verlaine1979

Except he's a lightweight beanpole and is **** in the air. Vest rarely does more than loop the ball up in the air when he does succeed in getting his head on it.

So slow, so weak, so scared of the ball. So painful to watch.

Maybe, but you'd have to assume she did her due diligence over his finances (she was being advised by UBS or similar) so would know that a) the value of Lander was in the process of collapsing even as the negotiations were ongoing, and b) that Gao was having to finance the purchase with high-interest loans. Not sure how she could look at either of those situations and conclude that Gao was in a position to take the club forward in any meaningful sense.

As someone said above, their goal started with McCarthy botching a kick out. We were set up for it to go long, but he only managed to slice it around half way. Put us on the back foot immediately, and we weren't set to defend the simple through ball.

McCarthy's kicking is dreadful. The turnover leading the goal began with him slicing one less than half-way.

Credit where it's due - fantastic leap from Long

Brilliant free kick

Hope I eat my words before the end of the game, but Redmond really is gash - no pace and no ability to take it past his defender.

F-ing hell, how far down the pecking order has our marquee summer signing fallen that Long and Obafemi, neither of whom can reliably finish to save their lives, are comfortably ahead of him?

This is likely to be it - the motion smoothing setting on many TVs is input-specific.

Exactly - crowing about him now is just tempting fate with his fitness for the rest of the season. The fact that our likeliest saviour has dicey record with long-term injury isn't really something to celebrate.

You're probably right, but that doesn't stop it being absolutely mental to have 'undroppables' in a team that has had such a rubbish season. Twelve league games, 1 goal 0 assists and his best performance was a cameo as a sub in the cup against Pompey.

The irony of Steven Davis' biggest fanboy criticising JWP for being cautious in the pass and ineffective in the tackle. They're essentially the same player, only one scores the odd free kick. Give JWP Tadic, Pelle and Mane playing around him, and suddenly he'd be the metronomic glue sticking our team together.

This is all very underpants gnomes: Phase 1. Collect football clubs Phase 2. ??? Phase 3. VAST INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECT PROFIT!!!

I'm sure you realise this, but both Fonte and Lambert transfers were either record fees for League one, or very close to it.

Not a chance. You think she fought that hard to liquidate the largest part of her inheritance, only to lock up the vast majority of her capital in the same place a couple of years later? She supported Gao's legal appeal against the league's initial finding that he wasn't a fit and proper owner, despite her due diligence (undertaken by UBS) surely revealing that the person she was selling to was having to borrow the money to buy the club. Those are not the actions of someone who thought she was securing the club's legacy - they're the actions of someone who really wanted to get her hands on the best part of £300m. And I don't blame her really - if I inherited a baseball club that I didn't care about and that didn't make me any money, I'd be desperate to get rid of it too. But please enough with the amateur hour PR briefings - not a single one of them passes the most basic sniff test. Gao is potless, KL just wants to enforce the purchase of her remaining 20%, and we are in the sh*t with very few options.

Didn't some Pompey fans, I mean Paul Allen once say: "Southampton is a sleeping giant, a family-supported club with traditional values, and we see the value in taking the brand global."

Missed out on the top job at the FA, but not high enough profile to jump to a DOF job at a top club. Few years at Saints (assuming we somehow manage to avoid relegation) will pad his CV nicely.

Missed out on the top job at the FA, but not high enough profile to jump to a DOF job at a top club. Few years at Saints (assuming we somehow manage to avoid relegation) will pad his CV nicely.

We're averaging much less than a point per game at the moment. Probably best to leave talk about how we make other teams look bad for later in the season?

Persistent poor finishing is usually one of the most reliable predictors of relegated sides.

Got about as close as anyone else in the league to a Mitchell-esque streak of unearthed gems with Mahrez, Vardy and Kante. Everton wasn't great, but they tried to make a statement spending a lot of money very quickly, which hasn't worked that well for anyone of late. His track record is as good - or better - than we could've hoped for. Assuming he really is coming and isn't the backroom equivalent of Promes.

You'd think that those four, properly drilled, would be a pretty good starting point for a front press.

The weird fullback picks are clearly because RH's entire game plan relies on having wide defenders with enough of an engine to get up and down all game. Hence why Hoj/Armstrong/Danso get put there. Doesn't quite explain why Valery doesn't always play when fit and the only specialist RB, but I presume something about confidence/form/mentality that we're not privy to. As for the reference to Sheff Utd above. Correct, on simple transfer market valuation, our individual players are worth more than theirs. However, their squad has been selected for a specific game plan, whereas ours seems to have developed over the past couple of seasons with no design other than to buy the weakest, slowest players we can find. That is where the problem lies. We don't have the technique to play a passing/pressing game, and we don't have the strength and resilience to be an archetypal limited-but-hard-to-beat Dyche/Pulis side.

Is the Bayern job still open?