verlaine1979

Not entirely convinced that anyone will offer what we want for him yet. He had a few injuries last season, and while he looked several steps above anything we've had for a long while, he didn't dominate games so much as glide through them doing the intricate stuff well. I suppose Chelsea are really the only team likely to gamble on paying what we want, even though he's still quite a way off the standard of a prime Kante/Fabinho/Casemiro etc.

Our attack has been overdependent on the full backs for about the last five seasons. It often seems to be literally the only idea we have about where to move the ball in open play.

Semmens did not get to choose who his boss sold the club to.

Bah

We didn't lose out on Gakpo and Ramos because of poor negotiation. We lost out on them because, rightly, they both concluded they were already better than us. The clue there is in the fact that Gakpo got bought by Liverpool five months later and Ramos is already among the most sought after strikers in Europe after lighting up the Champion's League and World Cup. The failure of management was in not targeting realistic options and being left with nothing at the end of the summer window and Tall Paul at the last minute of the January window. We've been shit for three or four years - it was absurd arrogance to assume that the lure of the PL alone would be enough.

I think it's more that JWP generally lacks the dynamism to receive the ball from our CBs, turn and drive into the middle. They have to pop it back and forth between them for a couple of exchanges to get us to the halfway line. Compare with McAllister & Caicedo yesterday, who took the ball off the Brighton CBs constantly and just scampered forward with it.

What's come out?

I want him gone, even if we can't find anyone better. Four seasons of watching him trundle about and hit easy chances at the keeper is enough for anyone.

There's no point talking about anyone "ditching" Ankerson. He's not an employee, he's a co-founder of the company of which Solak is the main investor. Solak could probably force him out/buy him out if it came to it, but that's a lot more complicated than just firing an employee.

Fab, Fornals, Lanzini, Cornet and Ings for sure. Downes would also get plenty of games for us, Emerson too.

It's amazing how few teams have discovered the magic of having a deliberately shite second striker. You'd think after the Ormerod/Beattie and Ings/Adams pairings, the hipsters would've cottoned on. You don't need finishers - you just need one player who can't finish and the other one will automatically score goals.

He has two obvious qualities: decent chest control and he can pass reasonably accurately most of the time (though his passing and control were both crap yesterday) As for the rest of the striker's toolkit, he's got no pace, no anticipation in the box, he's incredibly one-footed, and he can't finish unless he's leathering it as hard as possible in a straight line. As bad as anything we've had since the days of Ormerod.

He's shite, and his shiteness, along with that of many of our other attackers, is a huge contributing factor to us going down. He's managed five league goals this season. In terms of minutes per goal, it currently works out at about one every four-and-a-quarter games. The Championship is absolutely his level, but because he's played in the PL, someone will probably take a punt on him and find out how shit he is for themselves.

🙄 literally anyone who thinks they're good enough to stay in a top league will either be sold willingly or agitate to leave. We'll be left with the crap, the youth, and hopefully Tino as he hasn't played for a season. FFS, even Che Adams is going to think he's too good for us once we're relegated.

To be fair, the three from open play were basically hit from the six yard box with only the keeper to beat. Maybe if Adams wasn't always rocked back on his heels like an old farmer remembering a historic drought, he might have scored a few like that himself this season.

No *technique* at all.

Let's all just agree to turn the game off now and see what the store is in half an hour.

So Alcaraz not injured or anything?

Can Elyounoussi please just fuck off?

This 100% - the idea that Semmens somehow acted as gatekeeper is ludicrous. You want to buy a football club, you talk to the person that owns it. And if you're a Chinese national who rather desperately needs to sell an asset worth hundreds of millions, you don't let one of your distant employees make a decision like that for you. All of Semmens' comments about SR being the best fit after the sale are just spin. He was a marketer by trade before he got involved with saints, so he can't help marketing himself.

Sport Republic IS Ankerson. He's one of the founders of the company.

Unfortunately, there's no such thing as "pretty good until the final 3rd".

Doesn't seem to have the strength for this league at the moment. Schade, the 21 year old winger Brentford signed under similar circumstances in January (on loan, but with a record fee agreed for summer) is 6'1 and appears much better suited to the league. Several times he made trouble on our right wing because he was strong enough to hold off KWP while sprinting.

That last Perraud cross is a great illustration of Adams' poor positioning and movement in the box. Both the keeper and a CB were between him and the ball, but he made no move to try and get ahead of either of them. He just stuck with his position in the hope that somehow they'd both miss the ball and it would reach him, rather than moving towards the near post and finding space himself.

ABK the only one of our outfield players who doesn't look like a small child compared to their opponent.