James

Hardly…we’ve played some quite nice stuff at times. Very difficult to please some it would seem.

Cannot understand selling Tella unless he wants to go. For a team that's been so poor at scoring goals it seems absolute madness to be selling the top scorer in the Championship last year for £15-20m. I'm not sure we'd get a better player for that money. Hope Wilcox knows what he's doing and that Martin is on board with this as things looked pretty good after the Reading friendly and in parts against Bournemouth but latest rumours seem to have us getting rid of a lot of our better players. If we really have targets lined up then they are going to need to get signed pretty quick and hit the ground running extremely quickly to ensure we don't lose too much ground.

I can't believe its even up for debate that (a) Bazunu was nowhere near PL standard last year and (b) there were PL quality goalkeepers available to us that we could have signed instead and probably for less money (most of them have been mentioned). Whether Bazunu is good enough for a promotion chasing Championship side is yet to be seen and whether he turns out to be "quality" in the future is, again, to be seen but personally I haven't seen much to suggest we've got a top keeper in waiting. It's a concern that he's making silly errors in pre-season, let's hope he gets those out of his system before we start in the league, but we know that those types of mistakes are going to cost a team like ours points - as encouraging as yesterday was, this team had a serious issue scoring goals last year. I hope Bazunu turns out to be good, every Saints fan does, but so far he's quite a bit worse than Angus Gunn (to compare to another keeper we paid big money for from City) and we got rid of him quickly enough....

You are probably right but again SR need to be careful. Things could get toxic between them and the fanbase if we are uninspiring this year. They will know they are under massive pressure to turn things around.

This kind of deal is the penalty for the brainless relegation that SR orchestrated last season. Once you factor in the sell-on fee for Chelsea we are basically giving Tino away. Understandable as its a big draw for him and he is too good for the Championship but look at Villa - they told Spurs to p*ss off with a derisory offer for Grealish, he stayed and helped them back up and then they sold him for more than twice as much. SR have got to be careful here - not much incoming activity on our side, now starting to shift some of the players we'd hope would stay and the real possibility of a mass exodus once the season has started. The depth of our squad means that we will more than likely be competitive in the Championship but if we were able to obtain promotion we would likely be left with a massive overhaul being required again - we know that the players we will likely be relying on this year aren't good enough at the higher level.

He's going to Qatar?

Totally agree. I think we are in a weaker position, from a long term sustainability perspective, than the last time we went up, where we had a group of talented players capable of stepping up and hungry to get there having never played in the top league, versus now, where we have a load of guys who might be good enough for the Championship but have shown themselves not good enough for the PL. Could see Ipswich being really strong next year as they have a great young coach and will be coming off an excellent prior season. Lambert's goals were a huge part of our success last time and even if Che is good enough for this year we know that as soon as we go back up he won't be.

Re Downes: he may want to be the Rice replacement but realistically there is no chance he will be. Barely played for WH in the league last year and, by the end of the window, I'd be surprised if he wasn't third/fourth choice. Of course he has to say that, he's a WH fan I believe and he probably thinks he's got the chance to step into an open spot, but I don't think Moyes fancies him (based on his usage last year) and IMO a move to us, with a chance of promotion and coming up as a starter under a manager who knows him, might well be attractive at the end of the window.

Just noticed Lanzini released by West Ham, CFDAJFU?

If, and I stress if, we lose JWP to Fulham and Tino to Brighton in the same window then it just emphasises how much of a SR-induced fuck up last season was.

Gyokeres would be my primary target if he was in any way obtainable but suspect the price is too high for us and that he will go to a bigger club. We should have gone for him in the summer/instead of panicking and buying Tall Paul. Failing that would like to see any of Manning, Grimes, Piroe from Swansea and Ronnie Edwards and Jack Taylor from Peterborough.

Completely perplexed as to why any club with winning ambitions would be considering Selles. Absolutely dreadful. Nathan Jones would be a much better option for Reading and that really is saying something.

There would have been a meltdown if we had appointed him so its a lose lose.

If we are looking at former Wolves managers would also be happy with Lage - he had them playing some good stuff, just didn’t have a striker.

Yet another statement that doesn’t commit to being there next year. If he cares that much there’s one way of showing it - give us a year in the Championship to help put right the wrongs.

Thank god they showed their mettle in sticking with the Spanish Wigley instead. Truly inspirational stuff.

Hard to see how keeping Mad Nate could have been any worse tbh. The Spanish Wigley. Sooner his departure is confirmed the better. Until that happens I worry there’s a chance these SR morons will continue with him.

Is Carrillo better than Tall Paul? Think he might be, at least he got an assist…

This sums up how I am feeling right now. For a while we were a club on the up and one that made you think almost anything was possible. But for our purple patch after the COVID restart that period of optimism is long gone. For me, and I know others will disagree, the decline started when Koeman walked out. We had a golden opportunity to kick on from a 6th placed finish and we blew it. We appointed the wrong manager, signed the wrong players etc. The attempt to "get us back on track" by appointing Pellegrino was a disaster and, bar a few OK periods with Ralph, we've been pretty abject for a while. Hard to say this hasn't been coming really - the squad is shattered mentally. Quite looking forward to the Championship, provided that it comes with the clear out we so desperately need. Not massively confident in SR's decision making given how poor its been this season though.

Maitland-Niles is just terrible.

God the sooner we get rid of this bunch of wasters the better. An insult to travelling fans. They don’t even care.

Yep. Arguably he's even worse than Jones. Almost as if the guy who has been here all season shares a lot of the responsibility for what has happened... Sooner Selles gets his P45 and we rip it up and start again the better.

This lot don’t care so why should we? I’ve switched it off. Sooner Selles is fired the better.

Are we sure Jones is the worst manager we’ve had this season? From where I am sitting it’s Selles. Utterly clueless.

2-1 now. Come on Fulham.