qwertyell

Alysson Edward joins Aston Villa. We were linked with him in the summer. I forget what the forum consensus was - presumably that we'd be fine with the players we already have, who are world beaters at this level. Interesting to see how he goes.

Yes. Tired of hearing about our amazing players (for this division) while simultaneously seeing no on-field evidence to back that up. Can't always be the manager's fault (although he's not exactly helping). Our squad have found their level. And it's utterly mediocre. Happy new year, everyone. It's going to be crap.

It's a stupid situation. We can't "permanently" address the goalkeeping issue, seemingly, because our best keeper is out on loan as no-one wanted to buy him, and he doesn't want to play in the Championship. So we're just going to, seemingly, tread water until the end of the season, when he'll return as our best keeper - who'll immediately want to leave again because we're still going to be a Championship club. And if, again, no-one wants to buy him, he'll be loaned out again. And the cycle restarts.

He's already played for two clubs this season. So, no.

Absolute banger of a year, 2025. Started it bottom of the Premier League, ended it 13th in the Championship. What joys will SR bring in 2026?

If you were remaking Brewster's Millions, who would you spunk £15m on without ending up with any assets?

Might have been. Fucking useless. Archer's half assed effort at tracking back should've been a stackable offence.

This is ridiculously poor. How did we spend so much to end up with so little?

No-one's mentioned whoever the fuck it was that joined us on loan in January last year, made about one sub appearance, and that was that. Can't even remember his name. Not worth bothering to look it up.

Agreed, there's no single magic bullet solution. We signed a better (although wildly overrated) goalkeeper than Bazunu and McCarthy last season - and then conceded a risible 86. Our worst ever was 92 in 1966, but from 42 games - we would've conceded around 95 last season with 4 more games. It's the entire defence. Not one of them is worth a damn. In any division. They don't work as unit, they don't compliment each other's strengths (whatever they might be) or cover their weaknesses. And individually, it's a pile of crap - mostly slow, weak in the air, physically indifferent, and positionally all over the shop. And prone to total panic. Wood and Quarshie have physical attributes that could work, but their lack of actual football ability is something of a drawback. The rest, you can fire them into the sun for all I care.

Vague idea we have an option to extend for a year if he does anything worthwhile to suggest he might have a market value.

Last four seasons we've shipped 67, 73, 63, and 86. We're on course to concede 65 this season. It's been years since we've been competent defensively - and the wait goes on. If we want to be successful in any way, this is obviously not sustainable. We have some crap individuals, but we also don't seem to be defensively well balanced as a team. Lightweight, small, slow. Not sure what the answer is other than raiding the transfer market again. We've tried multiple configurations, across multiple seasons, under multiple different managers, and the results are the same: we give up an inordinate amount of shots on our goal. That's not ideal when you've got a keeper who doesn't save much.

Wins breed confidence. We're already night and day from the naval gazing lumps of 7 or so games ago. Whether we've looked dodgy at times getting those wins is a moot point, really. I still think we're treading water until January - and I'm not confident we'll bring in the necessary reinforcements that defensively and offensively we're crying out for. But let's ride whatever this momentum is for as long as we can and try and muscle into the play off places before then. Things might look a lot brighter come the new year. Or worse. It'll probably look worse, won't it? That's the Saints way.

Dad driving the kids to the footie only to find they're a player short and can he fit into a mismatched pair of size 9 boots they found in the kit bag.

Frustratingly, at one stage today we were just 3 points off 2nd. Which, if you're looking for silver linings, tells us we've forced ourselves back into the promotion picture after a terrible start - with plenty of points left to play for. Irrelevant, though, if we're as poor as today and still can't defend properly no matter the combinations back there. A hard earned point wouldn't have been the worst outcome, but we really didn't deserve anything more. Back to the training ground for Tonda to give the lads a damn good staring at.

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.