aintforever

I think the most important thing is what Gao decides to do, the quality of manager we get depends entirely on what our financial situation is like and how much Gao is prepared to gamble/invest to get back up. We know very little about the owners and even less about their intentions - if he just decides to asset strip to try and repay his loan we could well end up like Pompey.

I think the atmosphere is going to turn a bit nasty for this one. I expect it will be fine until the second or third Spurs goal then I can see the crowd getting pretty hostile towards the owners, board and manager.

This, I think they actually believe their own PR bull****. Deluded from the top down.

Let’s hope it’s something serious.

Noah should shut the **** up. Having a rich mummy doesn’t give you any right to tell us what to say.

Stephens and Yoshida are OK as backup but we definitely need a replacement for VVD. I don’t expect the club will bother though.

Impossible to say, will totally depend on our financial situation and Mr Gao.

They are bound to have meetings discussing it as it is quite likely now that we’re going down. I expect it will just be to discuss job losses in unimportant departments like marketing. It doesn’t mean the players have accepted it is inevitable.

It tends to be a sign of a good manager when the team improves second half, we do the opposite. If we can’t see out a two goal lead against that shower of ****e what hope do we have?

Get in!! JWP is a ****ing goal machine

No goal threat there at all, dropping Boufal is ****ing nuts, he’s easily our most creative player - I would build the team around him not drop him. Oh well, the negative cloud has long gone, the clown has no excuses now.

Nah, Stephens was already part of the squad when Fonte was here.

I thought Hoedt was Fonte's replacement?

Sounds to me like they are obsessed about being seen as a model club with the perfect system and have forgotten the fact that the most important person is always the manager - get that wrong and a club the size of Southampton will always be in a relegation fight.

But with a guaranteed income of £70mill (Minus Celtics cut/agents fees of course) coming in it can't be that hard to finance a decent amount of cash up front for a signing. Either from the bank, cash in the club's account, or god forbid some actual investment from Mr "next level" Gao?

Won't happen because he will probably want wages or something.

But you don't need £75mill sat in the bank to make £75mill worth of transfers - you pay in instalments.

He doesn't want a pay cut? - that says he's a normal human being.

This one does feel like the first proper relegation 6 pointer - with us touching cloth down at the bottom. The sort of game in years gone by were we would put up a right battle and Le Tiss would nick a winner. Usually a draw would be a decent result away from home but with our run in anything other than a win is ****. Saturday will go a long way to showing wether we are up for the scrap or not.

Has to be Camera’s but Beattie’s opener in the 2-0 v the Skates must be close. It had been 16 years since the last derby and the atmosphere was electric that night.

I dunno, I remember thinking it was a pretty lame effort last time.

We need to accept the fact that we will have to pay over the odds for anyone. Everyone know's we have the VVD cash and January is always more expensive anyway. If we try and penny pinch we will go down.

If you think that atmosphere was toxic you obviously were not around during the Branfoot days. There was a bit of booing at the end and a few chanting at the back of the Northam. I would describe the atmosphere as 'bored' or 'displeased'. Certainly a million miles from toxic. I think MLT wrote a piece just after he was sacked which hinted at the reason. Puel met with the board in June and they wanted him to change the playing style, Puel didn't and thats why he left. Sacking him was obviously a mistake but the atmosphere in the ground would not have been a major factor.

Would probably be a massive, expensive disaster but **** it, at least he will liven things up a bit.

We obviously needed more options up front, we couldn't score for toffee last season yet all we did over the summer was sell Jay Rod.