verlaine1979

When we play Ralph's system with Djenepo and Walcott, both ostensible 10s spend the entire game hugging the touchline. That leaves all the central attacking threat to either come from JWP and Romeu (who are both too conservative to play as 10s) or from Adams dropping deep (which he's decent at, to give him his due, but I doubt he'd anyone's idea of a first choice attacking midfield). If Redmond hadn't already had his one good game for this half of the season, I'd say him and Elyounoussi seem more capable of coming narrow and finding the right pass. Then all of that aside, I still think our squad is far more suited to 4-2-3-1 than Ralphball as our first choice defensive midfielders are both so lacking in pace for both recovery and transition.

Adams showed a bit of strength at one point, but aside from that we got very little from our front two that half. Ings always seemed quite good at reading a defence and finding space as the game went on - hopefully Armstrong has that in his locker too.

When was the last time we actually looked purposeful on a break like that?

Romeu's touch so far has been dire. Looks a second off the required pace (and it isn't even a particularly hectic game).

The only place up for grabs would seem to be Walcott's, and as Redmond only seems to be able to play off the left, S Armstrong injured, it's either Moi, Tella or rejig the backline with KWP and move Livramento forward. Any of those three changes would be interesting to watch and leave good options if it doesn't work out. The main thing is just DROP THEO.

Didn't we have three senior keepers on the books as recently as 2018/19? Gunn was signed in July 2018 and became second choice behind McCarthy. Fraser didn't go out on loan until the start of the 2019 season. We've done it before, and I think the arguments that it's worth doing again now for a year are pretty strong (assuming the right candidate is available).

Their keeper likes his near post even less than Fraser.

That's a lovely finish.

I see Torreira is leaving Arsenal on loan, probably to Fiorentina. Could've been worth a punt at DM.

Watford woke up a bit in the final 20 minutes, but rarely threatened to actually score. Brighton had a *lot* more movement and interchange up front than I've seen from us in recent seasons.

Stuart Armstrong is a decent player, but I doubt fans of other teams are looking at him covetously. We paid a small fee and got a slightly better player than we paid for. He's been a relatively bright light in a very dull team, but that context is important.

Someone should tell those two that they aren't meant to be wingers.

Linked with quite a few players around the 15m mark, buy a player around the 6m mark. How much are loyalty payments to players in their last year of contract?

As someone else said up thread, it sounds like it's either a promising 17 y.o. investment LB, or no LB.

I'm assuming 5m for this kid won't put our CB recruitment in jeopardy. If it does, I absolutely take your point, but I can't believe the club won't scrape together enough for both given that Gunn and Lemina both brought in similar amounts.

We need players we can polish and sell after a few years, otherwise our financial model won't work. Promising scholars that bigger clubs are desperate to keep seems like as sane an investment strategy as any.

It's weird in retrospect how a relatively small amount of money enabled us to take the p*ss in both League 1 and the Championship by buying the best strikers in those respective leagues during the January window.

He doesn't have any money to put in. He was a paper billionaire when Lander's stock price was high, but now the whole company is only worth about double what Saints is worth, which is probably why he lost control of it to local government over there. Similarly to Markus and KL we've now had three owners in a row with substantially overestimated net worth.

I'd love to see heatmaps for Walcott and Djenepo from Saturday. Suspect they'd show both of them spending almost the entire game near their respective touchlines.

Only having any sort of creative threat from out wide is probably why so many teams find us easy to keep out once they've gone ahead.

Have you ever heard Terry interviewed? He's clearly a mouth-breathing moron. You might get the odd ex-pro, instinctive type making a decent fist of management, but it's no coincidence that most of the more successful managers of the past decade and counting have been pretty intelligent and articulate.

Would definitely be up for playing him on the right instead of Walcott. TW was an absolute passenger the entire game on Saturday, as he was through pretty much the last six months of last season. KWP and TL both have pace and close control to burn - could be a superb pairing.

Need to make changes now. We're nowhere in this half.

Walcott our only passenger this half.

Three out of four pundits on NBC predicting us to go down with Norwich and Watford.