verlaine1979

As Tuchel has now proven twice, it does no harm to a manager to sit out for a year waiting for the right job to come along (and it's not as if most can't afford to with ease). Much more harmful to just immediately take whatever has been offered and risk a downturn in performance due to infrastructure problems at the club (even Mourinho's reputation is starting to get dinged a little by his failure at Man U). And it's not as if the likes of Klopp, Conte, Villas Boas, Mancini (and yes, even Mourinho) haven't been able to walk straight into the top clubs in the PL from the continent without serving any sort of apprenticeship at a mid-table team. It's clearly a myth that you need to serve and apprenticeship at a lower-PL club to get a job at a better one - in fact, if anything it was a huge negative for Moyes, who never managed to escape being thought of as a small club man - and who'd voluntarily sign up for an apprenticeship when they've already established themselves as a CEO?

Hang on, in what sense hasn't that been our model all the time? Trying to hold players to three years rather than two is simply a function of us starting to adopt five year contracts rather than four, and even then the VVD situation is probably a special case because the PR impact of it being Liverpool every single time was starting to undermine the club's attempts at branding. There has been no change in our recruitment model, just in the quality of its outputs, and for that the scouting group and transfer committee must take all the blame.

Even after a relative failure at PSG, Emery's stock is still way too high to come to Saints. Just like Tuchel, if he's smart he'll sit on his hands for as long as it takes for another big club to come knocking. Why risk genuine failure at a small club with limited resources? The list of managers with sufficient experience and profile to manage the top four in any of Europe's big leagues is very small (whether it should be is another question entirely) and as long as these people have sensible agents, we're never going to see them chancing their arm on two years at Saints as a stepping stone to the PL - they'll never need to.

I think the point about Stephens is that when he's up against anyone half good in the air, he loses almost every time. Sure, against a Bournemouth side whose strikers are selected more for pace that presence he'll mop up all day, but he's easily bullied by more physical players in a way that VVD in particular seldom was.

This is absolute balls. He's clearly an arrogant sort who is in the process of comprehensively burning his bridges with the club, but the one thing that always stood out to me was how aggressively (verging on recklessly) he always tried to get the ball back after he'd lost it. I'm not disputing that separate to that there were times when he just couldn't seem to be bothered with any aspect of the game, but I'd rate Boufal's commitment to getting the ball back after he's lost it has much higher than either Redmond or Tadic.

Was just saying this. His only trick is that little side drag, and it gets read every single time.

How does owning a provincial football club help your international business interests exactly? Sure, maybe if you buy a prestige club in a country like Italy where there's a slightly more forgiving attitude towards political corruption I can imagine it *might* do you a tiny bit of good, but even then I'm not sure the dots really connect. For some Chinese investors, clubs look a lot like status symbols or validation, but those have tended to be much larger acquisitions by groups with a great deal more wealth. By all accounts Gao struggled to raise the money to buy us, which doesn't really sound like the logical first step in a plan for international expansion. I think it far more likely that borrowing to buy income-rich sporting assets capable of paying off their own debt is a good way for rich Chinese to move money abroad.

Ignore me, we might still have needed a draw on the last day.

If we'd won today, a point against Swansea would've been enough to keep us ahead of them on GD barring a huge swing on the last day, no? Dropping those two points today hugely narrows our chances of survival.

Let's hope that doesn't feel quite as demoralising to the players as it does to the fans, otherwise Tuesday is going to be an f-ing nightmare.

Thing is, Lemina and Hojbjerg playing at their full potential in a well-coached side should be more than enough presence in the middle to give that team control of the ball.

He clearly thought he was coming to a mid/low level PL club where he'd be the main man. It didn't happen straight away, and he probably regretted the move almost immediately. It's a shame, as he's got the best first touch and technique of any player we've had here in the last decade, and as it happens, I don't really mind arrogant sods, but you really have to fault the scouting and recruitment. This is pretty much exactly what a friend in France said would happen - he told me Boufal was talented, but was an idiot with a terrible attitude. Unless you're committed to building your team around a player like that, you shouldn't buy them, and you certainly shouldn't break your transfer record for them. I suspect he'll go to a slightly bigger club than us (but not the top tier) and be a roaring success. Insofar as he's capable of playing with real pace and intensity, he's far more likely to make us regret his departure than Gaston ever was.

He goes up with his arms outstretched, Austin is backing into him and his head is pushed against Caballero's left arm, which seems to cause the keeper to lose the flight of the ball, meaning that he starts clutching it a bit lower down. It would've been lovely if it had been given, but I'm not seeing a huge injustice there. Once you make contact with the keeper as he's going up for a routine high catch, you get called for a foul. I'm sure there are a handful of times when this rule hasn't been consistently applied, which is frustrating, but the overwhelming majority of times the foul gets called regardless of who is playing, precisely because it's such an easy decision to make.

I'm 99% certain it would've been disallowed if it was going against us too. As I said, if the goalie is jumping with his arms raised, there's no legitimate way you can actually be contested the ball other than by hoping to subtly foul the keeper. That's why they're disallowed 99% of the time.

Not sure what the fuss is about. That goal would've been disallowed every day of the week. For a high ball like that, no player can reasonably hope to jump as high as a keeper can reach. Therefore, any player who backs up against the keeper when contesting such a ball can only be hoping to put the keeper off his catch. Whichever way you look at it, it isn't a genuine attemy to play the ball, and is thus a foul.

What was Hoedt trying to do there? At first I thought it was a push, but he actually seemed to be bending over deliberately holding his arms behind his back?

There's not a lot of pleasure in watching us these days, is there? Since the game is so dull, what was the last genuinely enjoyable period of play from us? I think probably the last 10-15 mins in the home game against Everton. Pretty much everything since then has been unremittingly grim viewing, win or lose.

Promises to be a very long afternoon if the pattern of the first ten minutes continues. Barely had a kick.

If Davis makes a decisive (positive) difference in this game, I'll happily take back everything bad I've ever said about him.

Whenever one of our midfield commits to carrying the ball forward a couple of yards before looking for a pass, we seem to create something. Whenever they do their standing-still-and-offloading routine, it ends up putting us under pressure. Just a slight uptick in bravery on the ball could make all the difference.

Struggling to keep hold of the ball for longer than about two passes out of defence. Feels like just a matter of time before Leicester score.

I think he described it as a rumour he'd heard. As above, he does have a slim connection to the club due to his stint commentating for south coast radio during the 90s.

He used to commentate on our games for radio solent back in the 90s didn't he, so wonder how clued in to the club he is?

Did anyone else hear Jim Proudfoot say during today's commentary that only a few of our players have relegation clauses?

Might be difficult for Gao to refinance his personal debt onto the club while our PL status is still in the balance.