Nordic Saint

Talking of Mitchell, his RB Leipzig side won 3-0 away to Hertha Berlin at the weekend to move up to 4th place in the Bundesliga. The team featured the three players he signed in the summer: Mukiele, Saracchi and Cunha, and one of them, the teenage striker, Matheus Cunha, scored.

I think he was talking about next season. If we are relegated, anybody we have left who is any good will be sold in the summer. Blackburn, who were promoted from League One last season, are above Stoke and Swansea in the Championship this season. Overall, there is not much to choose between teams promoted from League One and those relegated from the Premier League when their paths cross in the Championship. It depends how much they strengthen in the summer. We can only hope we get drawn against Pompey in the FA Cup this season, like they did against us in their final season in the Premier League.

This does even more: 2015/16 63 pts 2016/17 46 pts 2017/18 36 pts 2018/19 26-30 pts ??

All of our goalkeepers would look better if they could escape the coaching of Dave Watson. As England coach, he wrecked Joe Hart's career and at Saints he has done the same for Fraser Forster and now he seems to have got to work on Alex McCarthy.

Statues of Les and Ralph?

4th best team on the south coast? Have we ever been that before in our history? The other three all seem to have ambitious owners who are prepared to invest, as well as good managers. Brighton's owner. Tony Bloom, for example, paid for Brighton's new stadium out of his own pocket and contributes to their transfer kitty every season, as you can see from their accounts where 'owner's contributions' are listed.

Gao was sold a vision by Kat of a profitable business, where players were brought in cheaply and sold for huge profits every year. But, she knew the cupboard was almost bare. She also knew that the people who'd found those players had left. The only reason the van Dijk sale was delayed was because Gao wasn't going to part with his borrowed cash if any more players were sold before the money went into Kat's account. Gao's main business. Lander Sports Development, is not doing well and is only worth a fraction of what it once was. He is going to really struggle to repay that loan. If you look at the Forbe's rich list of the wealthiest people in China, you won't find him anywhere near it. The only thing poor, old Gao is really guilty of is being gullible and allowing Kat to con him out of all that money. There are probably people who post on this board who have more spare cash than he does at the moment. These are the 400 richest people in China. It's a pity we couldn't have got one of them as an owner: https://www.forbes.com/sites/russellflannery/2017/11/15/chinas-richest-2017-the-full-list-of-400-billionaires/#1bab339a296b

You really don't know anything, do you? Gao is NOT one of the wealthiest men in China. His business is in trouble and he is in debt. The Wolves owner is one of the wealthiest men in China but Gao is nowhere near. As for Hughes starting Man City's rebirth, he was sacked by them in 2009 https://www.forbes.com/china-billionaires/list/ Are you Les Reed in disguise?

It is getting close to dire straits now. Most good managers will understandably steer clear of us. A punt on one of the lower league English managers who's always wanted a shot at the big time, like Paul Cook, Nigel Clough or Chris Wilder might be an option. I'm not saying any one of them is one of the best managers in the world but they would be better than Hughes. Or, there are still plenty of good managers around the world who would find Premier League wages immensely attractive, like Rubi, Dieter Hecking and Christophe Galtiernot, but you'd expect Ross and Les not to find one of them. Someone like Pardew would be more likely with them, and he would merely continue what Hughes is doing. Until Les Reed and Ross Wilson are replaced by someone useful like Paul Mitchell, our club's decline is not going to be reversed and more useless managers, coaches and players will be brought in.

Perhaps I was being a tad overoptimistic. Results under Hughes really are much worse than they were under Pellegrino. With just 1 win and 7 points from 11 games, we are currently on course for only 25 points this season. Les & Ross have decimated our club. Meanwhile, Paul Mitchell's RB Leipzig are 4th in the Bundesliga with only 1 defeat in their first 10 games.

Le Tissier has just been discussing Saints' struggles on Gillette Soccer Saturday and when asked how confident he was that the squad would be strengthened in January, replied, "Not very... there's not much money there, which is why we got Ings on loan." There will be even less next year if we get relegated so the club is going to struggle to pay the players' wages. There aren't many players in our squad we could even get a decent transfer fee for.

And now he looks much better under Hughes. In fact, he's probably 2nd only to Hojbjerg as our player of the season so far.

In Jack Stephens and Christoph Klarer we have two central defenders far better than the ones Ross and Les have wasted the van Dijk and Fonte transfer fees on: Vestergaard, Gardos et al. The point is we still have a few talented players left at the club and I think that if they were played regularly in the first team, they would give us fans players to identify with. It's just unfortunate that a lot of the useless dross the club has wasted tens of millions of pounds on gets in the way of that.

Obviously he can't do it all on his own but he has been one of the few bright spots this season. We have kept clean sheets in 5 out of the last 7 games he's played in, including the final two last season: the 1-0 win at Swansea Swansea and the 0-1 defeat to Man City, when we were unlucky not to keep a clean sheet.

He can't tackle so he wouldn't be half decent there. He probably looks good in training, where the pace is slower and the games are less competitive. I'm certainly in favour of our Academy products being given a chance and persevering with Stephens, for example, finally seems to have paid off but I'd rather see Hesketh or Sims in our team ahead of Ward-Prowse. He's had his chance and they offer a bit more in terms of pace, skill and competitiveness.

Kelvin Davis's Premier League record is incredibly bad. He has a lower percentage of clean sheets than just about any other keeper in the history of the league, having only kept 8, 1 every 6.6 games, and he was voted into the worst Sunderland XI of all-time. In contrast, Fraser Forster has kept 38, 1 every 2.79 games.

Another great goal from Hesketh tonight, v Nott. Forest.

This is our fourth consecutive season of decline in the league. Is there any evidence that the people currently running the club can turn that around? 2015/16 63 pts 2016/17 46 pts 2017/18 36 pts 2018/19 28-32 pts ?? (and even that's being optimistic as we currently have 7 points from 10 games, which over a season would give us a total of 26-27 pts.} On a positive note there are 4 teams below us with even fewer points. So, Huddersfield, Cardiff and one from Saints, Fulham and Newcastle look the likely relegation candidates. The bookies have Burnley in the mix too. A change of manager and coaches plus players bought in the January transfer window could be the deciding factors.

Jose Fonte's Lille team won again and remain 2nd in the French league, looking very likely to qualify for the Champions League. Pied came on as sub for the last few minutes.

Lemina shouldn't be in there twice. One should be Romeu, who although nothing special, has proved that he is OK at this level.

Judging from our last two games, Jack Stephens has now become the best central defender we have. He and Hojbjerg are our standout players now. Although, some fans don't seem to like Bertrand, he is arguably the only player we have left good enough for a top six side. So, those three should be automatic selections. Cedric's height is a problem and the opposition exploit it by playing high crosses over him but he is still a classy player. Ings looked by far our best striker when he first arrived but a few months of SFC coaching seem to be reducing him to the same level as the rest of our strikers. In one pre-match warmup I saw Kelvin Davis coaching Charlie Austin how to shoot. That could explain a lot, What other team would be stupid enough to have three goalkeepers as first team coaches? But, still, Ings must retain some of his Liverpool quality and so should be picked ahead of Long, Austin and Gabbiadini. Talking of Gabbiadini, we seem to have acquired quite a few players in the Boufal mould, who show occasional flashes of brilliance and every now and then have a good game but most of the time have little impact. Lemina and Gabbiadini fall in to that category. So, as that is better than being mediocre all of the time, like many in our squad, they should be in too. We have two good goalkeepers. So, here we have the core of a team that should be good enough for the Premier League: Gunn/McCarthy Cedric Stephens Bertrand Lemina Gabbiadini Ings Lemina That leaves us three short and we are spoilt for choice when it comes to mediocre players, who are not really good enough at this level, to fill those positions. If we could place any faith in Ross Wilson or Mark Hughes to find decent players, we should try to shift as much of the dross as possible and bring in 2 or 3 good players in January if we want to stay up.

2015/16 63 pts 2016/17 46 pts 2017/18 36 pts 2018/19 28-32 pts ?? Koeman>Puel>Pellegrino>Hughes>

No, we are not. We are worse. After our opening 10 games last season, we had 13 points. This season, we have only 7. We haven't even scored a goal in any of our last 5 league games. We are much worse than last season.

End of.

One bright spot this season is Stephens becoming a real rock at the heart of our defence.