gio1saints

It’s a great question, no doubt.

Join bet365. Deposit £10. Watch the match. Withdraw £9.99. All super easy no hassle. Jeep £0.01 in your account so it’s “ live@. Then you can watch whatever matches bet365 is streaming all season. Including this one. And thru stream a LOT of good matches.

Sue you need to get here a bit early to soak in the local. erm atmospheres. 😎

Have to say- first rate service at the turnstiles by the stewards and security and bar staff. All excellent. Well done Eastleigh!

Oh indeed they are. Could be trouble brewing with the Riverside park steam train casuals. And in my first pint of the season…old speckled hen on draught. 🍺

I don’t think the Saints massif, YOOF!( central) the SO18 nor the Lordshill sniffers are bothered by this one. Im going but just as a warm up for Wrexham. 🏃‍♂️

And don’t get me started on Arsenals Paul bloody Davis. I saw the c&nt do it. 🤬

I’m still angry at Arsenal for that. I loved Stevie Williams and they ruined him.

I think I watched saints play on a cow pasture in one of those preseason visits to Sweden. It started to puss down with rain and everybody ran for shelter. I ran into the players changing rooms with Saints players. All us soaking wet. Was a bit awkward actually when I was asked to leave. 🤣

Not quite. Melodramatic certainly though 😁. Italian DNA m’lud. 🇮🇹

Not that Ralph Ted! The apex of SR’s ambition is promotion /not relegation to League 1, and >17th EPL the following year or year after tops. The system may throw us a bone if we are lucky - A cup run to make us feel it’s proper but otherwise, over the long term, and continuing my classic literature theme, to quote George Orwell from 1984: If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”

Yes yes yes. it’s a joke of a situation. SR aim to carve out a living from the hinterland between the championship and the EPL. Trying to be top half competitive in the EPL is a very fast way to go broke basically. When you know your team is not competing for titles or trophies anymore it’s like a dose of smelling salts, we try to pretend we are competing but that’s simply only the facade of competing ~ not in reality - reminds me of a line from Goldings Lord of the Flies : ” Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.” It sucks. Pretend I don’t know it, is how I still bother to follow Saints ~ that plus they are in my heart whatever. The EPL, it’s NOT a competition.

Transfer window does not end until September 1st. About 30% of transfer deals crystallise in the last few week. Correlate that to Saints and one can reasonably expect 2-3 departures /arrivals in the last week of August. Given our current heavy squad status that might just be it give take a player in (or more likely out).

Thank you @SaintJackoInHurworth. Most useful post seen on here in ages. 🙏🙌. Good job!

Fernandes, for me, is guaranteed to be in the Championship player of the season stakes if he stays. Mind you I thought same of Charlie. Keep him and we have a title winning contenders team. Sell him and bets are off. My personal opinion : if MF, AR and THB stay we will be promoted. 100%. oops Sry wrong thread !

For last two years he’s consistently one of our best players. Perhaps that says more about our team than KWP but all the same at least when he gets the ball I have had the hope something might happen. As do most of SMS. Take him away and replace him with a conventional FB and we may concede fewer goals. Win perhaps more matches by consequence. But he does bring JOY and DELIGHT to the match and that’s what I mainly go for. Not football-by-numbers.

Fair point about the three years instead of, say, another year extension or nothing or indeed to be sold - but it does rather depend on some other factors we don’t know about yet re our other CB’s ~ but this unusual extension gives us a clue. Selling him right now would not be unreasonable so why is he not sold? Nobody wants him or is it something else? My guess would be there’s a strong chance Jan, BK and maybe THB are all for sale/being sold as we speak. IF JS were also going that would leave us relatively CB lite - even with RE coming back and Quarshie. Besides it’s a nominal fee I’d imagine. The not renewing and letting it roll option is almost the same thing except after maybe losing three CBs getting in two we do not have the security of knowing our utility man Captain and CB is fully committed. The extension means we could still release him early- potentially for a fee - if we get promoted or even if not - but also ensures credibility for that much vaunted Academy to first team pathway. In a league which WILL be more physical he has shown often enough he is not afraid. When it comes to our local derbies for example I’d have my heart in my mouth if he was playing - but also secretly know he us the player most likely to smash someone into Row Z. Which I’d find very satisfying and worth my ST 🤭😎

I did not say or imply he was young hungry and guaranteed to improve. You’ve imagined it. I simply set out circumstances that might work in our favour from his signing before then saying that if he was rubbish we might still get some or all our money back. I had no idea it was so hilarious.

I don’t think there’s much downside buying a 20 year old player who will likely be in the US World Cup squad - and as their #9. He scores two or three for Saints early doors, does same with some international goals for the US in the preliminary friendlies then performs well @worldcup and that £8m will become £30-£40M in no time. If he’s no good he’s still only young and we can get some or all of our money back at least by selling him to an American or German team. Difficult not to say this is good business all round by SR.

Fair point. A probably meaningless point of distinction to most ( but I feel it’s relevant) is that RM did what he had to do under sufferance for the playoffs ie relax the dogma. Was not the way he wanted to play but he had to. That he then reverted to his predictable style of play in the EPL shows not that he had not “learned” anything - he’s far from stupid - but more a calculated decision which went wrong. His reasoning was that the quality of his squad was probably inadequate for survival so I think in his mind we could play a season like plucky Luton - and get relegated - or take a chance and see if the system that had generated play offs and unbeaten runs could overcome the reality of his relatively poor squad. And that even when it was obviously not working nor going to work he felt that we may as well get hung for a sheep as for a lamb. His name is become synonymous with a style of play. If he had chopped and changed likelihood was we still go down and he’s become anonymous instead of notorious. Call that ego or call it bloody minded defiance but I genuinely thought we had a shot playing that way in a league loaded against the smaller teams like us. He failed, we failed. I actually respect he held to his principles not flip flopped like a no principles politician s we all despise. He lost. That season. The season before he won. This season with Rangers- who knows?

No it’s his younger brother -22 187cm attacking /creative mf left footer. Grok thinks he might be useful and a good buy ith.😁

BBD was just a horrible literally pointless signing. Did what he was signed for in his match v Lazio - cut in from the left and score with right foot plus generally be aggressive and physical up front - but after doing it once he promptly stopped. His “ performances” consisted of getting paid for goals and performances of his past-not the present. Bloke needs to lose some of that timber imo and buck his ideas up fast or Still will “ outsource” him pdq.

To those who want shot of Sam Edozie I’m wondering who on earth you are expecting Saints to buy to replace him? It’s so easy to say “ yeah sell him show pony” but who you got in mind for that role then that’s not? IF that alleged Bruges bid is taken seriously I’d expect TWO decent incoming wingers. Players like Sam are amongst the most disposable easy to blame in football - yet mediocre mfs and defenders who never risk anything can get pencilled in every week without fail. Saints lose him, Tyler and Mateus I’m wondering wtf I wasted my season ticket on- a team of nil entertainment value

When you say show pony do you mean that as a criticism of him? His job was to, bravely, isolate the full back and go round him to create a dangerous opportunity -often whilst the rest of our team just watched and held their spaces. In a team with an iota more attacking initiative -and not just let’s retain possession and pass opposition to death - we might see a lot more dangerous output from him. We may literally have nobody with flair left if both he and Tyler go that will be worth paying ticket price for. NB: his replacement was BBD ( Boring Beyond Description ) who would you rather see? I think we need another as well as SE -but to unload SE without having two good ones already in the house -very bad.

Agree with @Holmes_and_Watson as usual, He was dangerous and scoring last time he played championship and I kept a close eye on him from that side of the Northam in particular where he plied his trade. When he got the ball it was usually the only moment of one on one skill we got to see at SMS from one of ours so I was grateful! Now KS and KWP have gone we only have TD and SE who can actually dribble round a player and, call me old fashioned, but I like to see individual skills on occasion. All this team shit is great but I also want to see individual flair…and Sam has got that.