gio1saints

Will be So much better for us kicking into the Northam second half. IF noisy fan support is required to fight back or hang on they will get it far more from newNortham wall than was achievable last year, sun or no sun. it can work the other way of course but the opposition will certainly hear the noise as ball gets close to there goal. More chance if that 12th man narrative actually aiding us this EPL season unlike last time. Interesting to compare it.

Players will arrive at 12.45 to no pyrotechnic and very well restrained polite round of applause from the smattering of fans present. Once inside respectful supporters will lift there little placards en masse at c 14.55 to reveal a massive mosaic tifo revealing the immortal words : 🎼“When I was just a little boy…”🎼 😂😇

Ramsdale is£120 pw and £5m fee. Bijlow is c £15m and probably £50k pw, In year1 with Ramsdale we commit to near £11m including wages. Thats before any haggling. We may get him for c £6-£8m with luck for one year of his services - if nobody else bids. And then there is obligation to buy. If that’s a sensible figure ( say £20m) then that’s another THB situation for what turns out to be a high class player for Saints. He may be worth much more than £20m if he keeps us up for instance. Bijlow otoh is going to be c £15m and wages c £50k pw. The transfer fee may get haggled down -but the wages won’t. He costs saints c £3m on a 5 year deal plus c £2.5m in wages total £5.5m. He may be worth double in a year if we stay up though - and gets to be Dutch #1 accordingly - value nearer to £30m. Both good goalies. One rather injury prone. I personally think the buying option is simpler and gives longer term ease of mind but it’s a close call either way. Very Happy with either. Both incentivised to stop goals cos they want to be national #1. Thumbs 👍 up either from me - and they start NOT bench!!

Is it possible Aaron is being lined up if Bijlow fails his medical?

Interesting alternative way of looking at it. Different to how fans generally think and a level or two deeper than the “ obvious” we need a striker-buy a striker thought line. Archer is in, BBD is in and the MF improved. We have not bought another winger to aid supply despite the impression we get that RM wants one who can deliver goals and assists rather than just step overs ( which is a rather direct criticism of our current and plentiful young wingers) but I guess Saints potentially have the Wee Man card up its sleeve for that at close of window.

Wow if you get Shea on loan it’s a masterstroke. He will improve your first eleven no question. Prediction now- he will play every match and at end of season you will vote him Player of the Season. And then he will return to Saints or be sold to another EPL team for an inflated fee.

I was there too and we hardly gave him a pass and certainly not a goal scoring opportunity. It was embarrassing all around how ignored he was. And how terrible whole team were except for one bit of Charlie skill. Yes TP had a couple of terrible first touches but frankly the storyline that he’s a shit player cannot play EPL has been way overdone. He can and does score goals if used intelligently. RM is pretty smart so I’m surprised he has not to date tried him out more. It’s a bit late now to see if it’s worth putting him in at the death for him to score. He will go to another club - and maybe score the goals we should be getting out of him if we were only cute enough and flexible enough to play to his strengths.

He did not get those kind of chances at Gillingham. We never chucked the ball into the box for that to happen. And he was playing in a crazy team. Not a settled team knows what’s what like we currently have ( pretty much).

You mean get him loaned out? That would help. Maybe he could re find his mojo. Unlikely someone is going to buy our injured winger who has not played for ages. Unless it’s a dirt cheap price. More likely loan with option to buy like with Charlie to Juve.

Two headers in the six yard box for TP. At 6ft 7” He probably dominates the challenge gets over the ball and we score at least one and we draw or go on to win. That archer effort for example came off top of his head. TP places that in the corner due to his extra height.

I’m still perplexed about this wide man search. I believe Saints still feel in Sam Edozie we have a potential superstar. AA likes to play from the Right Wing. BBD likes to play from the Left Wing. SAA can play either and is a highly rated young prospect already in senior squad. KS is a high fee disappointment of a winger who has the speed but not the end product - but is still young and has potential. Tyler Dibling can play similar positions to both AA and BBD ( and any AMF or new winger we buy closes starting opportunities for him..) I’m confident RF will join on final day of season if we are that desperate for another wide player. We’ve just bought Archer who is not a conventional nine also. So what’s with the Rak Sakai and Jack Clarke stuff? Good players - but we already have good players in those positions. Surely a goal keeper and a central goal scoring attacker are the two priorities at this juncture? Or has RM really decided we are playing false nine’s all season long??? …or are Saints holding out that our injured RS will come good and fill that #9 sized gap at some stage so do not need blow the money on it? Plausible but risky especially given Paul is likely leaving shortly. PS anyone else thought that TP would probably have buried the headed chance that Archer had late on Saturday? It looked like the ideal set for a big man to put away.

Nah he was a good player. But wasn’t a centre forward. It’s them centre forwards I’m not in favour of. I’m just being joking around being hyperbolically zenophobic for the sake of it. For the record: I do not care what country what colour what religion what sexuality what politics even what hair style or range of tats or taste in food and music * our players have as long as they give 100% for Saints on the pitch. NB. Some tastes in music can be right dodgy though and it does make you wonder. 😂

Non! All young French strikers that we buy are no good. MF are fine. 😂. Once bitten twice shy. I dont like the Frenchmuch anyway - ever since a Parisian waiter was haughty with me at a Paris boulevard cafe when I asked for butter with my croissant and he tried to explain to me that the croissant already had butter in it, which I knew , but he obviously considered me an ignorant English whatever back in 1985 so anyway I digress the less of them in the squad the better. This is my unbiased option of course. 😂. I don’t mind pommes frites. Nor a decent white ( or red) Burgundy. But I draw the line at their footballers. ❤️

He will cost north of €25M. We quite literally have just released a young French striker with potential but the insanity virus still lurks that says we must get another young French 5ft 9” short striker in return and quickly - and even more expensive. Like we did not learn anything the first time. For the same-ish money but more wages we could be getting Arsenals Eddie Nktieh (sp) - you know someone who is young gifted and has actually played and scored in the EPL….speaks English knows the game the football tricks of the epl OR a whole raft of strikers in that €25-€30m category that have goals and medals and experience - not just potential. Buying potential for this CF role ( and the keeper) was for last year. This year we needs saves and we need goals- immediately. Not in six or twelve months. I doubt we will get a CF but this Dutch GK guy seems to fit the immediately starts bill.

…seems to not be our kind of passing GK - from his stats last year at Roma. This will be interesting if he does come over. Good enough for Portugal but not good enough for Saints? Surely not. More homework required!

Current Portuguese National Goalkeeper Rui Patricio was on c £64k pw at Roma - and two /three years previously he was on c £110k pw at Wolves. His contract at Roma expired end June and he was released. I’m still checking if there is something else going on with him as I’ve an alarm bell ringing but at first glance if it’s true Goztepe anre hiring him ( will also check) he’s obviously an upgrade goalie en route to us via them. Goalie for hire essentially. Willy Cabellero type experience but better and still playing at top level. ALL the Goalkeepers at Saints would look up to him and there would be no questions about him being starting goalie from anyone.

You are right. I should have put the sports psychology stuff on a new thread. Let’s just hope RS and Adz injuries - whatever they are- cure fully and we see them on the pitch soon.

Sry for long reply but subject deserves a proper hearing imo. It does sound like nonsense - but it’s also Russell’s opinion. A lot of EPL teams use psychology/pyschologists - or what you might call mumbo jumbo. Not just for getting into players like Adz and RS heads positively after injury. The goal we conceded v Newcastle for example. Russell identified that we had a throw in by KWP as original start point of the goal.Our intensity and movement around it from relevant players dropped. Mentally we switched off. Collectively. At same time as NUFC were conducting a high press. A bunch of small individual mental went to sleeps or mentally not fully alert shall we say by our players at EPL level and it’s a goal. And the three points ultimately. It was nothing to do with physical fitness. This goal originated with mental Inefficiency. There’s a piece online somewhere on X or The Athletic actually Demonstrating how our intensity and forward momentum DROPPED after we went a goal up. It dropped when the EXPECTATION level of us scoring ( and winning) had just gone through the roof. Arguably it’s cos we don’t know how to play v 10 men- though that seems unlikely to me - these are professional footballers and RM is not a rookie manager either. Or NUFC are just so very good at defending. Yes I can buy that. But it’s equally arguable- and more convincingly imo , that we did not kill off a team we should have and maybe it was something in our heads. We conceded literally, a mental goal, and then did not find a way back. Thats why I called our defeat a psychological loss not a tactical loss.

Thanks for getting it what I’m trying to say! WRT Adz- You’d think Adz has got enough experience to not get performance anxiety but I suspect that he has it - he’s only human. Even if it’s not as much as a Sam Amo might have say. And that’s a good thing. Complacency coming back to SFC after being at Liverpool and England etc not what we want to see. And he knows that. But performance anxiety can come in disguise. Little niggles become not something you can run off but something you get off the pitch for treatment for example. With Adz he knows he has the big rep. But there must be a secret little voice of doubt saying can his body deliver what his class says he can/ or could?? So many questions as an elite athlete to answer - What are Saints Fc expectations versus saints fans expectations just one of them. They are very different for certain and that is the nub for me ( and maybe for Adz). Is his future just coming in off the bench sitting and recirculating the ball keeping possession or is he there to actually DO something aggressive? Tackle someone or Score goals even? What if he does try that and fucks up. Isn’t it safer to endlessly pass sideways? Saints showed performance anxiety in practice Saturday when in the time after player sent off our intensity dropped across the pitch. At that point the “ expectation” was for us to demonstrate our numerical superiority and sadly we could not do that in fact we failed at it. The second half bit better but all the same when loaded up with that extra expectation - before match we mostly all thought we’d get beat don’t forget - the players faltered. This was a psychological loss not a tactical or strategy loss. I’m hopeful SFC have noted it - certainly RM has said as much - and believe v Forest we will be a different animal. A Tiger.

@Chewy I’ve not claimed anything above as a factual summary. I’ve deliberately and repeatedly suggested it’s possible. I’m very much pro Both players and this is not an attack piece, as for your sarcasm - unnecessary. The situation in which two of our star players were unable to play all preseason without a clear medical diagnosis given inevitably raises questions in fan base. Is it the club being professionally cautious- or over-cautious? Are the players being professionally cautious - or over-cautious? Or a bit of both? I think there is such a thing as being psychologically rehabilitated as well as physiologically. I’m querying whether the former is the primary issue at this point.

He is desperate to play and show why we bought him. Same time I feel he has possibly bought in too much to the club injury rehab & prevention doctrine and is possibly now over-cautious with himself. It’s a very fine line but if the medical team stress that his career might be over with another bad injury you can forgive someone being super cautious themselves if it’s their livelihood at stake. I think biggest challenge he has right now - and same with Adz, is mental not physical. Adam Lallana is possibly bricking it at the thought that saints fans are expecting to see the old Adz - but he’s much older now and his Cruyff turn days are probably behind him. Technically he’s probably the best player we have - but physically he’s older and as for mentally, despite all his achievements, I reckon he’s massively concerned about turning up and playing at SMS in front of 30k saints. Almost stage fright if you like. I saw him kick a ball in warm up at Eastleigh and since then he’s disappeared. That’s like a 3 week injury from just “ a niggle”. It’s mental not physical imo. Both players, imo, need massive fan support when they both reemerge PLUS a massive dose of downplaying expectations. Worse thing we could do is slag them off if they don’t deliver star quality straight away. Best thing is to treat them like human beings and encourage them to do whatever is their best at any given moment recognising it’s a pathway in the first matches - not the be all and end all day one.

No revelations but my instincts tell me If anyone is still in the race for MOR it’s us. We still need goals from attacking players. He ticks both boxes. The probable purchase of Fernandes does not change that imo. The ultimate impotency of our attacking yesterday can only underline the point we need finishers. The probable sale or loaning out of various of our players could fund MOR. And maybe a surprise sale as well. Basically - Shea, Paul, Charlie and others need leave first for MOR to happen. That’s my gut feel. And our starting line up come October will be rather different than Saturday. I’d expect: 1. New GK 2. Lesley to start and 3. MOR to start. Who gets dropped? Alex, Jack and Will/Joe. NB having said that Tyler’s excellent progress has got me hoping that he = MOR minus a year of scoring goals in Scotland. If he can score a few in early matches maybe the Attacking mf position is resolved in house.

Excellent goalkeeper currently at Luton. Seems to have that decisiveness that’s required in tough situations. Think Saints should sign him up? Based on this best of highlights clip I think yes. https://x.com/ballsdotie/status/1824801688227651811?s=46&t=l5Q4mkKSxz5qdVtggXqogw

https://x.com/ballsdotie?s=21&t=l5Q4mkKSxz5qdVtggXqogw The Luton Goalkeeper automatically enters Saints Hall of Fame. Buy him a point anywhere in Southampton for rest of his life. Excellent goalkeeping! 😂😇https://x.com/ballsdotie/status/1824801688227651811?s=46&t=l5Q4mkKSxz5qdVtggXqogw

If Lesley is as good as his reputation then he probably should be starting ahead of Jack Stephens in any five man defence set up. Or indeed Shea. At 6ft 3 he is a unit and going to be fine doing that and being a French u21 international he must be able to pass the ball. Im happy we’ve added some obvious steel to our CMF.