SaintlyAnd

Isn’t there some rule about not being able to play for three teams in a season? I think he played in the cup for Villa, so he can’t go anywhere else in Jan. Guess he’s stuck getting paid loads just to train.

The EFL insist its read in 30 seconds!

Just read the 40-something pages. One thing I didn’t understand about the punishment was section 114 where they state “A Regulatory Commission is not entitled to include a ‘deterrent element’”. Was this a dig at the EFL? Back in June the EFL commission said that a lesser sporting penalty might be a risk worth taking and that a fine might encourage other clubs to cheat. Therefore, deterrence clearly influenced the severity of the sanction. It’s probably me not understanding things but it feels something a bit off.

It is either complete incompetence or pure arrogance by SR in so many things they do.

My guess is they spend a lot of time wanking so have gone blind

That happens to me too!!

Looking forward to the post match comments from Eckert about how there were good things (there weren’t) and bad things that we’ll work on. But see more of the same next time out. We really need to be playing the ball into the box faster and with players making runs, but its so slow and predictable, and relying on individual moments like today.

Affengruber translates to Monkey Pit

Really need to get the tempo and speed of play up. Its not a big surprise that goals come when we play fast, one-touch passes forward and through defences rather than pumping in crosses. We have the quality to play that way with Azaz, Leo, Dobbin, Matsuki and Cyle/Divin on the end. And I don’t think the right side is working.

Was thinking the same. No intensity, walking pace, pass backwards. They just don’t look happy or motivated.

If he can play full-back then we can have Wood just inside Anel

Playing Scienza central up with Larin ended up like a 442 - he was 10/15 yards higher up than Azaz plays. Led to our two CMs being all over the place and huge spaces between defence and midfield. Then we had no ability (and zero intensity) to play through Watford pressing and chasing, and led to our mistakes. Would love a centre defender who wins every header and defend above all else. Ours don’t.

Well that was shite. Zero intensity on or off the ball. Defenders running away from the ball, lazy passing and cannot handle Watford’s pressure. Huge spaces between our midfield and defence that Watford just walk into. Not a fan of Dobbin on the left - far better central.

100% this. Our recruitment team (analysts and scouts) had to go from working for one club’s needs to multiple clubs and needing different profiles of players. It was chaotic for a while.

I’ve spent a lot of this week feeling so angry and down about what happened. With people in our club and in particular SR. For my own sanity I tried formulating my thoughts on the last few years and how its built up to this. Appreciate its a long read, but was cathartic for me to gather together frustrations. https://saintsstuff.substack.com/p/too-smart-to-do-the-basics-a-view

My gut feel based on all that is I can imagine the clubs internal investigation saying this was something done by a couple of analysts and they’ll be disciplined. So not the lone wolf thing, but also not the everyone-complicit thing.

Some bits from a chat this evening with a friend who was an analyst for various teams over the last few years, his take on things and what I can remember he said (I may paraphrase)… - “observing” other teams training is very common and easy outside the EPL - the 72 hour rule is something no-one worries about - a lot of analysts know each other (or at least know of each other) across teams as they move around a lot, so the “observing” is generally tolerated as a lot of teams do it - he said something about it helps them in their careers not to say anything as it benefits them all to do it (his words were “rite of passage as an analyst”) and impress people with their work (still not sure I understood that part) - its very unlikely the coaches/manager are involved in getting analysts to do this and break rules. He said the manager could be aware it probably happens but a junior analyst/intern would be told what to do from within the analysis department, and then turn that data/information into what the coaches want to know about. I’m sure there were some other points but the above were the interesting points. He said he feels for the intern as he’s getting hung out for something thats very common.

I think there’ll be more articles like this (no evidence but stirring things up) between now and the game. Boro leaking bits to the newspapers and trying to destabilise Saints.

Am I right in thinking he’s beaten more Premier League teams than any of our actual Premier League managers since Ralph? (Selles, Jones, Martin, Rusk, Juric)

I got told very similar a year ago ( by a friend who used to work in analysis at the club about 7 years ago and still knows people there). He said SRs move to scouting for the whole group led to so much confusion, plus undermined and frustrated a lot of people and it took years to get them functioning. In the meantime Ankersson went off by himself bringing in Onuachu, Sulemana (plus someone else I don’t remember) based on him knowing them from Denmark while criticising the recruitment team for poor recruitment! I also had one interaction through work with our analysis team during the season we were relegated under Selles. I used to meet with analysts from lots of clubs and the most laughable experience was with Saints. And I was really impressed with Bournemouth and the work they do.

I got told this evening by a friend in Germany (who works in football) we’re trying hard for Scienza but he’s waiting as he wants Bundesliga or Premier League team.

Maybe we’re all wrong and FM is reality and what we have to endure at St Marys is some bug-ridden shit simulation. It would explain quite a bit.

I merely implied the real transfer process is somewhat more complex than FM. I was not being dismissive of it. I have played it and loved it in many of its forms over years. It’s a game. I mean I won the Premier League as Southampton - it’s clearly not real. But seriously I know the people working at SI building out their software to sell their data to clubs, so I have no intention of disrespecting them and their work.

Given the uncertainty over many players who may leave, there is mountains to do within the club. Continue identifying targets, analysis and research into them, find out which players might be interested in joining, speak with agents to see if it financially fits, enquire to clubs to see if they may sell, convince players to wait for us. Internally they will be doing shit loads right now. We probably have the highest risk in the league for number of departures, so I’d suggest our recruitment folk are under a ton of pressure (remember they also do 3x the work to bring in players for the other SR teams). Replacing players isn’t like in FM, its a big process and overhead. And we all know most transfers hit in the last week/days of the window. We’re going to struggle to replace 5, 6, 7 players in the last few days and get anyone decent. Or we could just panic like Ras did with Onuachu, Sulemana, the Croatian lad and someone else if I remember right. None of them were scouted and Ras pissed off a lot of people within the club by going off by himself and its had a long impact on the club.