Dusic

No particular reason for ghem to give a shit about red ball cricket though. We will be competitive in T20 and their priority will be Southern Capitals in Hundred.

The recruitment for a test county is just horrific. Compare our top 5 to almost every other county and it clearly isn't competitive. Time and time again they fail to address the top of the order with meaningful signings. Look at this side versus the one from two or three years back with Vince, a motivated Dawson, Barker, Abbas etc and its lightyears apart. Relegation inevitable and caused by awful cricket management.

I have written to the club about this, haven't heard anything as yet. Does anyone know of a way to get in touch with either of them assuming we get the go ahead?

Yeah but you have to name one of Bennett or Spedding, as is stated.

If we had to name one on the bench for the City semi final who would you go for? Bennett is 57 now so would probs only manage a short cameo, Spedding a decade younger but was dreadful although like Sam Hoskins made the transition from Southampton failure to Northampton legend. Will go for Bennett's experience for an occassion with potential to overwhelm.

Joined from Kings Lynn for £75k plus add ons in 1998 and didn't make an appearance. Unrealistic to expect the lad to have been a success at PL level IMO.

Was on the final shortlist last time and continues to do very well at Verl so imagine Tobi Strobl would be next in line if we do make a change.

He had no control over where the rebound was going and could easily have stopped the cross if he marshalled the defence more confidently.

For balance, the Hamburg #1 has played over 150 games for them and has seemingly been very good this season so not easy to remove him as a loan player. The other option was seemingly Patterson who has also not been deemed good enough by a top flight team - you won't find many starting keepers being loaned out in a Jan window. Lack of minutes is the concern rather than not becoming no1 at Hamburg - lets see what he has to offer before making sweeping judgements.

P5 W4 D1 L0 GF13 GA5 At home its largely been very good under Eckert so far playing with 3CBs - we have scored 3 in four of the five games - so not sure your point really holds up!

Yeah will be interesting to see what happens with our existing GKs, not least because Bazunu has 18mths left on his deal but replacing him at this stage surely puts a fork in him at Saints. I would imagine best for everyone if he moves on loan to keep playing and perhaps we could get a small fee for him in the summer? Assuming Baz does go then we need Long anyway to do what he was signed for and be a training aid so imagine he stays in that role as Norwich won't want him back either and he surely knew his role here when he signed. On Peretz, in this position was always going to be a loan and that pretty much dictates that it will be someone who isn't playing regularly. I've never seen him but he did well at a young age for a big club in Israel and enough for Bayern to sign him so obviously has something about him. Our team know the German market best so would have to think they have heard good things and feel he can come in and make an impact immediately.

I don't think we used any so could get two. Was seemingly part of the plan to avoid reliance on them for key players - good idea and now can use them for more specific short term again.

Most of our other signings of decent cost (Azaz, Jander, Scienza, Fellows) have been at worst decent (Azaz) or at best outstanding (Scienza). No club gets all of them right and considering Downs supposedly has multiple Bundesliga clubs interested then he obviously has something - he has just never really got going at Saints.

Yeah certainly seems keen on the 3CBs, but IMO it wasnt really a factor today and actually helped us completely dominate the ball. Far bigger issue was that when we regularly worked the ball wide to the space we had no targets to hit in the box - more personnel than tactical

Will comfortably get top 6 IMO. Why is relying on your attacking talent having moments of brilliance a bad thing?! Its the whole point of having them. Besides, a lot of our goals under Eckert have been good team player rather than some kind of unsustainable worldy.