verlaine1979

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.

Is that a 4-2-2-2?

Moi ruined that attack twice in the same move. Talent.

Balogun only got 3 for Middlesbrough last season, and is now outscoring MBappe in Ligue 1. Not saying Tella is in that class, and he's 2 years older, but he could just be a relatively late bloomer finally kicking on. What's not in dispute is that he already has more technically decent finishes in his account this season than all our strikers combined.

That's not how managers build careers. Once you step up a level, you do everything in your power to avoid going back down to where you came from. And if Potter gets sacked, he'll have at least a year or more on full salary to wait for an appropriate job to come up at somewhere like Spurs or Arsenal when Arteta gets poached. It's the same reason Tuchel was never, ever coming to us after managing Dortmund. Lo and behold, he managed to resist the allure of mid-to-lower-table Premier League and took over at PSG.

I want to know how the fuck he passed the interview. You only have to listen to him repeat the same empty phrases for a few minutes to realise that there's literally no understanding of the game in there - all he talks about is attitude. The days when blood and thunder was enough to consistently win matches is so far behind us that half the Saint Mary's crowd probably weren't born when that was the case. I'm all for trying to use data to gain an advantage, but the quants clearly shit the bed here - the multiplying effect of money in the PL is so massive that it makes any kind of linear points/spend comparison with lower leagues utterly pointless. That should've been the first clue. Then a two minute chat about how he thinks football games are won and lost should've been enough to send him on his way.

It was a cup game they gave only the slightest of shits about. And they still had the chances to bury us (as our old friend xG pointed out at the time).

Sterling I can see. Ronaldinho? Not even a little.

So you're saying that selling Targett has probably been the single most damaging event in the club's recent history? Hard to disagree...

Are you having more luck trying to make "Jonesy" happen?

Hah maybe time to revisit the debate about the xG from the City game. We're a Djenepo worldy and a rare Haaland miss away from a conversation about Jones with no fond memories at all. With some new managers you can see what they're trying to do and it makes sense to give them time until things click. I've no idea what Jones has been trying to do for the past three months, other than attempting to turn Che into a target man and Lyanco into Ronald Koeman. The team has no shape, because we change it three or four times a game. The lineup has no consistency because he makes bonkers changes in search of his fabled aggression and front-footedness. And we have no clue how to build attacks as our passing and movement in possession have gotten worse, which is staggering as we were dire to begin with. There's nothing to click here, so no point in waiting.

Nobody seemed to have a clue what they were meant to be doing last night. Now we've got the new players in, can we just settle on 4-2-3-1 with Alcaraz in the middle of the attacking three? That's where he looked positive in his previous cameos, trying to burst through the middle and get into the box.

I assume the handful of people who STILL bang on about Lemina not putting a shift in during the semifinal against Chelsea in 2018 will be similarly outraged at the crass incompetence of Jones(y) in picking such a shite lineup and formation? No? Does chewing your nails and being Welsh get you some kind of free pass that isn't available to Gabonese midfielders?

Bree, lol.

Rumours are we agreed fees for Gakpo and Ramos, but didn't agree personal terms with either. Suspect we're about to see the same happen with Vitinha. In fact, didn't Gakpo downplay the possibility that he was ever going to sign for us to the extent that he only mentioned Leeds having been in for him when he joined Liverpool?