James

Also, if you are going to bring on Konsa, why on earth would you take off Gordon, the one player whose pace was causing them issues. The substitutions were effectively self sabotage.

It’s hard to attack when the entire team is made up of defenders. Tactics absolutely killed us, as soon as they scored we were totally done for.

Completely agree. The media would be hounding Southgate out tonight but that was worse. I’m struggling to remember an instance of such appalling in game management.

Tuchel has to go. That was Southgate on steroids. Moronic.

Quite like the sound of Azon. He’s young and seems to have decent pedigree. Good movement but sounds like finishing needs some work which is doable. I’d like us to sign Lankshear too assuming we ditch Archer and/or Downs. I can’t really understand folks suggesting this is “massive” money for us. 8/9m for a striker really isn’t much these days.

Him constantly talking makes this much worse than it needs to be.

This is why I object to it. It’s meant to overturn “clear and obvious” errors. Given the ref has awarded the penalty, I don’t see how it’s a sufficient error to overturn it.

“Clear and obvious error” - VAR is utter garbage.

Wait until you hear about all the “men’s” football teams that are also losing multiples of that.

DRC are 20 spots higher than Ghana in the FIFA world rankings so seems a stretch to say they are “nowhere near” as good as Ghana. Either way, a team we should be beating.

The retained list article says the contract extension wasn’t agreed. I guess he could change his mind but it doesn’t sound like he’s going to.

Agreed. SR record of signing strikers is pretty awful.

Assume he’s staying given he is not on the list. Should hear soon.

It’s a shame to lose Stewart for free, he’s given us so little over his contract that I think he owes us. That said, it’ll be nice to not have to worry about our striker getting a season ending injury more often than not. We need SR to avoid messing this replacement up, as good as Larin is, I don’t want to be relying on him to score the goals to get us up, especially starting on -4…

Genuinely delighted with that, best keeper we’ve had in years (and, for me, better than Ramsdale). If we follow that up with Bree and Stewart extensions and Larin on a permanent I’ll start to feel very positive about next year even with -4 and a few inevitable sales. COYS.

Henry Winter is an embarrassment. He used to be respectable.

Great interview from Solak. He’s right, what we did was wrong but the punishment was disproportionate and the Panel process was essentially a kangaroo court. Only giving us 12 hours to respond to the charges prior to a playoff semi final and then criticising for inaccuracies. What a joke.

Exactly. Whether there was bias or not (and there probably wasn’t) is irrelevant. Saints could and should have used this to question the integrity of the proceedings at the time and/or stall the timeline by having the Panel reconstituted. In proceedings of this magnitude you have to do background checks on the people deciding your case.

This is my fear now. We need clarity on who is going to be the manager first and foremost. I have this lingering fear that he will get banned late into the summer and we end up having to put Lallana in charge. I’d say there is no chance the Club could get blindsided by that but their response to this whole saga has been insanely shortsighted.

Whether there was or wasn’t is irrelevant in my view. Either way it’s a missed opportunity for the Club to have kicked up a huge stink at the time and gotten the hearings either delayed or the Panel reconstituted. As you say, to make the allegation after the fact is pointless unless teeing up a suit against the EFL which feels unlikely.

Didn’t stop the EFL from implying it though with their statement which is disappointing.

The more I read from the Club the clearer it is that we completely and utterly ballsed up our response to this issue when it first arose. How can we be raising objections to Panel members etc in a statement almost 2 weeks after we got kicked out? Surely we could have taken a harder line at the time and kicked up more of a fuss about the way the proceedings were being brought if that’s genuinely what we thought at the time?! Seems to me as if this is covering the bases after the fact.

Realistically there was never going to be. I think the Club are right to be aggrieved at the severity of some of the statements made by the Panel. They say they uncovered evidence of “top down conspiracy” or whatever words they used but, in reality, there is no written evidence for anything of the sort.

It seems to me that is what the Club is alluding to in the statement, that the Panel drew a lot of conclusions from very limited evidence.

The statement raises fair criticisms of the process but, as you say, bit wet after the fact. If the Club were concerned about the independence of the Panel, they should have objected strongly at the time. We have statements from Panel members confirming no objection was raised so, if true, smacks again of not doing the job thoroughly enough the first time…