itchen

Yes, but it would be worth it if he brought his wife to the Leicester game.

I am realistic enough to know that we are likely to be relegated. But I haven't accepted that this is inevitable. We still have 40% of the season to play and the gap between us and safety is not huge as there are some other very poor teams near the bottom. This talk of appointing a manager who can get us promoted again seems premature. Certainly that is a consideration but it would surely be better to appoint someone with a chance of keeping us up in the first place. This would suggest someone, like Marsh, who has experience of doing that. Yes, he was sacked at Leeds but most managerial appointments end in the sack unless the manager retires from the game. I'm not necessarily arguing for Marsh. I don't have the knowledge and don't know who the club is considering. I'm just being realistic in observing that it is likely whomever we appoint will have failed somewhere else. Personally, if it wasn't so urgent, I'd like to see us hang on for whenever Potter is sacked by Chelsea. HCDAJFU.

Balanced article in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2023/feb/09/nathan-jones-southampton-fans-manager-analysis?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other Sorry, just seen this has already been posted.

From a quick glance at The Guardian, I see other clubs apparently seeking to complete signings today include Leicester City, Bournemouth, Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United. They've all left it too late and should have done it on January 1st.

It's like you were in the room.

Indeed, the speed with which Jones has been linked underlines that the board have been looking at him for a while. If they had sacked Ralph because of a run of poor results and then spent weeks interviewing and recruiting a replacement, I would be more concerned that they did not know what they are doing. I'd never heard of Nathan Jones before yesterday and have no idea whether he is what we need. But I assume, for the club to have moved this quickly, that somebody in the hierarchy has done their research.

Oh dear, made the mistake of looking in here at half time. See you at the end.

For what it's worth, the Guardian has done a review of all Premier League clubs transfer activity. Here's their view in ours: Southampton The early signs suggest the Saints have done some of the best business in the division. The 20-year-old Armel Bella-Kotchap, one of 10 new faces, has made a big first impression. Southampton’s new head of recruitment, Joe Shields, turned to his former club Manchester City to bring in four youngsters: Roméo Lavia, Gavin Bazunu and – on deadline day – Sam Edozie and Juan Larios. Southampton’s faith in youth is not a gimmick but genuine, hence why Jan Bednarek was allowed to depart to Aston Villa and the long-serving Jack Stephens, Oriol Romeu and Shane Long were moved on. Duje Caleta-Car arrives from Marseille with a big reputation and Ainsley Maitland-Niles will be determined to enhance his after joining on loan. At the start of the window another striker seemed logical but Ché Adams and Adam Armstrong have hit the ground running. BF Tottenham

10/10. Yes, I know we didn't get the striker we all hoped for. But I'm comparing this window to previously disappointing ones over the last few years. I wasn't expecting much and we got a hell of a lot. That's surely worth a 10.

The naked truth.

You called it there.

That's the sort of performance and result we've threatened a few times this season. Not a bad player in our team and some outstanding play by JWP, Perraud, Diallo and Forster (although it's a bit unfair to highlight anyone in a great team effort). Well done all.

Well, not over. Plenty of time to lose yet though.

Maybe. But I would expect anybody contemplating spending serious money would be looking at more than perception: likely return on investment, increase of profile and potential for growth for example. We have a finite local fan base that seems to be a maximum of 30,000 to attend games and a maybe 100,000 (200,000?) more who would call themselves supporters but don't attend games. These are not big numbers compared to the national and worldwide followings of the "big six" and clubs like Newcastle, Leeds and even Everton. Yes, there is potential to improve our numbers and make us a major "brand". But that will give a much slower return than buying a club that is already halfway there. I hope we do find someone with the means and desire to build us into a bigger club. But I temper that hope with realism about who we are and who has that sort of money to say goodbye to.

Here's an easy thing to remember "a lot" means many, or a large amount, or an item in an auction whereas "alot" does not exist in English except as a misspelling of "allot" (to deal out, apportion etc).

On a vaguely related note, when my mum died a few years ago we called in a house clearance co. This was in SE London. Chap who came was interested in a couple of things (sixties table and sideboard) but most of the rest would go for scrap. When he found out I was a Saints supporter he said he'd done a house clearance for one of our players when he'd signed for us. He was not impressed either with the style "all white leather, flash, vulgar" or the fact that the player just abandoned everything as he'd just buy new for his new home. Somewhere near Southampton there's probably a similar house with abandoned furniture now Ryan's gone to Leicester.

I think the conclusion to draw from this thread is not to trust the word of builders. These are the same people who tell you they will concentrate solely on building your extension only to bugger off to another job halfway through. Let's hope future posters learn from this and get their information from more reliable sources in future such as estate agents, car salespeople or members of the current cabinet.

I had nothing against Newcastle until they got taken over by a murderous, middle Eastern regime. I really, really hope they go down and hope they stay there for a few seasons.

No Redmond or Walcott? The blokes who sit behind me will have to find a new scapegoat.

Premier Inn does have parking but it's operated by another company. Most city centre on street parking is free overnight. You may be able to pay sufficiently the night before so that you don't have to get up by 8:00 to move your car. Check the machine.

Lot of silliness on this topic. Howe isn't a bad manager and would probably suit us quite well. But, rightly, there's no vacancy here and Howe's taking the blood money at Newcastle. So everybody's happy.

He was. But he made it clear he would not stay and wanted a top 6 club. Or Villa.

Vestergaard gave away a penalty (probably not his fault, to be fair) and Bertrand a free kick leading to a goal. Good to see ex-Saints making a contribution at Leicester.

Quite encouraged by that. Our defence looked stronger. All the talk before the game was about Antonio's amazing season so far yet Stephens and Salisu kept him virtually out of the game. I noticed that, at last, we are leaving a man up when the opposition have a corner. OK, we didn't score from it today but it meant West Ham couldn't get as many people in our box. Redmond was not as bad as some of the comments here. He did a fairly solid job but we need to give our midfielders forward options and, when they do get them, they need to be quicker in using them. I understand the need for side to side passes when there's nobody available further forward but too often today we passed sideways or backwards when an attacking move was on. But it's early days. We'll find our best combination and have a good season.

I spoke to someone who was approached to invest in a group looking to take over SFC (New York based). They had identified the potential to buy from Mr Gao at a low price and build the value of club by investment in players and infrastructure and then to sell the club on at a profit. My contact thought that this looked possible in a relatively small way but decided not to get involved as it appeared that the main people leading the bid knew very little about football. They had noted that SFC was high in the Premier League at the time (this must have been early last season) and so was obviously undervalued. They talked about building SFC to Manchester City levels. He said at this point he walked away. I have no idea if the others are still thinking of going ahead,