Holmes_and_Watson

The disapointments just keep on appearing this weekend...>sigh< 🙂

What are the thoughts in it being a nice touch to give him a guard of honour at the end of the game, when he breaks that total? 🙂

Towards the end of the window I had us down as a high 6 out of 10, tipping over into a 7 with a very late arrival of a striker to come. The club, and everyone else, knew one was required. The club were extremely confident a signing would be made. We have a modern recruitment dpeartment where a number of targets are assessed. For every one of those deals to fall through outmatching our recruitment's abilities was a big failure. Yes, we got Mara in, but he was never billed as a combined Broja & Long replacement. Getting shot of Romeu reminded me more of the penny pinching we-know-best approach of the Lowe era. Overreliance (and overhype) on the young players coming in , combined with cutting down on that wage bill flying in the face of competent squad management. A half decent management team could have arranged a transition between the two over the coming season. There have been games when I'd have them both starting. Instead, you can see that Lavia was offered a starting spot right away, and that information was used to push Romeu out of the door to other pastures. It's unfortunate that Lavia is injuried. It's incompetence to not have contingencies in place. It's not as though we all couldn't see how important Romeu's role and presence in the team had been. We could also all see that Diallo simply wasn't that replacement. We can only hope AMN steps up, but it's not been a good start. And it's a situation that could have been completely avoided. It was Romeu's new club's connections with the Man City group that got it over the line in the end. We couldn't wait to cut that wage bill. As S-Clarke said, we had a good start to the window. Then chose to chuck that by not recruiting a player for the key postion required and offloading a key first team player, with no real back up in place. A transfer window of a high 6/ low 7 rapidly falls away to a high 4/ low 5, despite all the good work that has been done. I can imagine Ralph using the lack of a striker, Lavia's injury and Romeu's departure in discussions. He will argue that we are conceding fewer per game this season than last, and that our win percentage is the same. He will point to the personal errors that have led to so many of the goals. Relying on players without a clinical finish he could argue, along with those errors, is what is costing us in a tactic where goals are going ot be harder to come by, than in RalphBall v1.0. But to do that is to argue against a lot of other, more miserable stats.

Scroll down past winning euro millions... all the way past truthful politician ... keep going all the way past invasion from a parallel dimension... 🙂

That just shows you the fine margins in football. In your scenario, it's a rear guard action where City sneak a winner. In mine, we sneak a winner after a lot of defending. Hard to blame Ralph under such circumstances.

ABK and Salisu's physical presence does enough to keep Haaland out of the goals. As Pep is distracted looking for wonderkid Redmond, who he set up his tactics to oppose, JWP gets a free kick into the box. The goalkeeper paries it and Stu hammers it home (even if he was aiming for the other part of the goal). 0-1 Saints win.

OOoooo. thought AA might put that away. Before I realised it was AA.

Mo coming on to save us?

Over from AA. Another good move though

Nearly from Adams. Nice move that.

AA on, and that means goals!

Utterly missing for the first. Standing waiting for a non penalty for the second. >sigh<

Economy

Was old age even in our sweepstake? I had Corgi Assassination.

Useless

If FM showed the game changing in the future... Chelsea's new proprietor convinces 13 of the other, now US owned clubs... and SoccerBall replaces the Premier League... Only the plus side, SoccerBall still allows pensioner Ward Prowse to be wheeled on as part of The Saints Special Team, with his 20 in free kicks. 🙂

Deficit

Knight

Quest

My thought at the time was that he was setting upmore defensively after injuries. Not my favourite to watch, but I could see why. Did we not also have an injured forward later on too? So, more defensive to protect the goal, and losing an outlet up front. I was expecting him to be involved in bringing in new players for the following season. No reason to think he wouldn't have matched it, unless there were further departures.

Ex-Saint gets England back into game. Saint keeps England at bay. In other news, England are only a Maguire and Pope dropping away from winning a game.

They just need any warm body they can get for the front. 🙂

It's going to be a 1 0 win to us. A frustrating game, where we get caught between trying to be a little more forward, but get stuck still trying to contain. The goal comes from a corner, that doesn't clear the first man on the first attempt. A scruffy second attempt ends up in the net. Both ref and VAR look to rule it out, but realise they can find nothing after 3 minutes. But can we kick on after this win?

Sandwich

Bear