qwertyell

The toilet?

There's a little bit of academy depth to the midfield now. Bragg did well, Williams didn't look out of place, and I think Sesay is maybe a better prospect than both of them. Nice to see. One of the few benefits of being in the lower leagues should be greater opportunities for the youth to get some first team exposure, as opposed to being thrown into the deep end in the Premier League.

Additional context: his starting GK (Samba), CBs (Khusanov and Danso), and Striker (Wahi) were sold.

He ditched us twice before the age of 20. Who gives a shit if he's having a lovely time or not? Let it go, chaps.

Johannes Spors has been in football for nearly 20 years, starting as an analyst, through to scouting and head of recruitment, and now multiple Sporting Director posts. Rasmus Ankersen was a professional player, has some coaching badges, coached Midtjylland u17s before becoming chairman, and has been a director for more than a decade. Yes, they might not be very good, but inexperience and not being "football people" has absolutely nothing to do with it.

Younes Ebnoutalib is catching the attention of bigger clubs with 9 goals in 12 matches in our favourite shopping centre, the Bundesliga 2. He plays for tiny Elversberg, who are briefing the media that they'd accept between €6-8m for him in January. 22. 6'3". A handful. Shades of Pelle in the way he moves. Could be a flash in the pan, though. His career has only really gotten going this season, having spent most of it thus far in very low level leagues. Scienza might know him a bit, as his Heidenheim beat Elversberg in last season's play offs to retain their place in the Bundesliga. (From about 1:30) (couple of nice finishes here too, from 0:42) (a hat trick against Greuther Furth, who Quarshie played for last season) Anyway, just throwing it out there in a try-and-get-into-the-sport-republic-mindset kind of way. He's ticking data-driven boxes in Germany. Ergo, he's probably on list.

Those 2 losses were also in their last 2 matches. So he was unbeaten all season until the last week or so. And now he's out of work again. Tough gig.

I don't know about giving him longer, but I agree in general that he has done all that can be expected of him with no real time on the training ground to make any big tactical difference. Perhaps that's what Spors is supposedly impressed by - that he was able to fashion two wins out of two in spite of having his hands tied. Maybe with two weeks to actually coach the team, we might see some noticeable changes. Maybe the team will get worse. Who knows? The prospect of him possibly getting the job permanently doesn't fill me with any optimism, but by the same token, I think it's ludicrous to write off his coaching potential on the basis that he didn't completely revolutionise the playing style in a couple of days. And these easy victories, by the way, that "we would've won whoever was in charge" were against QPR, who were above us (we had beaten zero teams this season who were above us), and Sheffield Wednesday, who were below us (we have dropped points against Hull, Derby, Blackburn, Portsmouth, and Watford who were all below us at the time). There are no easy games when you're crap.

Could be almost anyone. John Dahl Tomasson. Rooney. Robbie Keane/Savage. Uwe Rosler. Jelle Van Damme.

Turns out all we need to get a tune out of the squad is someone to silently stare into the players' eyes until it gets weird. Is Marty Feldman available?

Thought it might take a bit longer than 24 hours for sentiment to shift in his favour. Obviously not. Maybe this time tomorrow we'll have gaslit ourselves into thinking we're incredibly lucky that the great Gary O'Neil has deigned to slum it with us bottom dwellers instead of hold out for something more befitting a manager of his exalted status. Perhaps we can become known in media circles as Gary O'Neil's Southampton. It's got a ring to it. We accept so little so readily. This is why we can't have nice things.

Sigh. Wonder who'll be our manager after Christmas. At least it might prove mildly entertaining watching all the people twisting on here trying to convince themselves that a negative, slow possession, philosophy first manager who plays 3 at the back and can't defend (and is also ex-Pompey) is fine now, having spent months apoplectically railing against such a thing. If the board really had nothing better lined up to replace Still, they may as well have given him more time and saved on the compensation.

Boro fans already can't stand him for past comments bragging about deliberately getting suspended so he could watch the golf (when he played for them, obviously). That's probably DOA. Just saw a guy at the FAB choke on his smoked salmon croquette.