Supersubpuckett

He's on a season long scouting mission for his parent club

Might explain why a seemingly straight forward deal is taking so long - perhaps they're stalling or maybe the player is himself if he thinks his mate is going to get ditched. But yes, that's true - maybe the black box suggests he's worth it.

The Telegraph article reads to me that they have run out of patience with MP and are preparing to act. "Pellegrino’s position is now under considerable scrutiny and, while the club hierarchy are sympathetic to the difficulties he faced while Van Dijk was still in the dressing-room and evidently keen to leave, they are concerned by recent results......There is still faith in a wider model and no desire to turn towards a manager who might be perceived more as a quick fix, but the final two weeks of the transfer window are becoming critical" In other words, they've given him a few games to show that the VVD situation was making life difficult but results and performances haven't improved, therefore making it clear that poor old MP isn't the man for the job. They believe the overall approach and structure of the club works so wouldn't ordinarily entertain getting in a 'survival specialist' as a long term replacement, however remaining in the premier league is fundamental to everything, esp the Gao deal, so a short term contract to see us through and then appoint a longer term replacement is a more likely scenario. Having said that I think all the usual survival specialists are now accounted for so god knows who would be able to come in and sort things out!

One thing I don't think Puel did was basically replicate Koemans style of play with Redmond in the Mane role and Austin instead of Pelle - I'm sure we would have seen more entertaining football, more goals and maybe got more from Redmond. There have been so many instances where players were looking to play the ball into the attacking channels for the likes of Long, Tadic or Redmond to run onto....except of course they're too busy 'defending when attacking'.

Using the Coutinho and Virgil situations as an example, why, when we are a club that prospers by moving players on for huge profit, do these situations almost always result in huge amounts of acrimony, division and disruption? VAR (Vacuous Annoucements from Ralph) is not available.

Using the current situation at the club as a context, how would you define the word 'hubris'? During the announcement of Gao buying an 80% share in SFC the club, via Kat, stated how this would be the next chapter in our progress towards continued success and development.....how do you view the team performance since then and the current urgency to address a seemingly inevitable transition to a Championship club? In times of significant change and uncertainty, how important is communication in ensuring you keep stakeholders 'on side'?

Which could explain why we are struggling to land any of our targets. Kat and Chairman Gao would not want us to get relegated as it would badly impact their investments, so I'm surprised they haven't acted before now. Gao hasn't built up his business based on badly run sports clubs with terrible PR, so maybe action will now be taken.

they'll run riot 1-4

Absolutely this

They're basically saying what we've been saying for weeks/months......everyone can see it

Not so clear cut according to the soccer saturday panel

We'll be the perfect footballer factory - the championship offers a decent enough shop window for our conveyor-belt of talent out of the academy without having to pay silly wages. Maybe we can even relocate home games to the training ground and convert SMS into a terminal for landing ships from china.

The state of the pitch sums up the state of our club and how quickly we have fallen. Palace were terrible and we should have thrown everything at them but yet again the passing, decision making and determination was severely lacking - some of our football looked so bad that you wonder if the players threw the game. Unless getting relegated is part of the new master plan then MP needs to be put out of his misery.

Considering the season we've had I'm not sure he could have said much else. Hardly going to say we're about to splash millions on new signings and will fire MP if the crowd keep booing him. For those of us more used to listening this kind of corporate speak my take is; - nobody is happy about 2017 - the VVD situation clearly has had a highly disruptive affect on the whole playing staff/environment - the coaches and players all know they need to step up, the pressure is on them to do so - reality check about our size and spending power versus others - believes we have a good squad and will get new players in if it's right Sometimes when you're leading an organisation and you're really fkd off with how things are going, this kind of ambiguous and passive approach is used. If i was MP I would be feeling serious amounts of pressure. My only concern is that long sustainability doesn't include accepting a short period back in the championship.

as a footballer he is superb as a professional he is shocking

Things seem to have gone badly wrong throughout the club. Management have presided over continuous player sales whilst replacing them with inferior quality, at the same time we've seen a succession of managers. This level of turnover has meant that any positive spirit or culture will have evaporated and we are left with a disparate collection of players, playing for themselves and hoping for the call from a bigger club. Trying to do it on the cheap may have worked four or five seasons ago but sadly there's more money around now and the rules of the game have changed.........unfortunately our leaders don't appear to believe thats a good enough reason to step up with investment. We have a worse squad than two seasons ago when the average across the division has gone up significantly. MP has a tough job with this squad, but when it's patently clear the players are not a united unit, lack confidence and don't seem to be giving everything to win a game then he needs replacing. How many more 'if only' moments do there have to be before we all accept that it's just not working. At times today we were so bad (that Redmond cross field ball to nobody towards the end of the game sticks out like the crowning turd) that I do wonder if the players are facilitating their managers exit. Another poster said how this season feels like the 04/05 relegation season - I couldn't agree more.

i wouldn't mind betting last night was an example of the players looking to get the manager sacked - what better way than to let yourself get stuffed by a team run by your former boss.

forster should have caught that ffs

redmond up to his usual tricks - p1ss poor passing and basic ball control

at least we went for it but i don't think that game tells us much as everton were soooooo bad - a good solid confidence builder which was refreshingly enjoyable to watch aside from his cross for austins goal I thought bertrand had a pretty bad game - poor passing, slow decision making and failed to close down everton players on a number of occasions. PEH was superb, a more refined version of romeu with a broader range of passes. we looked a bit ragged at the back sometimes and there was too much dithering about before we cleared our lines. city will smash us on weds

loving the intolerance on here - quite alarming how ignorant and bigoted some people are doesn't bother me at all but it's clearly important those who wish to use these new pronouns physical illness vs mental illness physical intersex vs mental intersex just because you can't see it doesn't make it any less real

So you want to go down to an apparently more competitive league so that we win more games.........and then get promoted back to this horrible, frightening and scary premier league?? Or are you going to suggest we have some sort of 'southampton way' veto on promotion so we can go on this perpetual loop of second tier success?

it's beginning to feel more and more like our last relegation season

6+ we're about to find out how bad we really are

we're a vehicle for getting money out of china so probably doesn't matter what division we're in