Nordic Saint

Who knew? There's a parallel universe out there.

We should all be happy that after the unpopular Jones appointment, we dodged another bullet with Marsch. Neither of them had much to commend them and neither will be missed.

He took them from 16th to the bottom 3 and was only saved on the final day of the season by coming up against a lower mid-table Brentford with nothing to play for, who conceded a penalty and were reduced to 9 men. Even though he made them worse after he took over, he got very lucky on the final day with a 94th minute deflected shot against 9 men. "Even when Brentford were reduced to nine men, Raya's goal rarely appeared in serious danger until Dasilva's clearance from a last-minute corner fell for Harrison, whose 25-yard effort took a slight deflection to beat the goalkeeper inside his near post" So, it was a sheer fluke.

This is very good news. We've dodged a bullet there.

They were 16th when he took over. He took them down one place. At least he can't do that here. 11v11 league table generator

I agree. He failed at Montreal, he failed at RB Leipzig and he failed at Leeds. His record at Leeds (29.73% win rate) was worse than Ralph's record at Southampton (34.19%) and his record at RB Leipzig (38.10%) was much worse than Ralph's (48.19%). So, why would anyone think he'd be better than Ralph here??? The same red flags of previous failure are there that were there for Nathan Jones, only there are more of them. For those who say he saved Leeds from relegation, they weren't even in the bottom 3 when he took over in February. The one thing in his favour is that he is a more likeable person than Nathan Jones. I actually felt sorry for Marsch when he was at Leeds, because you could see he was a decent bloke finding it hard to cope.

He wasn't at RB Leipzig and he wasn't at Leeds so why should he be here? Have we got a better squad than them?

On this day one year ago we drew 1-1 at Man.United in the middle of a 7-match unbeaten run: 2022 22 January Southampton 1–1 Manchester City 5 February Southampton 2-1 Coventry FAC 9 February Tottenham Hotspur 2–3 Southampton 12 February Manchester United 1–1 Southampton 19 February Southampton 2–0 Everton 25 February Southampton 2–0 Norwich City 2 March Southampton 3-1 West Ham FAC "impressive Southampton" 44 Forster 2 Walker-Peters 35 Bednarek Sub Stephens 45'minutes 22 Salisu 15 Perraud 17 S Armstrong 8 Ward-Prowse 6 Romeu Sub Diallo 90+5'minutes 24 Elyounoussi Sub Livramento 71'minutes 18 Broja 10 Adams Man Utd 1-1 Southampton: Jadon Sancho and Che Adams score - BBC Sport

We've got some good new players now. Ralph would have kept us up with this squad. Thank God we were only playing against 10 men today or we'd have been annihilated in the second half.

Jones is a bit odd, don't you think?

"Hart was appointed as permanent manager of Portsmouth on a two-year contract on 21 July 2009.In the 2009–10 season, however, Portsmouth, a club in turmoil and on the brink of administration, had the worst ever start by a Premier League team, losing their first seven league games. On 24 November 2009, with only two Premier League wins in 13 games and three points adrift at the bottom of the table, Hart was sacked." Yes, I can just see him being brought here to help Jones administer the final rites.

Quite a few of them still playing on well into their 30s too: Forster at Spurs, Clyne at Palace, Fonte at Lille, Yoshida at Schalke, Targett at Newcastle, Reed at Fulham, Tadic at Ajax, Davis at Rangers, Mané at Bayern Munich. Only Ward-Prowse is still here. There was a more settled team then. Our lineup a year later wasn't much different apart from the addition of van Dijk. You need a settled team to be successful. What we have at the moment is more like a collection of interchangeable individuals. Queens Park Rangers 0-1 Southampton - BBC Sport Southampton 1-0 West Ham United - BBC Sport

Welcome, Paul Merson.

Isn't it rude to compare a member of your own family to a dog? I know he hasn't done well here but he is still human, isn't he?

He arrived on here when Jones was appointed and when people suspected that he was Jones, he claimed that he was a Saints fan who'd lived in Luton for 40 years. His posts were all about what a great job he (Jones) was doing and then last night he became very bitter about how the fans had treated him, started rantiong emotionally about hate and misery, and said we'd be happy now.

I don't expect Rob Edwards cares. He's a much better manager than Jones and the Luton players and fans know it. Rob Edwards' first 8 games at Luton = 6 wins Nathan Jones' last 8 games at Luton = 3 wins

When new managers have taken over from Jones (Mick Harford at Luton, Michael O'Neill at Stoke and now Rob Edwards at Luton), they've got better results from the same players. So Jones is clearly not a manager who gets the best out of players.

Whoever replaces Nathan Jones always does better than him: Mick Harford did at Luton, Michael O'Neill did at Stoke and now Rob Edwards is at Luton. So that at least gives us something to look forward to.

His proximity to Djenepo and Boufal in stats indicates the type of player he is. Hopefully, he will be more successful here. I can't recall many players having their finishing refined at Southampton in recent years. If anything, it usually gets worse.

If he'd been even more terrible he could have ended up with a fanbase like Newcastle's. I remember how they mercilessly hounded out Pardew. In fact, the more supposedly 'passionate' the fanbase, the worse they are for getting on the backs of managers they don't like. Remember the treatment that McMenemy got at Sunderland not long after he'd arrived? The vandalized car, the death threats. Our lot are pretty tolerant and easy-going in comparison. Newcastle manager Alan Pardew given grief by young fan and admits more than half of fans want him out - Mirror Online

Our passing seems to get worse and worse. I can't recall us making as many misplaced passes to opposition players, or out of play, in all our years in the top flight as we do nowadays. I guess our stats will be inflated by successful backwards and sideways passes deep in our own half, although often they are far from accurate, but once we near the halfway line they start going awry. There seems to be a lot of confusion as to whether to pass to the man or in front of him. Shouldn't this be sorted out in training? Newcastle's slick, well-practised passing, in contrast to our hit and miss approach, was what led to their 2 goals and saw us already beaten in the first half. The few goals we do score nearly all come from individual efforts such as free-kicks and long-range shots. Even though we beat Blackpool, our passing was just as bad then, when we were under far less pressure than against Premier League opposition.

It looks like Nathan Jones has messed up our defence to fit Bree in. Surely, it would be better with Perraud on the left and Walker-Peters on the right, especially as Perraud was our best player in our last game. Let's hope Jones knows what he's doing and it turns out to be a masterstroke.

I don't see how Zapata could pass a medical, unless it was as dodgy as his legs. Recent Injury history: 22/23 Hip problems Jan 19, 2023 Jan 27, 2023 8 days 2 22/23 Bruised Knee Jan 4, 2023 Jan 8, 2023 4 days 1 22/23 Hamstring Injury Sep 1, 2022 Oct 21, 2022 50 days 7 21/22 Muscular problems May 2, 2022 May 11, 2022 9 days 2 21/22 Pulled hamstring at the adductors Feb 7, 2022 Apr 2, 2022 54 days 11 21/22 Muscular problems Dec 21, 2021 Feb 5, 2022 46 days 5 21/22 Sprain Aug 19, 2021 Sep 11, 2021 23 days 3 20/21 Contracture Feb 24, 2021 Mar 2, 2021 6 days 2 19/20 Tear in the abductor muscle Oct 12, 2019 Dec 30, 2019 79 days 14

That's a good draw.

But they bought him from the J-League where transfer fees are ridiculously low. The same is true of the K-League, which is why Japanese and Korean players are such bargains. We could get a great striker like Cho Gue-sung for a similar price if we wanted to.