Tommog

I think AI would have looked at our performances so far this season and "self taught" itself that our tactics aren't working and we need a change. Very much stubborn humans at the helm

Completely agree with criticism of the manager, not one redeeming feature. But going to stick my neck on the line and say Les Reed has done enough to deserve to stay, he was at the helm for some pretty fantastic years where we approached champions league positions all whilst keeping the books balanced. Yes we sold a load of players, but we don't have the revenue to hold on to them and for all we know it was the owners telling him his job was dependent on making an operating profit, it isnt a charity after all. He has totally ballsed up the last 2 appointments for sure, but has shown he can do well. I think the biggest issue is we lost our head of recruitment to spurs a couple of seasons ago, our signings have all been pretty average/paid over the odds since then. But yeah, anyway, the coaching staff all need to get the boot.

Am starting to wonder if playing 4-4-2 might be the new innovative style of football. So many teams playing diamonds with one up top but Austin doesnt have the legs to make the movement required of someone up front on their own and Gabbi is built like a 13 yr old. He makes great runs and a quality finisher (as is Austin) but they need someone close to them making their life easier. Tadic is a lazy whiner, JWP only appears when there's a free kick and Redmond is championship level. Two up top with 1 decent play maker behind.. go old school.

ok cool thanks

Im not one of these people that fears money and big business in football. A lot of the times the motivations are aligned. If the club's fundamentals are strong and performs on the pitch its value goes up and the owners make a lot of money, good for them. But it needs to be the right owners and think we are so lucky with who we have now. I love how the club is run, the academy, the scouting system, the fact we have a philosophy. Some billionaire will probably come in and make it their play thing spend 50 million on some flair player from South America that gets destroyed in his first tackle against a no nonsense Stoke centre back or something. I realise we currently have a billionaire owner that hasnt done this. But just working on the probabilities that more often than not this is their attitude. Id want to know their interest in football/management structure before feeling too positive. Also.. isnt it a huge conflict of interest if they buy several teams in the same league. Team A doing great, Team B about to get relegated. Sell top players from team A to Team B (very tax efficient) and keep both in the league

Pray for the black box

Jay Rod too.. if the keeper jumps over the ball

Good to see we are getting a signing over the line. I just hope a mixture of recovering from an injury without a pre-seaon, adjusting to first year premiership pace/physicality and the rumored Africa Cup of Nations departure in Jan isnt too much for him. Realistically speaking could be next season before we see his real potential. Ballsy move to make a big play for him this summer knowing we will probably not get a full season out of him.

I know people generally get hammered for being anything but deliriously optimistic on here, but got to say, the Utd game wasn't great. Maybe its hard to get a fair assessment as Utds team is pretty incredible this year, especially seeing as Ibrahimovic seems up for it. I just think we lack quality. Which is disappointing as we have the finances to make some really strong signings. Our creative engine seems to be solely placed on Tadic's shoulders and he seems to spend half the game waving his arms about pointing at god knows what. Wish he would just get his head down and focus on his own game. Hes not a bad player but wouldnt want an entire league campaign reliant on him creating our chances. Long looked really out of sorts, hopefully just a one off, but had one chance that he fluffed his lines on massively and then looked sulky rest of the game. Targett, who i would love to get behind as a saints youth product isn't up to the grade.. yet. Clasie isnt physically strong enough to be a premiership player. I wasn't Wanyama's biggest fan but he was an absolute tank, whoever he marked was either going to get injured or suffocated out the game, thus effectively giving us an extra man over the opposition. I dont see Austin as an impact sub, he is a natural poacher. One of those players that needs 90 mins to wander around not doing much but somehow get a goal consistently every other game. On the plus side, reckon Hooijberg is going to be quality, Van Dijk is class, Bertrand yet to come back who i also rate highly. But theres a bit too much mediocrity in the side at the moment, we have the funds and the time to bolster the squad with some real talent. Hope we dont waste it!

Theres a lot of talk of strikers on here and agree with Austin and Jay Rod with question marks over their fitness (maybe harshly on Austin) we need a Mane replacement. And generally picking dream team strikers is more "exciting" But i personally think we need a decent CB signing. Every time Yoshida has to step in he plods along ok until he drops an absolute clanger, there are very few games where he hasnt put an opposition striker through 1 on 1 with our keeper, made a reckless challenge when it wasn't needed or some other "unforced error". If we lost Fonte on a last minute transfer or a 6 week injury, a month or two of Yoshida gifting a golden chance each game to the opposition is pretty damaging. Even if Fonte stays (and i hope he does) hes what.. 31/32 now. Probably one more top season out of him. Strikers come and go but you need to plan long term for that spine of the team i think and seems its very thin once you get past the starters.

No doubt it didnt appear to be working out for him here. But surely its worth giving him another couple of months to let the new manager cast his eye over him and see if he had anything worth working with? Might have just not seen eye to eye with RK.

I agree the rumors seem a little unfounded when all this is based off a pretty unreliable source. But the lack of response from RK or Saints is pretty telling. RK is normally pretty active on Twitter himself. Wouldn't kill them to just come out with a "contract talks still progressing well" etc type comment if this was all nonsense, i know ultimately it is meaningless, but they would look pretty bad if they said it and then he left 2 hours later. They are well aware the media/saints fans are getting themselves worked up over it.

True. But im pretty uninspired by Tadic too.He has a label of technically strong play maker but apart from his flying start to last season I find he goes missing for long periods of the game. For every game he makes a big impact there are 1 or 2 when you never even hear his name mentioned you never know what youre going to get. Having Bertrand adding pace as well as defensive awareness on the left wont be any worse. Also agree you can't put youth players in for the sake of having youth players. But its a fact they need game time to develop. You dont just turn up one day and find the finished article turn up for training one day. But its just an idea... am a bit depressed the production line seems to have slowed down a bit of late.

How about this... Why not move Bertrand into a left midfield position (he is actually a key offensive player for us despite playing LB with his overlapping runs and I think has a footballing brain) and putting Targett in at LB. Im not hugely impressed with Targett. But if he is best of the latest crop its a total waste to have him sat on the bench. Getting game time whilst actually playing as a double act with Bertrand (who should be his role model) could be great for his development. I mean we played Bale at LB who turned out to be a world class offensive player. Not saying Bertrand is Bale of course but he is a cut above most of our squad and think he could be up to the job.

Game is almost certainly a loss. So put the kids out, tell them best player gets a 1 year extension on their contract. You'll see them dying for the cause. And sit all the first teamers on the bench and tell them "thats what it takes"

Personally I think if we are going to sell quality and buy in "fixer-uppers" then we should just try and develop the youth again, at least then we can mold them to our way of playing, theyre cheaper and have way less baggage. Anyone else notice that Ron doesnt seem quite so keen on the youngsters? Watching Spurs this season it might be a coincidence but seems like Poch has done a fantastic job at bringing through a few stars. Maybe our production line has dried up which would be such a shame. To be honest I dont think Targett looks up to it. But Reed was making some real headway last year. I know theres a lot of hope for Clasie to come good, but i can honestly say I have seen nothing about him what so ever and Romeu is hardly a superstar. Not saying we should sell our stars and replace them all with kids, but if we relied on them a little more we can put the funds into 1 or 2 quality players rather than 5-8mill gambles . Maybe thats just fantasy thinking

A lot of talk about Long on here. Lets face it, he is pretty sh*te i know Pelle is off form and his constant moaning annoys me but he is still the best we've got. Longs got a place mind, coming on for last 15 minutes to run hopefully down a decent channel hes a half decent sub to have. I think the Black Box was trolling us though for what we paid for him

I dont think its time for full on bedwetting, we have had a dip of late.. it happens.. and hopefully this was a wake up. But it really is so depressing this constant selling of talent and replacement on gambles. Yes some of them have worked but a lot havent. I get the impression RK has asked for money in Jan and not been given it from some of his recent comments. Mane and Vic are as good as gone in the summer. Just thankful we got Bertrand to sign an extension. I know we need to be built on sound financial footing, i get that and approve of it. But seriously, whats the point when we are constantly fighting with one hand behind our back. We are not a "big club" but something is wrong when you look at how many of our players want out compared to other clubs and their ability to hold on to them. Yes 25 mill for a player is great. But so is having a 25 mill player in your team! If they are going to go for that sort of money personally i feel that should be spent on 1-2 proven players. Not cheap punts and loans (Romeu, Cedric, Caulker, Gardos etc) But then again its not like any of our big spends have lived up to the hype.. sigh.. *wets bed*

Yeah I know. Just wishful thinking. But players need to know there are consequences for forgetting they are paid a lot of money for a contract and if they break that agreement there has to be consequences. A player losing £1mill for an early release clause when they stand to make an extra £2mill over the next 2 years is hardly a deterrent. Im all for people making more money, its what motivates people and its going to happen. I would do the same. But it needs to somehow be made more of a risk for the player to make the call.

Hugely relieved at that result. Hats off to JWP. Never rated him but that was the first game I have seen him play to the level we need. Great performances by Tadic, Romeu, Pelle, Mane (at last we see some of the original quality Tadic showed a year ago). Romeu REALLY impressive. Still think our defenders look pretty low quality. Norwich were unbelievably poor and our defence had a day off apart from a few attacks when I still think they looked disjointed. As for Wanyama... its time to get tough. If you are soft leader youre going to have rebellions. Just let him rot in the reserves for a season and make an example of what happens. Just as a reminder who is really boss.

[quote= Quote Originally Posted by disconnect View Post If we're serious about progression, or at least retaining a decent Prem finish, Davis... will need to be replaced. verlaine1979;2244050]Six months or so ago, saying exactly this almost got me lynched on here... Saying this 6 days ago nearly got me lynched

Exactly my point

I didnt see any evidence of that really.. but assuming thats what did happen do we really have nobody better than JWP and Davis to be moving up into supporting roles on the front line? Two of the worst finishers in the squad probably

It seems RK is getting most of the flack on this thread. Im a bit of a bedwetter by nature but I think RK has done enough over the past year to warrant me going a little easy on him. Bad team selection... but I think we are bad team. Our defence (with Fonte now seeming to have a dip in form) is Championship standard at the moment. Yoshi has never been up to it. Targett.. its early days but doesn't look like we have another Shaw/Bridge/Bale on our hands and the others probably are an even lower standard whilst Bertrand is out. Midfield JWP ive never rated, yes he has a mean free kick but how many set pieces do we score? Goes missing for long periods of the game. Davis has peaked. Big Vic (although not playing last night) is probably our one top half prem league quality player in midfield and he wants out by the sounds of it. Our attack is decent but not much they can do with no quick passes in and around the box. If you're gonna play long ball at least get people playing off Pelle effectively. We need quality and fast

Careful with that sort of talk on here. Anyone thinking that you dont worship at the alter of The Black Box is likely to make you an outcast. Personally i think you hit the nail on the head. Im all for sustainable clubs. But we havent spent what we recouped in players. We have 10's of millions in TV money. Millions in league money, Millions in gate receipts and a billionaire owner. Im not saying we are in a position to do a Man City.. not by a long shot but come on lets see a bit of drive!