James

Yes and no. We could have had Maguire in the summer instead of the awful Hoedt and we passed up Nathaniel Chalobah when he was available for £5m so we could have signed young English talent if we’d have wanted to but we went elsewhere.

Exactly. It’s Reed’s fault for leaving us without PL standard defenders but 2/3 goals we conceded today were down to Stephens. For me, he’s one where we will look back in 5 years time and he will be playing for some mid table League 1 side and we will think it completely and inevitable that we went down with him as our starter CB. He’s the 2018 equivalent of Davenport, the only difference is that he’s come through our own youth ranks and therefore gets a much wider berth from most Saints fans.

Please do feel free to explain how the criticism is unjustified. He’s not a PL defender and has cost us a lot of goals with his mistakes this season. Hard to blame him as he simply isn’t good enough but today’s game reminded me just how much better Yoshida is than him. Still, if you think people wanting Yosh to start ahead of him is unfair, let’s hear it.

At least Stephens is banned. ****ing dross.

Stephens was in front of Welbeck, he missed it and we conceded. He’s cost us so many points from his lack of ability in the air.

Jack Stephens you are useless.

Jack Stephens is a truly terrible defender in this league. Sure he’s a nice lad but boy he cannot defend in this league at all.

Does anyone think we will here another public statement from Reedo before his (in my view inevitable) departure? Would be interesting to see him give one of his interviews after we've been relegated but I suspect we won't get that.

Would be good news he'd left but, I have to admit, the thought of Les dragging us down and then hot footing it to a cushy new job would leave a sour taste...

He's pretty terrible. Won't be good enough to get us out of the Championship, if we want to go up we'll need better which makes it absolutely crazy that he starts for us in the league above. If he wasn't a youth player he'd be getting a lot more stick than he is. Not helped by playing next to Hoedt, who is also appalling. To think, we could have had Harry Maguire for only slightly more than we paid for Wes...cheers Les.

I totally agree with this - we actually got some decent results in 2005 (Liverpool home for example). We also got ourselves into positions to win a number of other games (Boro at home, Villa at home, Arsenal away, Everton at home). This time around we’ve got a more talented squad (arguably) but we haven’t seen any displays that are a patch on some of those that we turned in during 2005. Had we not conceded one of the late goals in the games I’ve described then we would have stayed up, we will be much further away than that this time around.

Very well put. Arrogant board who believe we do things better than other clubs, arrogant half arsed squad that thinks it is much much better than it is. I feel totally disconnected from the club at the moment, doesn’t appear that the owners, the board or the players actually give two sh*ts about the club and so I question why I should. West Ham was about as poor as I can remember us playing since I’ve supported Saints. There have been worse results sure but the total lack of application, effort and desire given our position was appalling and unacceptable. The players should be ashamed but I know they aren’t, they’ll post something on Instagram and that’s it. Normally I’d have waited until the end to give them a piece of my mind but I decided not to waste my breath and left with 10 mins to go (first time in years). There’s a cancer at our club at the moment, a total complacency and a culture of rewarding mediocracy (Forster new 5 year deal anyone?). Reed is the most powerful man at the club and is therefore responsible for this mess. He simply has to go. The thought of him trying to do it on the cheap or be clever to get us back up from the Championship fills me with dread and will be a one way ticket back to the lower leagues.!

Agreed. Cedric is a terrible footballer, but he does post a good selfie on Instagram which is enough for most of our fans...

Boufal coming on. Couldn’t make this up.

Utter utter disgrace but they’ll still get paid and then post some bull****. Stealing a living these *****s.

Special shout out to Les Reed and Ross Wilson for assembling this poisonous squad of bottlers. Cheers lads.

We look like a Sunday League side. We’ve got a bunch of overpaid pansy players who think they are good but they are ****. Can’t wait to see the back of this mob when we go down.

An insult of a performance to the fans that have travelled so far. We’ve got a team of overpaid lazy players who are better at talking than playing. Awful.

If Hughes keeps us up then IMO it will (and should) be him.

Bit of a shame it wasn't at least a year so he had next year. Not really sure how invested you'd feel on an 8 game contract where, if we go down, he can say "I didn't have enough time".

Exactly, hard to get excited about the tepid backwards, sideways cr*p we served up in the first half on Saturday. The fans will respond if the players give us something to get behind. When we were putting Stoke under pressure in the second half the fans were good and loud but to expect raucous support for slow, backwards football is a bit much. Palace fans are responding to their team putting in a huge shift, our lads haven't done that for far far too long unfortunately.

IMO it would, I can't see us winning another league game under MP which means relegation. We might get a bump from a new man and that might be enough to steer us clear. With MP we will slowly trickle towards the inevitable. He's a trash manager and there are a lot of managers (even some out of work) who would be an instant upgrade. He might be a nice guy and he might have some decent tactical ideas (as alluded on another thread) but we've played the same way and made the same mistakes all season. He's had more than enough time to show us he can turn it around, he can't so he must go as soon as possible.

Whoever they want probably won't be available to us if we are in the Championship...

Think it does AM a disservice to say he's just been competent. He's been great I think, does the basics right and has made some very good saves for us. Definitely deserves his place and to retain it next year (esp if we go down).

Would be starting JWP over Redmond because a) on the whole, Redmond is pretty crap and b) a JWP corner or free kick is about our best chance of scoring at the moment.