Saint Albert

More importantly, Lemina seems convinced that his ankle is not 100%. He even tweeted about it in December.

Cracking finish to be fair.

Long scores, but he’s ruled offside.

Away supporters are in good voice.

Sims is on the bench. Bednarek starts, presumably because of the Hoedt and Pied injuries. Long starts. McQueen is not in the squad.

It could just be creative writing. It’s the Sun.

There’s too much other irritating stuff going on at Saints right now on to be irritated by this. At some point he’ll pull a Lovren, and if my schadenfreudascope notices it, I will enjoy it.

My biggest worry is that the club will blow the VVD money on 4 or 5 average players. I don’t mind the club spending the money on the right player, but I am not convinced that Mawson is the right player and I am certainly not convinced he’s a 25M defender.

If you believe this, Arsenal want 30M for Theo and he’s having doubts about Saints because of Pellegrino and our tenuous league position... https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/5278194/arsenal-theo-walcott-30m-southampton/

Theo’s a good player with speed, he scores goals and has an emotional connection to the club. If he wants to come here, we should sign him up if the fee is not exorbitant. I can’t see too many players of his quality wanting to play for Pellegrino in a team this close to the relegation zone.

You’ve got to think there are better options on the continent, for less money.

I’m hoping that this one is just a newspaper rumour. There must surely be better goal scoring forward options out there. If there is any truth to it, it does feel like the club is doubling down on Pellegrino. The player won’t be helped in the eyes of the Saints supporters given his lack of goals and his association with such an unsuccessful manager.

So Long finally scored in his last game against Palace. He’ll be coming into the Fulham match on a bit of a high, having played well and finally rewarded his manager’s faith in him. What are the chances that Pellegrino will drop him for tomorrow’s game?

I did not realize until yesterday that Olomola only has 6 months left on his contract. I wonder if Les & Co will try (or have tried), to get him to sign a new contract.

For any Canadian supporters, this match is being televised on the main (free) Sportsnet channels at 8 am MST. Sportsnet usually hide the FA Cup games on their pay channel, so this is a bit of a good break.

He’s not the first player under this manager to get dropped after playing well.

Post re McQueen removed - already in McQueen thread

According to this, Saints supporters are voting with their feet... http://www.insideworldfootball.com/2018/01/05/west-hams-bubbles-fly-high-saints-attendances-plummet-form/

This is one of the reasons why it would have been good to fire Pellegrino before the January transfer window. The manager has a say in transfers. Pellegrino said as much in one of his recent press conferences. This manager also does not know his arse from his elbow.

I read a report yesterday that he was still getting dizzy spells in training. Can’t mess around with concussions, unfortunately.

There’s a lot of information that needs to be fleshed out and verified, so I’m not particularly interested in rushing to judgment.

I was just lurking on Not606. There seems to be some further info in post 59 here... https://www.not606.com/threads/cmon-ralph-and-les-admit-it-you-ed-up.356828/page-3 (In reply to the post above)

This is bat**** crazy. They actually look like them!

It’s the empty corporate speak that drives me up the wall.

Perhaps one of the fab 3 could join Pellegrino on the bench during games. They could explain tactics, pro-active substitutions and how to react to the other team’s formation and personnel changes in the second half. It’d be great.