melmacian_saint

I threw in the towel at West Ham. That was the day. We have not won at home since ever and have won once in months. We are extremely poor, have offered virtually nothing to the league this season and deserve to go down.

Not sure what people are angry about? Spurs will be treated like a team in a neutral ground. There have been many European finals where one of the teams is also the home team. Sporting, Bayern, Feyenoord spring to mind. Lyon could've done it this season in the Europa League, and so could Hamburg when Fulham knocked them out. It's a neutral ground by all purposes, and the usual seating allocations of home games are void. Quite bemused at some of the outrage on here. It's like some of you haven't really watched football for very long, or just don't like to employ logic when debating it.

Didn't we get 40 000 for the League Cup final?

The main question is, if Hughes does well from now until May, and assuming he can be the kind that throws his weight around inside the club (while the last two managers just put up with whatever and barely raised a word, or well Puel did and was sacked), will he be backed with funds in the transfer window?

It's very hard to justify. One win in months, hopeless against relegation rivals, horrific home record, and the team incapable of solving problems that have been there to see since the beginning of the season. We are easily the 2nd worse team in the league, and will probably finish accordingly.

Rail-geek mode, if you come from Southampton on Cross Country, you might be able to change at Manchester/Crewe, to a (cheaper) slower local service?

Another 6-pointer that we will set up to get a point from.

Our home form is more than relegation form, it is rock bottom form. West Brom are gone, but of all the teams down there, we are the one that look less likely to be able to turn things around. We are shot for confidence and have wasted all the "accessible" home games. The only thing that can lift the team is if we do make it to Wembley. A defeat at Wigan, especially if we fail to win before (not unlikely), would see us panic.

Redmond to show Guardiola what he really is about, and score a hat-trick in 5 minutes. We then concede 2 in 2 minutes and hold on for dear life.

How many more home games against weaker/must-beat opposition will we start with a single striker. This is not Alavés! We have been in the PL for 5 years, there are must win games! Anyway the moment was after the Crystal Palace on NYD, that was make or break. Now we are well and truly in the battle and with other teams turning themselves around, we risk sinking.

He has - got his capital out of China before things go south there and has moored it in a British port (quite literally). Apart from that, what else has actually changed at the club?

Internal favourings aside, we seem to have found a new leader in midfield and successor to Davis in Hojberg, so I wouldn't bother too much about him if he goes, or if he stops playing.

It's funny that we all seem to accept that Puel was sacked because of everything he did, not what he was going to do. Maybe he wasn't going to be given what he expected in terms of players? Compare the cheque book that Pochettino and Koeman (x2) were given, and the team he had to start a season which by February had almost as many games already as the season before in total! Maybe he had started to plan for next season, but the players weren't happy, and he wouldn't give in? Playing a different kind of football from Koeman's free-flow is hard to take, and we all know who has to accommodate more than impose when it gets to managing expectations in a football club, or else face the sack... In other words, how much has our board been backing our managers? There has been a change in recent times and it's there for all to see: Pochettino had a golden pram, Koeman was given a spaceship each summer to deal with a meltdown. Yet our last two incumbents, more modest in their ambitions (one can only assume there is a stategy behind their arrival), seem to be left to their own devices, with little more than like-for-like replacements, and having to deal with player unrest that while not unusual in post-2010 Saints, seems to have become more harmful. Puel had a decent season with us, that wasn't good because it ended poorly, and everyone parted in poor terms. We will never know why, but it seems to me that whoever takes over will have to deal with considerable cold politics between our spreadsheet-driven board and some players that seem to feel the club isn't giving them what they want (maybe the board is unhappy with the financials they live under?). This is damaging the club, and the appointment of communication and league newbies seems to be a cowardly tactic to avoid action, until May comes and its too late.

Well I think people overrate Jeremy Corbyn. After all, he is a senior politician, don't question his principles or even his competence, but he is way past his prime and strength and has clearly been found as a consensual figure between the two real factions of the Labour party: Old Labour vs. New Labour 2.0 (currently under a purge to be replaced as Momentum). While the Blairites have largely been replaced or selectively thrown into the back benches and the purge continues through different Councils and constituencies, the announced conflict between Old/Non-Metro Labour and Momentum, which already had its first flash points in the key Brexit votes in the Commons, has been put on hold in light of Conservative troubles with Brexit and their internal fights being well in the spotlight, but it will happen sooner than later, even if it survives a general election (which I doubt). Corbyn is like the clueless great-uncle that a bunch of in-laws are trying to spoil to get a share of the inheritance, eagerly waiting for the fool to go. You can tell that by the smug faces of Thornberry, Starmer or Abbott behind him, who all know a lot more about the party than he can ever even think of asking.

When I think of him, I remember that ALL, ALL of our best players left the club in a poor manner, being singled out for their actions. Fool me once, shame on me?

Never. The championship is a joke of a league, and if you want overpriced look no further. In the PL, you have to prepare to play another team and build a good squad that just needs to keep evolving, otherwise you are found out. Down there, you play the league and gamble on everyone's ups and downs, not your 46 matches, meaning you have to sign similar players and set yourself up for a physical game where it's very hard to try something different. You either buy the team of the year or it's a couple of years of muchness.

What I really fail to understand is why we seem to have gone into this mode of only replacing like-for-like, and very slowly. Lemina a year after Wanyama, Fonte and Van Dijk with Bednarek (god knows) and Hoedt at the 11th hour and six months late, Pelle with Gabbiadini again after half a season (plus injury) and all while keeping the same offensive options (nothing more than a gang of 4) for going on 3 seasons in a row. This means we are not and cannot improve as a team. We have had an easy start and our current position is probably flattering, considering what we have played.

True, but he did have some rather frustrating spells without scoring or contributing that would've had us on our nerves right now anyway (just like it did). Wanyama was the big loss, and no matter what people say we are yet to try and replace him.

A bit late getting that extra striker in. It will be disappointing if we can't get a win out of these first two home games.

I can't help but think that this whole praise of the youth vote is slightly over the top and indeed patronising (contrary to what the left-wing journalists would tell you!). Most of the youth voters are in city constituencies where Labour already performed well. This means that if we draw an average of all the constituencies, they are probably a crucial demographic group in less than half of them. The key to Labour holding off the Tories across the country was the UKIP vote: pensioners and working class voters that saw its purpose served and decided to back the party that they felt was going to protect them during and after Brexit. After the manifestos came out, the choice was very easy. It will be interesting to see who has to give in. I think Labour now sees urban votes as safe enough for a few deals in parliament to allow for a complete withdrawal. The young, like before, will find themselves neglected, because really they are not a target swing group.

Never mind the explosion, the stampede risk in these events is sometimes very underestimated. Strange how long it took before it hit the news, reports mention 10.45pm?

I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting our current manager to stay? Some of you are a bit strange.

When's the last training session? I say the morning after (the night before), 10-11am.

In all fairness, I think he was the wrong choice. You can't get a manager out of a league where he has been for the whole of his life (one-man club and posterior managerial career), stick him in the PL an expect him not to be risk-averse. One could say that the vibes after the end of Koeman's first season weren't great particularly after the momentum we had coming from the Pochettino era, but he signed a number of players who were either experienced professionals or internationals (e.g. Tadic, Pelle, Mane, Stekelenburg). This summer, needing to rebuild the squad after yet another number of key departures we spent most of our cash on young players that are unproven at a top level (Hojbjerg, Redmond, Boufal) and just made sure we included some youth graduates in. Gabbiadini and Caceres came too little too late and one might question if they address the issues caused by previous departures - so a higher quality version of Koeman's January 2015 signings. In any case, not what a newly-arrived manager needs, but perhaps what he can attract outside of his turf? As a result, he has adopted a largely defensive layout, based on closing teams out in midfield and holding possession, but that conservative focus means we lack the creativity in the build-up both through the middle and down the wings (when they exist). We've also understood that the manager was not willing to change things too much or allow much duty freedom (i.e. get more out of the individuals) that could spark the players and give us a chance to produce slightly more unpredictable results - we frankly haven't done badly against those we expected to get a result from, but couldn't change the script against any team above that level! With our current mix of young and experienced mid-level players, all of that gave us an average season cruising between 8th-14th. We were unlucky with the cup final, but we are not good enough to plan for a cup run so a lot of it is down to finding the right ties through the rounds. On the other hand we could absolutely have planned our Europa League campaign without the qualifying noise - it came across as if we were always caught in two minds, and didn't invest enough in key games. I would let Puel go, but if we do I sure hope that we spend some good money this summer!

You are such a troll it is rather untrue and increasingly unpleasant.