CB Fry

We're seven points behind Arsenal so we should be targeting catching them, then.

Honestly who gives a flying fuck what Fulham do. They can win ten nil as far as I'm concerned, its makes no difference to us.

No it isn't.

Or, he had one little hot streak last season but has subsequently regressed to his standard level which is broadly ineffective. I liked him at the beginning and his run during that first lockdown was very satisfying but it's pretty clear he is not first choice Premier League standard. I don't agree with those who say he's clearly better than Long. He's not better than Long was for us at the same kind of age. He’s barely better than Long is now at present. I remain hopeful he can find some form again but this relies on the team being better and Ings scoring again. Our Che himself is not going to be the catalyst of any revival, but he might benefit as a passenger of it.

My realistic target for Ralph to achieve is to perform better than the 41 points achieved by Dave Jones. Those 41 points were achieved in Dave's second, terrible, 98/99 season. Not his successful Kevin Davies inspired first season: that was 48 points: I think that's pretty gone now, as is Puel's 46. So if he does pick up a few wins, which I fully expect him too, let's all not switch back to "he's the messiah" mode. We are very much in the midst of "average Premier League managers of Southampton" territory.

So yesterday Glasgow/Heisingberg comes back after more than a year. And today the appearance of this FORUMS.....greatest EVER....swivel-eyed lunatic ranting away like he did five years ago when he posted last. With CAPS LOCK and.....DOTS......just like THE....old DAYS You can tell we're right in the shit when these nutcases resurface.

He's got his own backroom team, and he's been here long enough with enough credit in the bank to have binned off (say) Kelvin if he'd really wanted to by now. The backroom/upstairs arrangements haven't changed since we were the best team in the world in the calendar year 2020(tm). So I don't think it’s a root cause.

We've already had a pointless diversion into Puel for 475 posts. We don't need the same diversion into Reed. The point is that post was ridiculously loaded and ignored facts, and if nothing else it is far too early to say that our player recruitment is now a undisputed success where previously it was a disaster. Che Adams and Djenepo are being presented as wonderful success story entirely because they weren’t signed by Reed. They're as patchy and average as any typical signing we've made over our late-period Premier League tenure. They're certainly not significantly better than Armstrong, Romeu, Boufal or Lemina.

Yes we are going to stay up.

We didn't deserve a point from that because we created pretty much nothing. All that happened is Everton pissed away the opportunity to beat us more easily.

We are never ever ever ever going to score.

It's times like this that we miss Shane Long.

Propaganda football.

Injustice Injustice Injustice etc etc etc thats why we lost four nil.

It's not a line up that screams "keep it tight and see if we can nick one from the scraps" which is the approach I would have gone for. Instead we've gone for all out attack, leave loads of gaps, concede multiple goals but hang the whole defeat on some refereeing or VAR injustice giving the manager and team a lovely little get out of jail card.

...

Redmond will be playing CM, mate. Ralph reads this forum.

You realise the post I quoted referenced a story about a player with a year left on his contract?

You could, of course, look at this in a different way. If Blackburn can ask for that much for a Championship level nobody with one year left, then imagine how much we can get for Ings.

The "Reed era" conveniently began in 2015, I see. And you singled out Juanmi as a major signing of that season and not, er, current first team regular Oriol Romeu. We also signed Charlie Austin who had more impact than Che Adams and Theo. And Cedric who splits opinion but still played several seasons for us as a first team regular. But yeah, Juanmi. Djnepo and Adams have no more been a success than Hojberg Gabbiadini and Boufal were. Last week was the first time since Sheffield United away in his first season that I thought Djnepo was anything other than aimless and ineffective. Salisu and Diallo haven't done a lot yet so early to claim too much but signs look okay. Were always promised some financial benefits when that dead weight is gone (Ely and Hoedt etc) but we'll see. Let's hope so.

We're still talking about "adapting to the Premier League" for a manager in his job since December 2018?

One draw and seven defeats in eight matches ought to explain it.

Absolutely - that afternoon in that pub garden before the cup final really was fantastic. Great memories, great day. Such a shame if we get to the FA Cup semi and it's an empty flipping ground.

Glad to see that Les Reed is to blame for us not having enough full backs in the 20-21 season.

That last ditch saving tackle and season-ending knock in the same match.