verlaine1979

Chief among them, you can't sell yourself as a shop-window club to young players if you refuse to sell them when someone higher up the ladder tries to buy them.

Practical criminal negligence from his agent if he didn't get a release clause.

It's just bizarre to claim that the Championship is a higher level of football than Ligue 1. The Champ is inferior on pretty much every single metric.

Even Koeman had a fairly patchy CV before he came to us, didn't he? Wasn't there a disastrous spell in Spain with a club like Valencia?

Didn't Mourinho take over at Porto 8 years after Robson left?

Two straight balls through the middle of midfield and defense.

You definitely need to be able to spend 30m when the position demands it, but it's not as if teams with better scouting than ours haven't been finding gems in the 10-15m range in the last 2 years. I can't be bothered to do an extensive search, but both Semenyo and Kluivert cost B'mouth in that range in 2023, and Hudson-Odoi went to Forest for about 3m. Our scouting is just fucking awful and has been for years (with the very small exception of when we've been able to convince high-profile youth players like Tino and Lavia to join, which isn't the same at all). (Obviously Hudson-Odoi also a known quantity, but he was just so absurdly cheap I include him for comparison anyway)

Ah I thought his name first came up during the summer 22 window when we ended up with Mara and still no obvious target man.

Lol wasn't Gyokeres rated as not good enough for us by some on here as he only played for Coventry?

On the contrary. He's very obviously shit in the PL and always has been.

Our recruitment really has been utter shit for a decade. It's not as if the likes of Bmouth, Forest and Palace have outspent us. Their scouts just seem to have clocked that you can't really make it in the PL without both strength and pace. Those are table stakes, and anyone who doesn't have them needs exceptional technique to make up for it.

Anyone got a clue why Archer never seems to get much of a look in at the moment? I can't think of a single instance where I'd want Armstrong on the pitch of he was available to come in instead.

Barely had a kick since the 20th minute. Getting absolutely rolled.

Lol, yup, Van Gaal told Gakpo he was already better than us and Leeds, and so it proved - quickly. Didn't he score a hattrick in the game when we were all waiting to see if he'd sign after full time? I've seen the Saints PR machine in action too many times to be taken in by those kinds of rumours. It'll be a long, long time before we're anywhere close to taking PSV or Benfica's best players off their hands.

Those would be the players who ended up at Liverpool and PSG within a window of us declaring our interest? That Gakpo and Ramos?

I'd rather watch talented mercenaries than shit that bleeds red and white.

When fit, he's a better player than either Bednarek (who we should've shit-canned seasons ago) and Wood (who has improved of late, but from a pretty ropey base).

I disagree. I don't see us taking up the positions or showing the kind of movement that would have us looking like a Pep team if we had better players. Better players would certainly make Martin look better, but mostly because better players look for the ball and know how to position themselves to find it. He's not a master tactician undermined by the quality of players available to him. He's an extremely limited poser who has latched on to maintaining possession as his only footballing ideal, but doesn't actually have any clue how to progress the ball up the pitch when we've got it.

There's no way SR bought us as a premier league club, saw us relegated with one of the biggest budgets in the Championship, and thought "you know what, we should stay down here for a couple of seasons to get our bearings". It's fucking moronic.

That's as bad as I've ever seen at this level.

It sounds like you're trying to argue that our strategy has now evolved into "get the ball to Dibling or Fernandes asap" - which bears no resemblance to what we actually do with possession (though being in the middle does mean Fernandes sees more of it than Dibling). US commentators on Friday were even lamenting how rarely Dibling got the ball second half.

Based on how rarely Dibling's runs seem to trigger any sort of organised surge of support, I'm pretty confident that when he takes on 3 players and muscles through he's doing it on instinct rather than instruction. The idea that Martin's strategy basically amounts to "hey, 99 times out of 100 we'll piss about with it at the back and never get over the half way line, but then twice a game we'll let our 18 year old have a run with it" is asinine. We're a shit passing team that has a rogue teenager who made himself undroppable early in the season.

I take it we've all noticed that we only look decent when Dibling takes on two or three players and forces our play up the pitch. Which isn't exactly part of the "patient passing moves opponents out of position" strategy.

He did, he stuck out his leg to try and either knock it or move it on with his heel.

Armstrong was miles off. Had no business trying to flick it.