Patches O Houlihan

His playing career has had an odd trajectory - there might be a Ricky Lambert-esque story to enjoy there. Lets hope he smashes it

You could argue the derby is a test of nerve and innate natural instinctive ability under pressure. There won't have been time for the players to have absorbed much - certainly in attacking areas. They'll be making it up as they go along and reacting instinctively. Let's hope the on paper quality shows up. Azaz was put in that position against Watford and certainly acquitted himself pretty well (despite the error). 🤞

Maybe the feeling is that you can train good positioning and agility in a goalkeeper easier than you can train good footballing skills. He has already played way more minutes than most young keepers his age. Goalies tend to improve with age, and so you could argue his keeping will mature earlier, giving him a longer career at the top level and saving Saints money in the long term if he stays. He wasn't ready in 22/23 or 23/24. He was rightfully not exposed in 24/25. So far he has been a little better than usual but I still have questions. McCarthy can clearly still make saves, so even though he appears to be the most relaxed reserve keeper I guess there has to still be a little competition there. It would be great if the club was proved right, but I'm not seeing it myself. Maybe Rambo will get recalled in January?

If I've got one criticism of the Saints media team it is the crazy banal questions new signings get asked. Would be lovely to hear something about what makes that player special or individual or different. But there's a difference between answering banal questions sensibly on the day you join a new club and being coached to do it.

I assume you'd be smashing it in your 3rd or 4th language?

It was on Question of Sport years back

fucking twitter

I don't think we would have got as good a price as we did for Dibling and Fernandes if we had sold them early. Our start is pretty much par with teams relegated from the PL over the last few seasons. 2 months ago we were most worried about Ipswich. We'll want to do well in the next four games though otherwise we really will have created a mountain to climb.

Jelert played a bit in midfield 2 seasons back too. Edwards only played DM twice for QPR.

Bearing in mind the change in atmosphere that we have had since Dragan took over the running of things and since Spors showed up maybe there has been some thinking over a longer time period than just the next season: Let's assume that PSR would make it hard financially for us to do a Forest and sign a whole new team assuming we were promoted to the PL. We'll have enough funds to bring in some good signings - but not enough for a whole team. So what is the answer? Well Strikers are the most expensive position and the most difficult to land for Southampton. No chance we're going to get a PL worthy striker in this window. Jan window seems unlikely. Most likely is next summer assuming we were promoted. If you were an aspiring high quality striker willing to join a newly promoted team you'd want to see that the club you were joining were going to provide you with the chances to make you look good. So in order to sign that player next summer we have to deliver an establish creative attacking force that can deliver those chances - hence that's where we've spent our money, gambling that our existing defenders and strikers will do what need them to do to achieve promotion. The alternative is to sign an expensive striker now who isn't good enough next year and be short of funds when we really need to go hard at the market. We have loaned out Rambo so that the goalkeeper situation should be sorted if we are promoted. So we would just need to buy a few defenders and midfielders. Thought on this? Assuming we get our Brazilian I'm going for a 7 - having been impressed with the last few days, and also the shifting of Sulemana and Onuachu early for good money.

Have you only just started watching football? That's not how a transfer window works out - even if you are f**king Liverpool

My dog is called Flynn and I just fed him chicken livers 🤪 True Story

They don't have saucy nuns as cabin crew 😉

Get your relegation money on them right now 😉

Don't say that you'll have Russell on the phone lining him up for a January loan!

Are you really going to bench Azaz for Downs?

If you were previously a high scoring forward but have been out of form due to injury or playing in a team which was terrible for the league you were in you'll be tense and low on confidence in the crucial moments. We've already seen this process once with Arma - wank in PL; Champ 23-24 2nd highest scorer and top for goal involvements. Archer & Nessie could potentially experience the same situation

If you were a striker playing for us and you saw the creative talent being signed wouldn't that lighten your mood a little - feel like there was less pressure on each chance you had because there would be another one along in a few minutes...

We'll be in red & white stripes HTH

Its the same bloke who posted about Osula being loaned to us (Brum or Leics) - if he's actually going to Frankfurt for £30m we can assume this is bollocks too...

Disregard the above - David Mason has his head up his arse