CB Fry

So players just pass through a Turkish club but good enough to move to a top level Bundesliga/CL club and at no point contributes a single playing minute to the flagship club. Exactly the same as if Goztepe had no connection with us whatsoever. You realise how fucking pointless it all is, right?

If he is any good, he'll probably bugger off to a role in Germany and you'd be on here telling us how wonderful that is and how grateful we should be

Look what Sport Republic have done with their flagship lead club since they bought it as a ten-year established Premier League club. They're a bunch of fucking useless cunts so spare me the be patient for the long term benefits bullshit.

Who's the best manager in the Sport Republic multi-club corporation multiverse? There must be an absolute gem we can import into the SR Flagship club to fire us to promotion, surely.

Because hed signed a contract with Sports Republic only months before and we're the lead club but of course not they just flog him to Germany anyway like any other club would. Multi club model is fucking pointless and zero benefit to Southampton Football Club. Zero.

First season down after relegation from the Premier League is pretty apples/apples to be fair. If anything there should be a closer memory of what is needed in the Championship this time than when we came down after a decade in the Prem.

I've no idea why we should keep faith with Will Still when Will Still has kept no faith in two of his biggest and most expensive signings of the summer, Azaz and Fellows not even starting. He's obviously of his depth.

Except he hasn't failed everywhere he's managed and he clearly isn't failing now. His first season at Derby he was doing far better than Still is now (16 points) and without a squad of million pound signings. I didn't want Lampard in the summer but now it is pretty obvious he is a better impact manager than Will Still.

Martin was an absolute mediocrity at Swansea and an absolute mediocrity at MK Dons. The only club he has had any definable success at is Saints. Adkins didn't get the chance to demonstrate any "shortcomings" at Saints. We were 15th when we sacked him and Poch finished one place higher in 14th.

Yes the timings don't quite add up. We signed Egil for far more than double Chelsea paid for Flo (by the time Flo joined Chelsea, Egil had been with us a year or so). Flo just a player we maybe missed out on like lots of clubs do and we saw on players like Dennis Wise or Kevin Phillips.

Sure, she's got her knockers, but i think she's quite nice.

Feels like this entire thread is built on the premise that the club have the next Rooney/Walcott/Owen on their books but are wilfully refusing to play this world beating wonderkid because something something Sports Republic idiots something If he was ready for the first team he'd be in the squad. Maybe he's just scoring lots of goals for the kids teams like billions of other young players before him and billions of young kids yet to come.

Still not sure where you're getting "not a massive outlay" from. This summer only Ipswich and Wrexham (and us) spent more than his fee on an individual player. Downs is about 12th in fees paid for any player in the whole league. His fee is more than half the league clubs paid out in total for all their signings this summer. I don't know why you are pretending otherwise.

Seven million quid is fucking loads in the Championship. We are two failed promotion attempts away from being barely able to pay that kind of money for players ever again.

It doesn't take much imagination to envisage the righteous indignation of the exactly same poster in the summer berating people for writing off a player before he'd even kicked a ball for us. But apparently that's what we should have done.

You do realise it is up to the club scouting and recruitment team to buy players that can contribute to the team, with goals and performances? You do understand that? What anyone on this forum said or didn't say in July when we bought him is utterly irrelevant. Downs has proven to be an appalling purchase for what the club and team needed now, this season. You using it to try and score points against people on this forum says more about you than anyone else.

He's got another job in him for sure, probably the Championship again unless he wants to disappear to Belgium, Holland or Sweden or somewhere like Pardew/Cooper/McClaren/Parker did. Norwich is the obvious one but might become available too early. Anyway at least we can see he's not the forward thinking football revolutionary genius that the Martin disciples on here were making him out to be. Sorry lads, we're all thinking of you in this difficult time ❤️ 🫶 🙏

And here he is with his usual absolute horseshit. I dont think I have ever known a forum contributor to be so fucking wrong about everything every single time. It's a talent, I'll give you that.

Yes, fine. None of that means we need to start pretending that games against Bristol, Swansea and QPR are tough games because they are above us. Fuck that.

Every single element of that fact is absolutely insane.

Sorry we cant start saying " quite a tough run because of these clubs are above us", that's absolutely pathetic and a cop out. We have resources that all of those clubs would kill for. We are supposed to be challenging for promotion (preferably automatic). Your 3 wins would get us to 20 points from 15 games which would be miles off and wed be not much higher in the table than now. After 15 matches last time we had 27 points, the top 2 36 and 39.

Any games we win will because we do have good players and the league is mainly terrible. Win one game in five because we just will and we just limp on.

Basically we tread water with Still in charge until December/January/February when his replacement can try and charge us into sixth place so the season not completely wasted. Club are not going to sack him for months.

Have you been living under a rock? We know, Nuno is never going to pick him.

There's only two teams on the pitch and our form is better than theirs. But I get it. This is a pivotal game ahead of the break. Win it and we are respectably in the mix for top six or better especially as no one is absolutely running away with it yet. Will feel a lot better. Lose or draw and meh, it could be a long disappointing autumn.