Ex Lion Tamer

To be fair, Kane would have had a free header if he hadn't been hauled down

https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/20/england-changed-shape-world-cup-2018-steve-holland-tactics If you read this article, it talks about how Gary Neville and Cesar Azpilicueta have both played successfully in a back three, and England are now doing the same with Kyle Walker. All three are under 6ft

We can't keep every player until 25 though, we always have to make a judgement about whether they will continue to develop. Some players just don't. I'm undecided on Targett but lack of pace can be a pretty limiting factor in making the step up to the Premier League.

Who do you suggest?

Has he been exiled to Siberia?

The loss situation is if he's not good enough and we don't sign a similar style player to actually play in the team

Also important if he is to make the step up to the Premier League

That's not quite what the article says

Let's hope he's better than Neil McCann but it feels a bit similar unfortunately

Branfoot was manager for 2.5 years during which we finished 16th, 18th and 18th. Lowe was chairman for 11 years during which time we made countless poor transfers, made various bizarre decisions, e.g. Poortvliet, Clifford, Wigley, Gray, etc etc, and ultimately got relegated. The present situation is that we have a manager who has just come in and an owner who has just come in. We've just had a bad season, finishing 17th, but before that we finished 8th, 7th, 6th and 8th. So although there is cause for concern at the moment, fans haven't been whipped up into the same level of frustration yet and a lot of people will be seeing if we can turn it around.

I don't know if we could expect things to keep going as well as they did for that couple of seasons, but something has definitely gone wrong with our transfer policy, I agree. I'm just hoping that the club can learn from its mistakes. Maddison was a promising start to the window, it just didn't work out. We have to wait and see now what comes through and then judge

No team has a 100% hit rate on transfers, you've got to cut them a bit of slack. But Martina did a job as a squad while Cedric was bedding in. Caulker had mental health issues so didn't get back to the form we hoped he'd regain, was a bit unfortunate

Shaq got roasted by the pundits at half time too. Failed to track back for the Brazil goal, and in general leaving the Swiss right hand side wide open

JWP might as well leave if we sign a free kick specialist like Maddison, it's his main value to the squad

I assume he means we maintain a shortlist of five players for each position all year round. They are watched closely and are considered our top targets, but this list can change on an ongoing basis if other players are identified as better

Chop off their hands i reckon

Watching that, I'd be surprised if a bigger team than us didn't come in for him. Unless there are serious doubts about his defensive contribution

Part of the reason why his squad seems really good is that he gets players playing at the best of their ability. Look at how the likes of Lovren, Lallana, Shaw, Schneiderlin have struggled since leaving the club

To be fair, he did look quite good in the 2014 world cup

Two of those have yet to be confirmed just like ours

I'd definitely keep but we need more options so that he can fall out of the side when he is in one of his out of form spells

It does seem to me that the ITK's in this thread were all correct in their own way: Arfurdent - Les saying that the club is considering other options, because that's what Les wanted. This then overinterpreted by the OP as Hughes out of the running. Telegraph - leak from Ralph or someone else on the board designed to be supportive to Hughes. EkonOkereke - dubious Kenyan back story but basically on the money that Les wanted to try to for another option. Les again talking up the possibility of other options, because that's what he wanted. Landford.Saints - basically confirms that Les tried to propose an alternative but it was rejected by the board. But this time the tone is a little different because its Ralph or other board member shutting down any possibility that someone else would have been chosen. Huffton - confirms there has been a power struggle behind the scenes

I think one of our biggest problems has been that while embedding a football philosophy through the club is a good thing, ours got outdated. Possession football and 4-2-3-1 has been overtaken a bit by counter attacking football and 5 at the back, and sometimes the manager needs to power to be able to change that if things aren't working on the pitch. So more autonomy for the manager in terms of the style of play and formation is all good. Power over transfers less so. But surely the board will have seen our track record of manager-led signings and not given carte blanche on that front - one can only hope

Best of both please

Cortese did a good job of creating a positive vision for the club, where everyone believed we were going to keep progressing up and up, players were willing to stay with us for the ride and we had the funds to outspend those around us in the table. But there came a point where Kat said she wasn't going to provide the funds to take us to the next level (above about 6th really) and so that vision became unsustainable. The vision for the club had to change and the best way to get players in that were above our natural level was the stepping stone strategy