Dusic

To be fair to the guy, its not his fault he only has one fit full back and still no Broja replacement! Not like he is selecting Djenepo over a host of other viable options.

Kicker and Sky Germany at the start of the summer.

Interesting that in the press conference this week when asked about strikers Ralph said lots of teams are looking for one and specifically mentioned Man Utd.

I think we would be looking for more of a right sided CB, as if we being someone in it would be to replace Stephens, Valery, Lyanco or Bednarek. Pretty sure Mings plays on the left side and Salisu is so bad on the ball I wouldn't want him playing on his weaker side. Aside from that, it wouldnt be a horrendous move and the kind of character that would certainly help.

Do get the feeling that if we don't win any of the league games in August - a distinct possibility - then he will do well to last much beyond then. Will be very interesting to see the selection and tactics on Saturday. Its not hard to work out the players who would be most disgruntled even if in the main we would happily get rid of most of them! Wonder if this kind of situation puts off potential signings?

Lets be honest, from here the window and a decent element of the season will be determined by the impact of the forward(s) that we sign. As it stands we are going to be well short of threat and goals, as the biggest threat has left the club and as yet not been replaced. You would imagine we have a prioritised list but need to wait to see which player we can get and that usually becomes more clear in the final couple of weeks of the window. It didn't appear from the forum or todays presser that there is anything certain or imminent at this point.

Just listened to it and felt actually Ralph came across well. Say what you like about him but he is genuine, cares about the club and obviously gets it in terms of where the club is and what the limits are. Obviously a difficult spell for him but would love it if he can turn itnaround and set us up for a solid season - which would be lower mid table.

A story involving two of our striker links:

We won't be signing Watkins (if they even sell him). Villa will want more than they paid two years ago and with subsequent good PL performance and England caps. He will be out of our price range and would likely have bigger clubs interested. Amazed some of you haven't noticed/heard/read/understood by now the numerous times that our transfer policy has been explained by Ralph/Semmens.

He is actually good? Also fairly sure I have read that he isn't exactly a model professional. Would be pretty underwhelmed by Dennis personally.

Should be an interesting listen. Why anyone would become hostile to Ralph though and ask him about resigning is beyond me. We may not always agree with his decisions but his commitment and passion about Saints and making us better is undeniable. He doesnt deserve to get abuse from Brian from Bitterne. Hopefully he will be asked about the balance between youth and experience, the rationale for 3CBs when they are the weakest individuals in the team, and why some players are continualy given chances when they have proven not to be up to it. Equally to Semmens...we have lost out best striker from last season, when will you give Ralph the attacking tools to make us more of a threat? Can we push to a £25-30m fee for the right forward? If not, why can almost everyone else?

Fairly possible that Ralph did want to start ABK but also wanted to avoid needing to start him up against Son and Kane in his first PL match. If he played and got rinsed as many PL CBs do then he nay have lost confidence. A home game vs Leeds is more suited. Also...this is the problem you get with signing too many young players. You can't expect them all to do a Livramento and Lavia and be one of your best players from day one. As with Broja, you have to pick the right time to introduce them. Easy to forget but the transfer policy is a club policy, not a Ralph one. I'm sure he would love a £30m, experienced CB with 100 PL games, but thats not what we do.

I've said many times but for a team that is poor and unreliable defensively, with a number of youngsters the last type of CB you need is a rash, inconsistent one who can't speak good English and makes poor decisions. Lyanco was a stupid signing that we will probably end up palming out on loan like Hoedt and Clasie. At least he was cheap, but a player like him should have been a loan with an option.

FWIW, I would go with this: Bazunu KWP--ABK--Salisu--Perraud -------JWP---Lavia------ -----Aribo----Armstrong -----Adams---Mara---- If Mara is not ready then I would play Redmond instead. He has played well with Adams before and I think we really need to have two strikers working in tandem whereas in the 4-3-3 it would just end up as 4-5-1 with an isolated forward. In that team everyone knows their jobs, we can press and we would create chances.

Trying to understand this... After spending £50m, its pretty likely we need to recoup some funds in order to spend more. We clearly aren't going to be getting big money offers for the likes of Bednarek, Lyanco, Stephens, Redmond, Djenepo, A.Armstrong, Walcott etc so perhaps the thinking is that by getting say £20m from Adams perhaps we have a couple of strikers we can bring in who the club think are better? Perhaps an approx £25m signing and a loan for example? We clearly can't have a net spend of upwards of £70m and obviously don't want to sell JWP or KWP. There is basically nobody else apart from Adams.

They have lots of PL experienced players and in Onana and McNeil have chucked £50m at two players. They might not be a brilliant side but hard to see them being in the bottom 3. This really is a season where we need all 3 promoted sides to be poor as most of the others are solid enough.

We need another CB but currently have 7 on the books. We need to be able to shift some (and shouldnt have signed Lyanco on a perm) before adding an 8th!

JWP isn't a #10 and our wide attacking midfielders don't score enough for this work unless we suddenly signed Harry Kane up front. All our best performances under Ralph have come with two strikers working together and when our full backs are a threat from deep combining with the midfield. Long and Ings, Ings and Adams, Brojs and Adams. Each of these partnerships are/were miles better than A.Armstrong and Aribo or S.Armstrong and Aribo will ever be. Amazed that after finally being more active in recruitment, Ralph has chosen this point to move away from his preferred formation and noy once tried it in pre season. If we wanted to play 5-3-2 we may as well have sacked him and hired Nuno Espirito Santo. Either go back to 4-2-2-2 which for all its flaws has shown it can work (and for which our recently recruited players seem ideal) or fire Ralph - rather than let him try to figure out a whole new system, that has been abject whenever tried, whilst we slip out of the PL.

We haven't got the players to play this system. Too many are in roles they aren't suited to and it totally takes away the threat we did have with a genuine front two. Hope Ralph isnt too stubborn to change. If he is then it will probably be the final nail in his coffin.

Find the reaction to pundits tipping us to get relegated rather odd. I would say its very likely we are in the bottom 6, and certainly very arguable that we will be in the relegation mix. Who do some you really think we will be finishing above? Even being optimistic I would say the only teams that can really be included are the promoted 3 plus Leeds, Everton and Brentford. Of those, Everton and Leeds have spent £30m on a player and Brentford have made decent signings under a very good manager. We may not like it, but us being in the bottom 3 is a very reasonable prediction.

Loan with option makes complete sense in that position. After the WC we might have 3 good players in that position who all want to play and if KWP doesn't go now or Jan he almost certainly will next summer so good opportunity to assess a loan player and low risk if it doesnt work out.

Colwill seemingly only going to Brighton on loan. Don't think it matters for us as if he is good then either Chelsea will keep him or he would be out of our budget anyway. Get the feeling after Broja that we aren't keen on loans without an option.

Change in approach from Ralph as he is normally quite open in talking about transfers in the media. Perhaps, £50m in, we have reached the stage where we need to sell to buy? Would not be unreasonable.

I like Adams, he has improved in each season and has the vastly under-appreciate attribute of robustness that has seen him miss very few games through injury. I also think that its totally unrealistic that we will spent £70m in this window without any major sales. So if we aren't selling JWP or KWP and nobody wants Bednarek or our fringe dross then maybe we have to sell Adams to be able to bring others in, and Ralph clearly doesn't think Adams is an x-factor striker (which lets face it he isn't). The biggest issue is that this season there aren't many genuine repegation candidates and selling him to Leeds or Forest, two teams who are, would be ludicrous unless either the fee is huge or we have an absolutely brilliant replacement lined up who is certainly a big upgrade. Both of these seem unlikely. Shame we can't get £10m for Adam Armstrong instead.

Without selling any of our CBs no chance we could have really gone for Colwill - we have already spent £50m without selling anyone and obviously still want to sign a striker. Good signing for Brighton though, and they are in a good cycle considering they will have generated £125m from White, Cucurella and Bissouma at an outlay of about 25m. Thats what we need to start doing.