verlaine1979

Our midfield is too slow to get close enough to the ball to put in a tackle.

Flowers, Ruddock, Le Tissier, Rod Wallace and Shearer - that's got to be a couple of hundred million at today's prices.

More likely that he believed/assumed that anyone who read his coaching manual would have everything they needed to do the job.

You're being pretty obtuse. Regardless of how good or big Celtic are, the standard of teams Elyounoussi is performing against is substantially lower.

I hate to break it to you, but we're really not one of the best teams at anything any more.

Eh, it's generous calling his Liverpool, Spurs and Wolves goals the result of pressing. None of those were a concerted team press that turned over possession - the first two were plain old charge-the-goalie and hope moments, while the Wolves goal was the result of a nothing clearance played under zero pressure and a hopeful header forward from Hoj that the defender unaccountably missed. He didn't miss his clearance because of our pressing - it was just a plain, unforced error. If we're going to rely on the sum total of gifts and worldies from Djenepo to get us over the line this year, then were f*cked.

Harsh, but spot on.

There might be strife between the two of them, but it's much more likely to be to do with the obligation to buy KL's 20% that has apparently just kicked in. If Gao made some contractually mandated commitment to invest funds at the time of the purchase (which it would have to be for KL to try and enforce it) a) why wasn't any mention of this made at the time to mollify fans worried about the new owner, and b) why did club mouthpieces like Krueger immediately start talking about no change in strategy and being self-sustaining at the fans forum and in interviews?

This is definitely true, which is why the start of the season is worrying. Sure. we're not in the relegation zone yet, and we have played some tough teams. But on the performances so far across both defence and attack, I'd say we're definitely within the margin of error where we could easily lose those two or three games that typically make all the difference and go down.

Eh, does anyone actually consider winning the Championship as silverware?

Back in July the Guardian suggested that the option/obligation to buy KL's 20% was about to kick in. Surely the timing is not a coincidence if rumours of strife between them have only emerged since then. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2019/jul/22/southampton-continue-to-invest-in-youth-after-gao-jishengs-boardroom-reshuffle

Since it now seems certain that Markus wasn't anywhere close to being a billionaire, he probably couldn't have afforded for the club to be anything other than self-financing once it reached Premier League level. Either way, it's irrelevant - if the club had been treading water like this for the past three years with Markus at the helm, do you think we wouldn't be having these same conversations about investment?

Being self-sustaining might win you plaudits for economic discipline, but it's a big impediment if other teams have owners who can chip in when required (don't bring up FFP - it doesn't stop owners making modest annual contributions).

I suspect that of our established players (i.e. not including Djenepo, Danso and Adams) the only player we have that most rival fans would definitely put in their first team is Redmond, with Sheffield United and Newcastle fans probably persuadable on Ings. I suppose a couple of others might also consider Romeu and Bertrand, but they're certainly not shoo-ins.

Eh? Hoj has played for his country more than 20 times - JWP has made 2 cameos for England, two years apart.

Do the top clubs still want their own league? I assumed they'd realised it was a bit like the Matrix, and if you remove hope of promotion from the wider football population, it could end up destroying the whole ecosystem.

This - Tadic wasn't fast, but was excellent at shifting balance and had enough acceleration from there to create space for himself. It's like the scouts looked at Tadic and the lesson they took from him was that you don't need pace to thrive in the PL. Sure, but you'd better have something else that makes up for it, and Elyounoussi doesn't have anything.

Bickering aside, the problem with Elyounoussi is that any scout watching him for five minutes should have been able to tell that he's got absolutely no acceleration or top-line pace. If a player has all the attributes to succeed and doesn't work out (Boufal, Lemina, Hoedt might fall into this category) then fair enough - those are the breaks where you're trying to game the market. When someone fails because of physical characteristics that are obvious within the first few minutes of his debut, then a bit of finger-pointing is probably warranted (especially if you boast about having scouted the aforementioned player for six sodding years before signing).

He did almost get his leg snapped off against Brighton, so I'm hoping (as with Bertrard) that RH has just been super cautious in bringing him back. That doesn't explain why both him and RB have been unused subs recently though, as fullback generally isn't a position where you risk someone on the bench in the hope that they'll give you a game-changing ten minutes late on.

I think it's because if he hadn't been such a pathetic noodle when challenging with Kane for the spurs clearance, that counter-attack would never have gotten started. Bednarek was at fault later in the passage of play, sure, but this is yet another instance of Vestergaard showing zero strength, so worth noting.

Was just thinking that - a lot of them don't pass so much as hand it on.

When you 'match' a better team for 10 or 15 minutes, and then they start to roll you over, as Spurs did here leading up to their goal - do you think it's because we started unusually well or because they started slowly?

Vest got beaten so easily in the air for the turnover on that goal. He interviews well, but is just so weak on the field.

Eh, if we gift any of their forwards the kind of chances we've been giving up over the last three games, a lot of this cautious optimism is going to prove misplaced pretty quickly.

I thought this too - first 25 minutes or so, Yoshida looked very shaky indeed, with a couple of ropey passes and instances of poor control.