Nordic Saint

Nathan Tella is beginning to establish hiself as a regular at Bayer Leverkusen. He's started their last 4 Bundesliga games and scored a good goal at Borussia Dortmund tonight.

Not only, Bazunu, but also the "FFS, is he still here?" McCarthy, will still be here. It's a depressing thought, isn't it? Newcastle want Ramsdale. At least it proves what a good goalkeeper we signed, even if we didn't know that already. I agree with you, he's the best player we've got. He seems like a great bloke too. I feel sorry for him, being stuck in such a terrible team.

Ironically, it was Adam Armstrong's finishing which got us promoted through his goals in the play-offs, after we'd finished 9 points off the automatic promotion places. Both Ipswich and Leicester did the double over us, with the latter beating us 9-1 on aggregate; a foretaste of what was to come when we faced even better teams. For most of the season we looked far more like a mid-table team than a promotion one. Swansea are currently 12th. Hopefully, we are the equivalent of an upper mid-table Championship team and can scrape though by the odd goal, for which we may need Adam Armstrong again.

I agree. Considering we've experienced the worst set of results in our entire history, it's been very good. With the old setup, you wouldn't have heard the home fans at all. Now, it's the away fans who are stuck in a corner, where the acoustics are worst. It feels good to have a proper home end at last: one of the few positives to come out of this season.

Yes, I agree. We can concentrate on the cup now. I know this is clutching at straws (in a gale), but there is a long tradition of clubs reaching cup finals in their relegations seasons: Brighton, Norwich, Leicester, Wigan, Middlesbrough, Portsmouth etc. A poison chalice… the FA Cup and relegation - BBC Three

He was generally ridiculed here because he wasn't as good as his predecessor, Paul Mitchell (now DoF at Newcastle). But, he's no fool and he's obviously learned his trade well. Some of Forest's buys have been genius. Ola Aina! Who knew? They got him on a free transfer and he's been absolutely brilliant for them this season. They got Milenković, currently one of the best central defenders in the world, for just £12 mill, rated by many as the best buy by any Premier League club in the last transfer window. Other clubs will be shadowing Forest and Newcastle in this transfer window to find out who they're interested in, because they obviously know what they're doing. It turns out that we've had some of the most talented people in the Premier League pass through this club. You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone.

Brentford paid a club record fee of £5.8 mill for Bryan Mbeumo. Saints paid £22 mill for Sulemana and £18 mill for Onuachu. How can we hope to compete with a club as sensible as Brentford?

Liam Delap and Omari Hutchinson. Also, of course, they have a bloody good manager.

Is he even going to reach single figures?

That's a great tribute to our medical staff here. I bet he's glad he came.

I think it's to build up the excitement for the fans over a period of several years until that great moment comes when he finally equals Benali's goalscoring record. What a day that will be!

Sport Republic are proving to be brilliant owners for Göztepe. They're having one of the best seasons, possibly the best in their history.

I think it's a fine testament to Saintsweb that even Merry Christmas can start an argument. Good job he didn't say Happy New Year as well or all hell would have broken out.

Anyway, he's nowhere near as good as Göztepe's top goalscorer, Rômulo Cardoso, who is on loan there from a Brazilian club until June. Now, he really does look the business. I wonder if we could swap one of our current so-called strikers for him, but I guess Göztepe wouldn't be interested in any of them as, thanks largely to Rômulo's goals and assists, they are currently the 3rd highest scoring team in the Turkish Super Lig, behind Galatasaray and Fenerbahce.

It would be good if we could get Rômulo from Göztepe. We badly need a goalscoring centre forward .

How can you expect Man United, Man City and Spurs to compete with a top team like Bournemouth?

Juric for Martin and Ramsdale for McCarthy = clean sheet. I'm very happy with that. Fulham are a decent mid-table Premier League team in good form lately. In the bad old days of Martin and McCarthy, hopefully never to return again, they'd have beaten us easily.

Ivan the not so Terrible?

I agree. Surely, he's got to be an improvement on Martin.

"On 18 September 2024, Jurić became the new head coach of Roma, following the sacking of Daniele De Rossi after earning just three points in the first four games of the season. Jurić failed to turn the team's fortunes and was regularly criticized for his management style and poor results; he was eventually dismissed on 10 November 2024, after a 2–3 home loss to Bologna that left Roma 20th in the Europa League table and only four points ahead of the relegation zone in Serie A." To be fair, some of the other names we were linked with, could have been worse. The very fact that Roma appointed him in the first place suggests that he can't be a total no hoper. So, let's hope things work out for him here. On reflection, my first post was a bit of a knee jerk reaction to the news and I agree with you, Scummer. He's done OK. I even recall that I enjoyed watching his Torino team's games on TV. Warning: Sometimes I post nonsense and then edit it (and post more nonsense).

He had one very good year as a manager, with Crotone in Serie B in 2015/16. Apart from that, his career looks so so. But, the fact a big club like Roma appointed him shows he must have built a good reputation in Italy. Let's hope that both he and we can repeat that 2015/16 season. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Juri%C4%87

This is a very good point. When top teams recruit a manager, they scour the globe for the best; they don't think, he knows the Premier League, let alone, he knows the Championship. Guardiola, Klopp, Slot etc never managed one minute in the Premier League before they were appointed at Man City and Liverpool, and that was to their advantage because their tactics were not stale and predictable. In contrast, our approach seems to be, let's appoint another manager from a mid-table Championship team because "he knows the Championship", when in fact all he knows is how to be mediocre and predictable to other managers in that league. Our best years this century were when Pochettino and Koeman, who'd never managed in England before, were appointed. There is nothing sensible in appointing a third mid-table Championship manager in a row and expecting the results to be any different.

Alan Ball was always a little hoarse, but he didn't do too badly. What can human medical knowledge do to restore his sanity?

I'm not in the COT, but I saw this headline in The Independent: Two horse race for St Mary’s hot seat

BO and dandruff, but not alcoholism or a drug habit. OK, beggars can't be choosers: maybe alcoholism if she's not too drunk during training sessions.