mrfahaji

Perhaps 9+, as it’s the equivalent of the 3 playoff games? So if 4th place were to win all their “extra” games and they still wouldn’t get more points than 3rd, then 3rd shouldn’t lose their place. I’ve also thought perhaps a bigger weighting in the schedule could work, such as 5th v 6th, then winner plays 4th, then winner plays 3rd etc (maybe one leg with higher team at home), but they have that in Scotland atm and it’s a bit ridiculous that the Premiership team just sits in wait and the end of the playoff gauntlet and more often than not despatches whoever makes it through to face them back to the Championship for another year.

And we did only pay 4m for him. Standard in those instances to see higher wages. As far as I know his preference is not to move that far north (Birmingham max) but obviously money talks, it might be that he (or the club) don’t get many offers and he has to take whatever is available.

But it's also totally realistic for every team outside the top 6. Even Everton finishing 6th takes some imagination. With the vast amounts of money at the top it's hard to see how it can change in the near future. They will probably be the top 6 after 5 games and there will be no looking back. I liked our model of aiming to be the 'best of the rest' and being in a position to take advantage of any slip ups from the top teams (as happened under Koeman, even if we were overshadowed by Leicester!). Unfortunately we are a long way off that at the moment, and even in the space of 3 years breaking into that top group has become so much harder.

Norwich aren't anywhere near as good as Wolves were, Sheff Utd might be about the same as Cardiff, Derby and Villa will lose their loanees and I don't think Derby aren't very good at all. Burnley - effective but dire and don't have a great squad Brighton - not very good but new boss could improve them Bournemouth - usually too good for a relegation battle but might struggle if they lose Wilson and Fraser Newcastle - always rumblings of Benitez leaving, but if he stays they will be fine Palace - think they will be fine under Hodgson but they have a couple of stand out players they'd struggle to replace Watford - not convinced about their squad but they always seem to be effective. Feasible they might not do as well next season. I think to overhaul Everton, West Ham, Wolves & Leicester we'll need to see something drastic. The other teams we could feasibly match but much will depend on our (and their!) transfer activity. I'm certainly not super-confident either, but I don't think 11th-14th is an unreasonable ambition.

There was an article a while back which made it sound like most things had already been agreed with Maehle before Genk decided they wanted to keep their team together. They won the Belgian league so fair play to them. Does make me think that if we wanted to do the deal now it could be done quickly, but of course there's always the threat that another club come in waving cash around (looking at you, Everton). I asked a Genk fan what he thought of Maehle, his response was "He is a tall and fast, so a bit like Meunier from PSG. Defending could be better, but he's still young. I think that he will be in the Premier league next season." I'd still like him, especially in mind of what shurlock says above (someone else also pointed out that Hasenhuttl has liked to rotate his FBs in previous jobs), but if our funds are limited, can we justify spending a large chunk on a player who might not play that much? Doesn't matter whether we have Maehle or Valery if they're playing next to Jack Stephens... As an investment it makes sense though - if both players get game time, no reason why we can't sell one off for a decent amount - having Clyne and Chambers playing in that position didn't do us much harm.

I'm not sure you can say that as any more than a hunch really. I don't think many expected Fulham to be quite so bad as they were. Although Huddersfield were one of the favourites to go down, doubt anyone saw them being quite so awful. Are Sheffield United and Derby (if they win) obviously stronger than Cardiff and Fulham?

This is the problem for me. I don't expect Saints to be on a level playing field with Man Utd and the rest, but it would be nice if it wasn't so extreme. Chelsea don't really have much room to complain, because they were the first to take spending to extreme, and City have then outdone them. I also find there's a difference between Jack Walker or Steve Gibson putting money into the club of their local team and Abramovich or Sheikh Mansour investing in a team because, well why not? Still glad they beat Liverpool to the title though.

They were given a stadium too.

I'd probably go with this. The manager is the most important piece of the puzzle but there's only so much he can do. There are a couple of other concerns with Hasenhuttl, not a criticism of his ability but rather how he is limited with this squad. His style is less cautious than previous managers, which is great, but when you play with more emphasis on attack and play a bit more open it's more important to have good defenders - ones who can bail you when you get caught on the break etc. We don't have that at the moment. The other thing is his preferred formation is 4-2-2-2. I'm not sure our players fit that - hopefully they CAN and it's just a case of working with them over the summer, but if not then are we a) forced to play a formation that the manager isn't as comfortable with? b) play less good players in favour of better ones to fir the formation? or c) do we need to sign even more players (which we won't)? These are more hypothetical questions open for debate, rather than assertions!

The main reason this thread went dead is because there is another thread for the kit, so people are focusing their attention there instead. This thread wasn't really needed in the first place to be honest.

Don't know, but I can't wait until UA don't do our kits anymore, can't stand the template for their kits. The bits round the side always look like a patchwork as well, don't understand why they can't just make a simple shirt like everyone else. Although not sure ALL their kits are like it, they seem to save the crap template for us!

This. It looked terrible on the bra kit, looked slightly odd on the 'patrick' kit, passable but unnecessary on last season's, and back to bloody terrible this year! Must be the Under Armour template - just don't understand why they can't make shirts with the same stitching as virtually every other manufacturer, especially for a team that doesn't play in a plain colour!

The only Saints that kit is nice for are St Helens.

They didn’t even want promotion, they want to defend their checkatrade trophy (after boycotting the early rounds obviously). Much more important.

Pretty sure that was 2001 (the kit that we had from 2001-2003). Perhaps that's when we made our own kits though.

I actually think there were some quite nice elements of that shirt - unfortunately they were totally overshadowed by the ludicrous bra (also the sides of the shirts looked ridiculous, like a patchwork that hadn't been designed properly). Basically, I thought the back of the shirt was nice

Most people would agree with you on this. However, Southgate has demonstrated in the past that he values the U21 tournaments highly, and I think they both qualify for it? Is it likely that Southgate thinks it will be better for them to play a major role in that tournament rather than sitting on the bench for the full team?

Is he not the one type of player that we don't really need though? I haven't seen him enough to be sure but strikes me as an all-round good energy general midfielder, not dissimilar to Hojbjerg, JWP, Lemina and maybe even Romeu. Perhaps he's capable of playing a bit further forward but doesn't strike me as a proper attacking midfielder.

Bit unfair to lump half of that team with the other half. If young players don't quite make it to the standard we require then that's unfortunate but it isn't their fault and nor is it the fault of Les Reed/Ross Wilson. Maybe that's not the point you're trying to make, but that's how I interpreted it - basically saying "look how many crap players we have in our squad".

Haha, you have mentioned this before - I don't really mind it, maybe because I like the 80s! I generally prefer the contrast with the light shirts/dark shorts and vice versa. Hence I like the Milan & Inter shirts with white shorts but prefer Saints/Sunderland kit to, say, Stoke. But even if I like the black, it still looks awful on that shirt.

I'm usually a fan of the black trim with our red & white but it doesn't work on that kit - probably because the sleeves aren't black trim, they're just black!

Quite. The only block I can see as maybe being ok is if it was behind the sponsor and the sponsor worked with the black, but even then I'm clutching at straws... but the post above says "top half", which sounds more like this season's kit but with black at the top instead of red, which would be extremely odd.

That's because there is a more personal reason not to want Liverpool to win, rather than because Man City are well liked. Certainly I have always disliked City immensely but was also fed up with everything (don't think I need to list it all) that goes with Liverpool being successful. If it was a choice between City and Portsmouth, who would you expect our fans to support, even if Portsmouth had reached the top by being an exemplary club (not saying Liverpool are)? If I had to order all the teams in PL by how much I liked them, City would be in the bottom 3 or 4, but crucially they'd be higher than Liverpool (and Tottenham and Everton).

I do think there is an issue with a lack of opportunities for BAME people (is that the right term?), but the problem is when people complain about this sacking and say it's to do with his skin colour, they undermine the actual issues because everyone dismisses it (rightly) as crying wolf. Hughton only seems to want his teams to play a certain way - he set them up not to lose at home to US for goodness sake - and there comes a point when fans want more than just surviving. After two seasons it's hard to see how Brighton are going to be anything other than a bottom 6 side with Hughton there. Of course if a new manager gets relegated then it will be billed as a mistake, but I don't blame them for rolling the dice on improving.