clearly made some big errors, which they are trying to justify. Yes there is well thought through strategy, but the execution so far has been poor. some of the nonsense about Jones having to follow the Ralph playbook (whatever that was) you would hope is just rubbish. As is the quote about how happy they were about the transfer window. Plenty of time to put it right, but this is to be taken with a massive pinch of salt

I think the problem with relegation this year is that it sets us back hugely with our strategy. We’ll only make big money on young players if they are showing their capabilities in the Prem, plus if we go down the pressure to sell the family jewels cheap grows and the players will agitate for a move more than ever. Plus high potential young players won’t want to join. Plus we’ll be saddled with a fair few average championship players on Prem wages we’ll struggle to sell. If we can stay up however, we may only need to sell a couple of young players for huge money, have the benefit of a years experience from the remaining high potential young players, and can reinvest and attract players who want a chance in the Prem. This is why SR have made such a massive error, the risk was too high not securing a big money striker.

Worth putting a cheeky loan bid in for Wood. Doubt Toon would want to lose him but with Wilson and Isak fit maybe, and he may want to play games.

What I do find a bit odd - is the amount of fans who don’t rate him at all - and see him as a sub par player who we could easily do better than. I’m not sure where this comes from, we have a proven 10 goal a season midfielder in our midst in a goal shy team, and previously right up there in term of interceptions / challenges / ground covered and yet some want rid !. He’s also undeniably been our best player not just for 3 or 4 games, but entire seasons. obviously people see things differently - and I agree his form thus far hasn’t been good enough and maybe I give JWP too much credit. But I’m interested in what fans want - sell and try and buy another midfielder ? (our success rate isn’t great here) or try Lavia / someone else in our squad ??

His form isn’t good, and our midfield is currently losing most battles. Is that because of him or because of the tactics / players around him ?. he doesn’t deserve to go to the World Cup, but we’ve seen how good he can be, if he has played to a high standard in the Prem before consistently then clearly he can do it again, our manager / coaching team have to solve that as a priority. With such a young team it’s madness that we suddenly can’t get a tune out of an experienced players. The captaincy - I’m not sure - is he a great captain ? Probably not, can I see a preferable candidate - not now Rom has gone. Giving it to someone else might improve his form removing that burden , but equally might further damage his morale. On corners - I think as fans we tend to overestimate how dangerous they can be. Every fan I talk to bemoans corner routines - i don’t see much wrong with JWPs execution, more that tactically we are not there (not helped by the constant cb changes and having a pretty small team). Finally the square / backwards pass accusations. This is a really tough one - when you lose control of midfield there is more pressure on retaining the ball to reduce pressure / build. Also if you are struggling to play a simple pass you are less likely to play a fwd one as the risk of losing the ball is higher. But I do think as a team we overdo possession and JWP is certainly currently a part of that.

Agree - Italia 90 was the peak, when you genuinely saw new players and tactics, the point when some traditional whipping boys gave teams a bloody nose, and just before it became about cash and corruption. As for this circus, my hope is that we have reached the bottom. There is no build up to this, November/December is when everyone is working their arses off to close the year / save to buy presents / Christmas shopping etc - not many can find time to watch daily football. And I also think it’s a negative for England. Most of their players are out of form or spent time warming arses on bench / playing out of position (Chilwell, Shaw, Sancho, Rashford, Maguire, Stones, Henderson, White, Foden, Grealish, Phillips etc).

If you look at their first 11 - this shouldn’t be a team we particularly fear, especially when at home. If we want to stay up, we need to get points from fixtures like this. I don’t see them battering us, I think it’ll be another close run game - probably another 1-0 or 1-1. Hopefully Almeron’s purple patch is over and Che has his shooting boots on. If Lavia is fit I’d love to see a midfield of him, AMN and JWP so we can actually try and win a midfield for once. Right back is still a problem, but we need to try Paine out at some point so may as well be now. Then Che and both Armstrong’s in the front 3. Isn’t A Armstrong a geordie ? He may actually look to prove a point.

So the new whipping boys are Che and JWP. The former puts a big shift in, is decent at holding the ball up and bringing others in, but can only use his right foot, and hits it as hard as he can at the goal - but at this level that generally means it’s at the goalkeeper. The latter looks very frustrated, he’s being overran in midfield, and cannot link up with the att midfielders, the formation / partners has seen his wc dreams ends and his confidence is low. The problem is this - both are vastly superior to anyone else in their positions, dropping one or both will make us worse. So the answer has to be to try and play to their strengths - for Che that means actually having players support him, he’s a 7-8 goal a season striker and will miss more than he scored, but that’s not a problem if some of our other so called att mid step up and start scoring, find another 8-10 striker, and get JWP back to scoring 8-10 a season( but for that he needs support, and he needs free kicks in the right areas) Finding a 15 goal a season striker is very unlikely, but we don’t need to if others contribute. And turning the criticism to two players who are clearly still putting a shift in, but are low on confidence mainly due to shocking support from team mates I think misses the mark.

I’ll raise you Gillingham away, uncovered scaffolding stand, no shelter for miles, lost that one too

I don’t think he’s drained, I just think he’s slow. He’s totally the wrong type of player for a wingback - no pace, no engine, can’t really tackle, won’t beat the opposing fullback. If he plays it’ll just mean Martinelli even more encouraged to get forwards. He needs to play a full back, even if they are wrong footed. I get the Djenepo thought, but I don’t fancy him defending for 90m…

One moment summed him up for me, very clever turn, burned away from the defender, sprinted into open space for a 2 v 1, tried to play it through to Adams, hit the middle of the defender instead. That said I do think at the moment he deserves his place, but that says more about his competition.

I did say slowly….4 points in 2 games after 4 losses is slowly turning it around, lunacy is a bit harsh !!!!. . I saw signs of a team trying to play for their manager, something I’ve not seen much of in the past 4 games, the fluency and passing will return with confidence, what wouldn’t return is if they have lost faith in Ralf.

You could see the lack of confidence, taking extra touches, misplacing simple passes, poor control etc. but there was a lot to like. I thought AMN was decent, he did some dirty stuff, played one amazing through ball, but more importantly was disciplined in his positioning and worked well with JWP (who ran his arse off, made some great tackles, but was shocking in his passing). Adams was fantastic, made the long balls stick, and I thought the cbs were both decent as was Perraud. KWP like JWP wasn’t his normal fluent self. The attacking midfielders were as per, they are all very average and you’ve just got to hope you pick the one who has a good day. Yet again the final ball / shot was generally dreadful - but that’s just due to poor quality players, we’re going to need to be on the right end of low scoring affairs as we can’t outscore teams. Diallo was excellent from the subs, and Armstrong took the pressure off. Out of the bottom 3, unbeaten in 2, I know some are slightly disappointed as they want Ralf out, which I respect, but he does seem to be slowly turning it around.

Let’s be honest - whoever he plays upfront and in midfield currently looks weak - that speaks volumes about the quality of the squad. Think Rice and Soucek will bully that midfield sadly, so we’ll need a bit of luck or a couple of our forward players to have their odd good game.

Agree with most of the above - if Ralph is going down, surely he needs to do it based on his high press beliefs not the recent turgid nonsense. He’s bought a load of you’d presume full of energy nippers, has 5 subs in a big squad, and are coming up to a month off - but we don’t seem to be outrunning teams, no excuse there at all. The back line picks itself - no messing around with Caleta Car, Perraud at left back as best option. I’d go JWP and Armstrong mid two as the best duo of a bad bunch, then it gets very tough - I’d give Djenepo a go on the left and try AMN right (is it just me or do we seem to have 4 left sided wingers and one over the hill right sided one), both have played full back so should provide cover if the full backs want a rampage and have pace. Then I’d have Armstrong and Che up front. Having to think about all that shows how weak the squad is - I’d rather not have Armstrong x2, AMN, Che, Djenepo in the 1st team - so half the side I’m picking I don’t really fancy !. Wonder if Ralf feels the same.

Not too bothered about this news, we’ve already got the result we want in getting the best available City kids. That’s a one trick move and Shields doesn’t have any reputation in finding mid priced gems - which is what we need. I’ll concede it’s a blow if we survive this season as he can clearly spot a good young player with potential, but they’re not coming here if we are down / looking like relegation fodder.

We don’t…..

The World Cup break may just save our season. Are any of our players going to the wc ? (That in itself is a worrying indication of quality), 1 or 2 max, so the manager will have 6 weeks uninterrupted training time and our squad should be completely fresh, which we seemed to do OK on during COVID. It does beg the question though on why our players aren’t going at 100pc with the high press now knowing they’ll get a 6 week break shortly….

Agree that a loan deal for a decent young striker knocking on the door at a top club would be most likely. Out of the 8 attacking players we have - I’ve genuinely no idea who are the best 4, and Ralph doesn’t either, which leads me to suspect none of them are good enough - which is pretty telling. Think we can all see that Lavia alongside JWP May solve the def mid, and Tino coming back gives better full back options. Cb and gk look good enough. But I’d be surprised if anyone thinks we can cobble together anything other than a championship level attack with what is left. Which is a big problem for a new manager.