madruss

If you want to bring JPT stats into this, do so by all means, but we all know stats in the league are a better gauge of a player's usefulness to a team whose sole aim is to get promotion. In his 12 starts in the league, he scored 2 goals. I reckon Paterson's record's better than that. As for comparing his record against footballers generally?? Eh?!! If we compared Lambert's record against footballers generally, he'd be the best striker in the whole of England....but that's just not true is it!

I take it you didn't watch the early round of the JPT then!! That was where Papa did his best work. As far as the league was concerned...not so special.

Eh? 5 goals in 34 appearances in the league? That's an amazing rate! Granted a lot of those were as sub, but the reason he was sub so often was that he was better as a sub and often faded out of games after starting. He was a great squad player, but not the world beater a lot of people seem to be making him out to be.

I completely agree with the OP, Puncheon's an excellent player - but is suffering from a loss of form at the minute. He's the most skillful player at the club, and has a great eye for a pass (for anyone who disagrees watch back the Plymouth game and Puncheon's reverse ball to put Connolly clean through). He's also got a fantastic left foot and he'll score us a lot of goals this season. His execution and decision making are both lacking at the moment, but those things are a symptom of his lack of form and are temporart. As for yesterday's performance, I think the fans got so frustrated with him because he saw so much of the ball. I reckon at least 75% of our attacks came down the right side yesterday. Was Lallana any better than Punch yesterday? No, but as he saw less of the ball his performance was under less scrutiny. Puncheon reminds me a lot of Fabrice Fernandes, left-footed skillful player on the right wing, hogs the ball a lot, frustrates the fans, scores goals out of nowhere. Like Fabrice, deserves his place in the side for his ability to create and unlock defences. He's not 100% fit at the minute and that shows, yes he needsto improve buthe soesn't deserve the stick he's getting

Start of the game reminded me of the huddersfield game last season. Main difference this time was that the hatful of chances we had didn't result in a hatful of goals. In fact I'd go as far to say that the chances we had yesterday were better than the ones in the huddersfield game, yet we ended up with 4 fewer goals! To all those whinging that the performance was the worst ever, would you rather we were playing utter sh*te and fluking a 1 goal win with 1 chance, or creating a lot of excellent chances but finding the post and an in form keeper? I'd rather have the latter, we'll win a lot more games that way

Devastating. The saviour of our great club. RIP

At half-time, the team were roundly applauded. Plymouth had barely been in our half and but for some woeful finishing from Hammond and some excellent defending by Plymouth we would have been comfortably in the lead. Everyone expected more of the same in the second half, but then Plymouth got a goal out of nowhere and we didn't react well. Unfortunately everyone remembers the result, so the first half performance becomes meaningless...hence booing. For some people, if they see something they don't like, they boo. There's no point telling them not to!

Indeed, I think you're right there. Especially given Peter Reid was in attendance. It was a case of 'have a look Peter, we outplayed Reading without 3 of our best players just imagine what we're gonna do to your lot next week when they're back in the side!'

And when we're a championship club, we'll be able to compete with those other championship clubs. Until then, the prospect of playing in League 1, even if for a season, is very unattractive...regardless of the money on offer. For me, the time to pay over the odds is when we're in the championship...we'll get much better value for money then.

I'm not happy that we've had to wait to get the quality midfield and attacking players needed to complete the squad prior to the first game...and you can bet anything that Pardew isn't either. Perhaps if Boro hadn't been in for Bailey we would have signed him earlier in the summer and we wouldn't be having this conversation now. But please stop saying that any half-decent player, when faced with a choice of a rich League 1 club with promotion credentials and a rich championship club with promotion credentials, would choose the league 1 club. They will always choose the championship club. Always. Yes Fonte dropped a division, but his choice was between a rich league 1 club and a nearly bankrupt championship club...big difference. I'm personally of the opinion that Pardew could have signed some decent quality lower champ/ league 1 standard players for our problem positions by now, but that he's holding out for something much better by playing the waiting game. Sure it's a gamble, particularly if Morgan's not fit for the first game...but hopefully the gamble will pay off

You talk about our spending power like we've got some kind of bottomless pit of money. We're most certainly not the Chelsea of the division. In Premier League terms we're much more akin to Aston Villa, ie spending and building mostly within our means and investing heavily in youth development and the club's infrastructure...with the occasional big splurge on a single player (ie Lambert/Fonte). I expect we are talking to various clubs about player availability, we're just not making a song and dance about it in the press. And sure there might be players who know they're part of the 25 now, but a couple of signings later and suddenly they're no longer part of that 25...and the knock-on effect will ripple through the Premier League making previously unavailable players potential targets. Will they want to come here? Maybe not. Is it worth obliterating our wage structure to accommodate them? unless they're seriously top quality players, then I'd say absolutely not. Hell even Mr Wheeler Dealer himself Harry T*atknapp is frustrated by the slowness of the market and has failed to make any signings this summer yet...however he believes there will be a spark and than flurry of activity in the market, and hopefully clubs like us will benefit (and no matter what you say, we will always fall behind championship teams with promotion credentials in the queue for those players, Nicky Bailey a case in point..no matter how much wonga we throw around) I will concede that the hole in midfield needs to be plugged. Morgan and Hammond need a bit of quality competition, as does Puncheon. And on that note I'd be very surprised if we didn't have at least one midfielder signed by Friday

Nope, I don't think it's a question of money. I don't think we're waiting for players to get cheaper, I reckon (and of course it's just an opinion and I could be proved horribly wrong) we're waiting for players who aren't currently available to become available as transfers pick up and/or we get closer to the 'pick your squad of 25 players' deadline. Our management and scouting teams aren't stupid, to suggest they haven't been working very very hard behind the scenes to identify targets for the key areas is pretty ridiculous IMO. We pulled Papa Waigo and Antonio out of the hat with even less time to prepare and review the market. Apparantly these players are now nigh on irreplaceable. Are we now saying that those 'finds' were just a fluke and won't be repeated?!?

Do you not agree though that there will be a lot more players available to buy/loan the closer we get to the end of the transfer window - as the market picks up. If we end up with a player 10 times better than Wotton, but we have to wait a few weeks then IMO that'll be much better than buying someone only 3 times better than Wotton for the sake of getting them in early....If however we've lost our first three games and there's no good signing, I'll admit we've fuc*ed up on the transfer front

Last season we started off the first game of the season with Paterson and Lancashire as 1st choice striker/defender yet we still ended up with enough points for the playoffs and not far off automatic. The squad needs quality and not quantity, and if it means playing the waiting game to get that quality then so be it. If we get to September 1st and we've made no signings and have less than 10 points on the board, then I'll start worrying. Until then, we've got more than enough in the current first XI to beat Plymouth, MK Dons and Leyton Orient

If it pushes Wotton out of the matchday 16 then I'm all for it!!

And without that pesky 10 point deduction! Plus our scouting network has been in place for over a year, as opposed to a couple of months. We're bound to have a wider range of player options this time round than we did last year.

The funny thing is, no-one had ever heard of either papa or antonio before we signed them-yet the way some people are raving about them now you'd think they were irreplacable. Who knows, maybe Pardew might find players who are better, they might even be players no-one has ever heard of! Or are we saying Pardew fluked both there signings?

But you're assuming that we won't sign anyone else. Making your decision before it's even happened yet. The gelling argument doesn't apply here, squads don't need to gel, first XI's do. We don't need to improve our first XI to get automatic promotion. If the management team want to explore every possible option for bolstering the squad rather than rushing in, then they bloody well should. Oh no wait, they need to rush - I forgot that Lambert, Barnard, Fonte, Jaidi, Puncheon, Lallana and Schneiderlin are all going to get injured before the transfer window shuts. Quick Alan, get as many as you can in, call Lloyd James back....ANYONE!!!!!

All your prophecies are of doom. You might get the odd one right, but that means very little when you don't admit to all the times your misery-laden forecasts turned out to be Bollo*ks. The day you start predicting positive outcomes correctly, you might find you get less negative attention on here.

Your reaction to the transfer window is very similar to the way you react during the match threads. If we're 1 down after 10 minutes you react as if it's the end of the world, 'same old sh*t'...etc. Never mind the fact that there's 80 minutes left. Stop panicing, we've got a proper set-up at the club, probably the best for a long time. Chances are they know what they're doing. Calm the hell down!

The gelling excuse only applies when a team needs to sign lots of players for the starting line-up because the existing starters are a load of shi*e. That doesn't apply this season, we need quality additions to the squad, so there's a lot less of a need for gelling.

But neither of those were regular starters. We have an AWESOME starting eleven. All the panic merchants are assuming all our best players will get injured and we'll be doomed. Here's a thought, maybe they'll stay fit! Can you imagine! This time last season our starting line-up was scarily bad, and we had no scouting network, and didn't have a full coaching staff. All we need is a couple of quality players to add competition and depth to the squad. Had anyone heard of antonio or papa before we signed them? No. Is it that inconceivable that the management team/scouts are taking their time over finding the right players rather than just rushing in so the poor lambs can come on the trip to Switzerland? There is absolutely no need to panic

Yeah exactly. And which starting xi showed that automatic promotion winning form? The one that's starting the season!

Where will these new players go, between now and the start of pre-season?!? Will they just hang around St. Mary's or staplewood, getting acclimatised to the Saintly atmosphere? This thread might as well have started with "I can't believe we lost the first 4 games of the season. The defence is shocking, we can't score and the manager's tactically inept....everyone OUT FFS" Still pretty entertaining watching folk get annoyed by it though...he may be a troll but he's a bloody good one!

If he keeps allowing Pardew to make 7 figure signings of the same quality as lambert and fonte, then quite frankly he can rip us off as much as he likes!