Daft Kerplunk

The values 100% go out of the window when it comes to money. Anyone who thinks otherwise is very naive.

The fight will be there from WBA but it would be nice if we can compete like we did yesterday and put a further dent in the reputation of Allardyce and make it harder for them to beat relegation

I think we as fans need to be prepared for a pretty hard summer. We will lose our best players who are close to the end of their contracts because we have to fill a serious hole in the finances and there is zero investment from Gao and no sale unless he recoups his money fully. This may become a reality if we get relegated next season because we might not have the quality of players needed to stay up. It’s going to be a rough ride. Buckle in.

What a day! Was significant because it confirmed we were on our way back to where we belonged. What football was all about.

Consistently producing is the only good way to assess. Dropping in players to the first team to improve academy stats is a fallacy. “Valery, Sims, Vokins, Slatterly and Hesketh will all make it with EPL or Championship clubs” Championship possibly, Premier League is very unlikely. Some of these players aren’t that young anymore.

Saints probably don’t mind a transfer being in the media if it helps drive up the price. The club absolutely needs the money so I’m expecting Ings plus others to leave with no effort to keep them because we can’t. There won’t be significant incomings either. Club’s finances are screwed and neither Gao or an inept commercial boss help.

Matt Hale is ex-Bristol City too. Who’d have thought it. The academy is in a mess.

Don’t be surprised about Reed though, I have heard through the football grapevine that he has been involved in discussions about an SFC takeover. At what level, not sure, but football consultancy and the higher level discussions is his gig now. If Simon Jordan is involved, I wouldn’t expect some of the current board to last very long as he’d surely be able to see right through them. He’d probably challenge Matt Crocker to get on with restructuring the academy and not be too focussed on first team and the pavilion.

When will the penny drop that the academy structure, and many of the senior staff members, is a busted flush? Needs huge attention but the rewards won’t show for 5-10 years

Uncomfortable comparison (football was dire under Branfoot but no contest on the fight - this team would be scared to leave a luxury spa with their wash bags if faced with some of the players on those teams - but at least now under the current regime, we are market ‘disrupters’ so the 9-0 defeats are just a clever commercial strategy for bouncing back and being different.

That’s as piss poor as you can get. From embarrassing stop the count T-shirts because we were top for a day or so, to stop the count so we don’t get relegated

Will be a tough match, they are desperate, we are not yet fully confident and are still on very patchy form. We only need 2 more wins and a draw so can see us thinking we are still fine and don’t need to grind out the result

As good a line up as we could have. Fingers crossed we get the 3 points

You also currently identify a chunk of players who joined our academy structure before the Liebherr’s were involved...showing how long ago it was that the academy was actually decent.

The success of the current academy is to be defined by those players coming through...which is how many at a regularly playing Premier League football? I also should clarified that by recruitment I meant within the academy. All the players ‘breaking through’ from our academy bar a couple have been rejected by Arsenal, Man City etc. or we’ve had to buy them. Many are just there to make up the numbers. It would be great to be proven wrong on the academy and there might be a few that come through unless we lose them to Chelsea but having watched plenty of football over the years, and like many others, you do develop a reasonable idea of what makes a top flight player and who probably won’t make it to be a first team regular in the top league.

If anything should help Ralph, it surely has to be the realisation by those overseeing the football aspects of the club (Semmens and Crocker) that the academy leadership and its recruitment, plus the coaching staff chosen for Ralph are just not up to the job. Ronald Koeman could see the younger players weren’t good enough but good ol’ Les was able to convince everyone else that he was wrong. Anyone watching these players coming through who has also watched the decent players of the past could see it too. They simply do not match the world-beating storytelling that goes on alongside the academy. The last players to make it through is the James Ward-Prowse group and how long ago was that? Now Ralph is coming to the realisation too that the whole academy myth is just that. We need new ownership, a good clear out at the FDSC (that’s Staplewood to most) and a leaner operation that lets action speak louder than nice presentations. It may all be too late to either save or keep Ralph.

I actually barely remember the match as b) just enjoying the one-off moment of us playing such a legendary ground and b) I’d consumed a fair few Menabreas along the canal 🤣

At first glance, I don’t disagree with your logic but do the same calculations over 5 years. Most of the players are similar so it’s a reasonable to suggest that last year’s good run was a blip (albeit relatively sustained) more than anything. If it were music, you could say that out of 5 albums, one was a blinder but 4 were bang average. Do you judge on the one, or the career?

For a good number of years before the first lockdown last year until December we just haven’t been good. Form last year was temporary from the evidence of this year so far. It’s easy for some to forget just how bad things were before covid put a halt to the 2019/20 season temporarily. If form is temporary and class is permanent, we are just a little bit above the dunces in our class.

I’m sure Paul Hardyman might potentially be a nice bloke but...who in their right mind takes on a coach with no particularly outstanding track record to join a club that prides itself on having a world-beating academy? And he’s a Pompey hero. Incredibly bullish!t decision when you absolutely know there are better coaches available, perhaps some of them even have Saints in their history. Just like the first team, the academy needs to be intensely assessed and realise that beyond spreadsheets and matrices, humans make the difference. It’d be nice to see us start employing the best people available and if not, at least people who give a sh!t about what this club means and have the desire to make it better from a deeper POV.

Bet Gao is regretting the decision not to sell now. We are absolutely in a relegation battle on this form

Phew

The club’s accountants will be. With commercial performance lower than it should be (covid and non-covid), the drop is league places will be putting the pressure on other departments outside the first team to make savings

So the plan is the problem 🤔

In other words, absolutely perfect for modern football 😄