Dusic

CB is the clearest of all. 1. CB 2. RB 3. CM All IMHO of course, Morph

I still feel he could make us into a decent PL side. Liked that he went back to his principles yesterday: mobile, aggressive pacy (where possible) lineup. He has strayed away from that, I think after understandably losing faith in out defenders so good to see a bit of a reset. Massive games to come before Christmas, need min of 7 points from the next 4.

We don't need him. Its probably the position we need the least.

This. Sign a decent CB and we can stay up. Don't and we are down.

Coach/Assistant presumably.

Return of 4-2-2-2? Suprised re Djenepo and Boufal but both have had long Intl trips.

Surely the only way he sells is if we stay in the PL? More important now than ever to stay up given the state of the club.

Walsh fits to this spec of a "Player Trading Expert". https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/17965856.southampton-look-appoint-player-trading-expert-ross-wilson-leaves-club-rangers/ If it is Walsh then he is an experienced hand which would probably benefit us in that specific role. He is 66 though and I would have thought we may look for someone younger. He also recruited Martyn Glover at Everton, who is now our Chief Scout - so some synergies there There has been a couple of good interviews with him recently on The Athletic - but no hint he was set to get back into a permanent role.

He has probably been speaking to Bertrand.

Loss to local coverage of the club, and thats a shame for fans. Solent aside there isn't really anyone who follows Saints specifically that has a good insight into what happens at the club and watches all our matches and has the ability to hold the club to account on certain things. Local journalism as a whole is dying which is a shame. Definitely a loss to TSP as well. Adam's insight will be very hard to replace.

Not really like for likes those options. Ultimately JWP doesn't really have any competition and I don't see that is RH's fault but more that the Academy lads like Slattery have regressed and the squad is weak in certain areas, like centre mid. Hasenhuttl is hamstrung by a **** defence which means we cant be as expansive as he would like.

Granted he hasnt been great this season, but do people actually believe that picking JWP is one of the main reasons for our poor league position? Madness if so. For a start there are the 5/6 behind him who are all more of a problem. Ive been a big knocker of JWP at times in his Saints career but its obvious to me that we are massively hamstrung by our defence (both in terms of defending and on the ball in setting up our play). We nearly always concede the first goal, cannot keep most teams to less than 2 goals let alone a clean sheet. That makes it very hard for the rest of the team. Thats far, far more of a problem than JWP. And that problem is almost entirely down to recruitment. If you want one single on field factor that will be the biggest single factor in relegating us then its our defence, by an absolute country mile.

Out of interest when you have bombed out Redmond (POTY), Hojbjerg (captain) and JWP (...) who would you be selecting instead? Isn't the whole point that RH doesn't have many options in certain positions, rather than he isn't very good? I mean...I wish he wouldn't built his decence around Yoshida, Vestergaard and Bednarek but I understand he needs to pick 11 players each week.

To break the cycle we need to keep Hasenhuttl and give him the tools to do his job. Is he a good Manager? Yes. If we get rid of him then we are just back in the firefighting cycle that in part has got us where we are. All the whispers suggest the club agree, which is good. If we go down this season, it won't be because Hasenhuttl is poor, it will be the result of a few years of poor recruitment that has left us with a defence of mostly players who are not PL standard - and the PL is ruthless at exposing players like that (see K. Davis, Hooiveld, Fox from the promotion team).

Crocker a great shout. Was linked with the FA Technical Director role before Reed got it. Knows our setup and also knows all the England youth players very well. I remember in Wallace's article he mentioned Saints wanting something similar to Brighton with Dan Ashworth - and this would be very similar. Dave Jones was also mentioned previously and could fit the ex Saints clue, but I don't see how he really qualifies for that role. Nigel Pearson another who came to mind, but I really hope not. Personally hope we go with the type of thing that usually works for us, i.e a Crocker type, rather than picking an ex Manager who "goes upstairs" because they need some cash and can't get a managerial role.

We need someone who has been successful in a football administration role not a recently failed Manager. Most of the best DoF types have not been Managers. Its a totally different skillset, experience and knowledge that is needed.

Not really a suprise. If we sign a CB we would have 7 senior CBs on our books.

Another CB mentioned: https://www.skysports.com/football/news/11700/11863312/southampton-offered-chance-to-sign-usa-defender-aaron-long

https://www.abola.pt/nnh/Noticias/Ver/815173 An actual link. Artur Jorge, 25yo CB from Vitoria, Portugal. Has caught Saints eye, as well as Championship clubs (insert punchline). No nothing of him, so not making a judgement, only to say that if we bring a CB in they simply have to be a player ready to go straight into the side and start every week.

Seeing as times are hard, I like this thread which features: - The merits of Lloyd James and Jake Thomson as they battle it out for the RB spot. - Calls for Kayne McLaggon to be given game time. - An idea that we should be picking Simon Gillett and Lee Holmes ahead of Adam Lallana, who is only good for cameos.

No worries. Buried in the Everton post math thread which was probably best left alone. Lets hope it is true anyway, Club in dire need of some good leaders at all levels. Will be interesting to see if its someone with knowledge of British football or not.

Manji

Or maybe he believed/understood they would back him and buy a CB as well as Djenepo and Adams. Clearly Ralph expected us to sign a good CB...and Danso was probably way down the list and not who RH thought would be the CB we signed at the start of the summer. We were linked with quite a few including Webster and Saliba, but presumably found it hard to do the deals for various reasons, mostly financial. I don't believe for one second that Ralph was happy that our CB signing ended up being Danso on deadline day...that clearly wasn't the plan.

Re JWP - who are the alternatives? Re transfers - that isn't his job. I'm sure he wanted us to do much more business but he can'y sign players himself.

He hasn't used that. But we do clearly have a lot of crap players, who should have been relegated the year Swansea imploded and nearly were last year. Ultimately, no Manager that Saints could attract could make this squad into a good PL team. The squad is flawed and lacking enough quality in certain areas. The squad is totally devoid of confidence having struggled for 3 years. The best chance we have is to keep Ralph, try and get a settled back four and sign one good CB in the window. If we do that still go down then IMO its a consequence of a **** owner, lack of vision and utterly dreadful transfer windows for the last 5 or 6. Not Ralph.