Dusic

Know nothing of him but the article this is taken from says he was wanted by some of the top sides in Turkey after doing well last season. Also says its likely he will go out on loan next season, probably to France which makes sense as zero point signing him as a 3rd choice who will never play. Seeing as we own one senior keeper and there are even doubts over him, then signing a 25yo GK on a free transfer and low wages with a view to loaning him out to see how he develops seems pretty low risk and sensible to me. He may eventually come back as no2 keeper once McCarthy goes. Seems highly likely we will have McCarthy and Bazunu competing for no1 with Caballero as no3 and then his guy out on loan.

I think its just a fair reflection of the fact the league is strong. Of course the three promoted teams will start as favourites and as unknown quantities but aside from those the only teams we finished above last season are Everton whose squad massively underperformed and Leeds who have already bought a player for £30m this summer. Personally I find it extremely unlikely that the following will be relegated: West Ham, Wolves, Leicester, Newcastle, Villa That leaves: Brighton, Palace and Brentford who all had good seasons and will be confident with further additions that they won't be involved at the bottom. Summary: its entirely fair and IMO we are probably 5th favourites for the drop behind the promoted sides and possibly Brentford. We really need all the promoted teams to struggle because its hard to see any of the others getting less than 35 points. Having Burnley and Huddersfield in there next season would have been much better!

No way we are going to be spending what Burnley want for Pope. May as well have just kept Forster if we went down that route.

If we could get rid of Walcott, Djenepo and Elyounoussi that would surely give room for some good additions in the #10 role. But with a year left he isnt going to take a pay cut and a subsidised loan isnt really worth it for us.

Lots of people are saying we need "experience" but if you look at our best and most commonly selected team from last season you could make a good argument against that being an issue: Our best XI by age: 34 19, 23, 26, 25 30, 27, 30, 27 20, 25 Only Livramento is very inexperienced and he was one of our best players. Many are in the prime of their careers. The only area you could really point to is at CB. But Bednarek has over 100 PL games for Saints, 39 caps for Poland and has played in two Intl tournaments. Salisu has 70 games at La Liga or PL level under his belt. They aren't novices! Quality, and specifically depth of it is what we need. Not experience.

Garner will be much more difficult to sign now as Forest will clearly want him back. Agree O'Brien looked good. Leeds have nearly signed him a couple of times and are supposed to be back in for him. Colwill recovered well from the unfortunate OG. Kept the (over?) hyped Johnson to a non entity in the game. Worrall a typical Championship defender who got done every time in a wide position.

Personally haven't been impressed by Forest in the Bmth game, two playoff legs and this final. They have a couple of players above the level of the rest but they aren't packed with loads of quality. Clearly their defence has got them promoted but that will be tested much more next season - Huddersfield looked woeful going forward and Sheff Utd had midfielders up front due to injuries. Not a vintage year for the Championship.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/18717354/southamptom-morgan-gibbs-white-transfer-wolves/ Good player. Imagine will stay at Wolves.

Don't offer new deal. Sell for small fee if possible. If only takers are on loan then keep and let him go free next summer. Agreed?

So he should have become an U18 assistant coach instead of winning Ligue Un with Lille? Somewhat bizarre.

It might make sense if we do re-sign Caballero as 3rd choice and given there are question marks about McCarthy longer term. Signing a GK with further potential to improve and loaning him out for a season whilst we don't need him and seeing how he develops is not terrible logic. Clearly if true we would be signing a first team squad keeper also, but not a bad thing to also be thinking a little longer term and essentially with very low risk considering no fee and likely low wages. Might even be a small profit to be made even if he didnt end up playing for us.

Livramento and Broja were/are prospects and both were in our five best players of last season. Walcott is very experienced and added little. We need quality above anything else. These lads are among the top talents of their age in the country and are exactly the types we should be targeting, alongside a couple of more experienced players.

Cole Palmer is easily on a par with Livramento talent wise. He would be a good signing as a loan but I would say zero liklihood of a permanent move as very highly rated at City. Personally more keen on Bazunu than Dragowski - sounds like he has a higher ceiling. Also, "marquee signing" is a phrase that neess putting in the bin. Meaningless drivel.

Have to assume Ralph is happy with this too as I think he would have walked otherwise. He isn't stupid. He has worked within the RB setup and knows what good coaches look like (Rohl for example). He more than anyone would have known if Davis, Watson and Fleming were good or not. He was happy to take input from Rohl, and then after his departure has seemingly preferred to go it alone. That in itself is telling. Crocker has brought in some good coaches within the academy setup and also clearly knows the needs for modern coaches. You would imagine they can collectively pick well. As an aside, I find some of the disrespect towards Ralph pretty off. Whatever we may think about him tactically at times, its a fact he has kept us up in 4 seasons where investment has been limited and also clear that he genuinely cares and puts everything into the job, in a way not all managers do. I think he now needs backing over the summer, and then its up to him to deliver a decent start with a return to our more proactive style. He has earned that chance IMO. Can he take it? Time will tell.

Sacking all the staff or sacking Ralph? Surely that depends on their review and what they feel has caused our poor form? So its not really an either/or choice. Its entirely dependent upon what they perceive the problem to be.

Two years into a four year deal and I am still not sure if he is really good enough for the PL. Probably one of the most disappointing players this season. With Romeu he is ok, with JWP it just doesnt work and assuming JWP stays that doesnt bode well for Diallo. Massive season coming up for him...if he is even still at Saints.

Hypothetical but it seems quite likely Ings will move again as Gerrard prefers Watkins and they want to sign another striker too. Would you take Ings back for a reasonable fee? Reckon he would almost be too embarassed to return? Would be a bit annoying seeing him sign for someone like Brighton! Always feel like he is a player who needs to be playing 90mins every week to be at his best.

But the wage bill linkage is also indicative of squad depth, i.e you pay more so you have more players of a certain level of quality. In a one off game, with a week to prepare and with a full strength line up we can be good and can take points of those teams. But, especially in the 2nd half of the season those conditions rarely happen and we don't have the depth of quality to easily beat the teams supposedly worse than us, or compete with those better. You only have to look at the bench at Leicester. More than half either won't be here next season or shouldn't be. We are a team that drops massively in quality if we miss one or two starting XI players.

If a top 4 club genuinely come in for JWP then he would be mad not to go. Especially to Spurs where he would have a good chance of regular minutes. That said, to Saints he is clearly worth in the £50 - £60m bracket - would anyone really pay that for him?! If he did go it would need a monumental rebuild as his output is so high in various metrics - not least goals and assists.

As research has suggested, the biggest link to league position is spend on wages. As you can see here, our wage position (2021) is 14th and our final league position was 15th. In previous years its been our turn to defy the odds, as the likes of Brentford and Brighton did this season. Clearly our run since March is unacceptable, but ultimately we have finished about where our financial power says we should. Is it really realistic to expected that next season we should be finishing above any/many of the likes of Villa, Wolves, Leicester, Everton, West Ham or Newcastle? I think the answer to that is no given what they spend compared to us. The fact three of those teams are considering paying James Tarkowski over 100k a week highlights the gulf. So essentially we will be competing with Brighton (huge net spend since promotion to PL), Palace, Brentford and possibly Leeds, plus the three promoted teams. (Incidentally Leeds are already about to spend £28m on a player). Of course we all want to see progress, but so do other teams, and many of those actually spend to get that progress up the table. Questions: - Should we feel entitled to more than a lower mid table finish? - Is it a fair statement to say that a top 10 finish now is far, far harder than when we did it under Poch and Koeman? - Is it getting to a stage where the PL is largely too rich for us?

Sorry but he is obviously not as good as Salisu or Bednarek (even despite his drop off this season) and we all know Stephens isnt good enough but I don't see Lyanco is any better than him at all. It was a stupid signing, buying a backup player who can't speak English when we needed someone to put pressure on Salisu. By all accounts we picked him ahead of Worrall and I know who I would rather have now...not Lyanco.

He is easily the worst senior CB we have. And the one we signed most recently, which is stupid.

Good socials but awful player. Poor signing. Had all the red flags at the time: no English, in and out of a poor team, erratic playing style. For an extra £5m we could probably have signed Tosin Adarabioyo, so he was clearly a cheap option.

Cue JWP in August: "Yeah obviously I'm good friends with Frase and he only had good things to say about the club." 😉

Still have no idea why Saints and Hasenhuttl haven't dealt with his departure better. Obvious as soon as we signed up McCarthy that he wouldnt be offered anything with us. Why say he is injured when he is leaving as everyone knows anyway?