James

Personally I can't see us going anywhere under Puel far too many of these turgid, terrible performances. We won't sack him though so we will have to wait and see if he gets it right.

No we won't.

Gabbi off. Ridiculous. We need to f*cking score.

To me it's not lack of effort, we've just not got any bite in midfield to win the ball back. We saw against Bournemouth that a front three of Boufal, Redmond and Tadic means we get overrun in midfield. It's happening again today which suggests the tactics are wrong.

Just to be clear, you aren't attaching any blame to Puel for picking an unbalanced side that is allowing Hull too much time on the ball? Team selection and shape is all wrong, nothing to do with the players. That's the manager's decision and IMO he's got it wrong so far.

Shocking half. Hopefully our world class manager will turn it round at half time.

Garbage so far.

Renewed mine. Our season ticket sales are relatively slow at this stage every year. Nothing to worry about, it'll pick up.

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/football/2806032/southampton-transfer-news-martin-caceres/ http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/transfer-news/southampton-sign-free-agent-martin-9776098 For example. Was relatively widely reported at the time. Could, of course, be BS.

Hadn't seen that, if that's right then fair enough.

Marco Silva was appointed on 5 January which was in advance of week 21 of games in the Prem. If you look at the form table since Silva took over Hull would be 8th. They were in the bottom three when he took over so he has clearly made a massive difference, to say otherwise is silly.

Let's hope that's right. The stuff we know about Lander doesn't seem to suggest they'd be a great fit for us but it does seem they are relatively far down the track (other bidders or not). What I do know from my line of work is that on deals like this you do sometimes as a seller progress things simultaneously and as far as possible with multiple bidders to create competitive tension and then decide which one to go with at a late/final stage (sometimes even where multiple bidders are ready to sign on the dotted line). Let's hope we are just conducting a competitive process and that there are in fact more serious bidders than Lander in the process that haven't yet been picked up by the mainstream media.

He's also reported to be on a very high wage. If that's not the case then I'd agree with you but if we are overpaying someone who is only good enough to cover our third or fourth choice CBs then its an error on the part of the club IMO.

There's entertaining them and then there's getting to the stage where they go through the fit and proper test (assuming that's true).

It's a pretty hefty price for a sticking plaster or precautionary umbrella (unless he really is on a pay to play deal). My view is that Stephens and Jones (again based only on the U23 games I have seen) are of a similar level (i.e. neither of them are ready but both are decent prospects for the future but aren't yet steady PL level players) and therefore, given that Caceres is considered by management to be below Stephens, there's not much point in having brought him in. Yes, I would still have thought it inadequate had we not brought anyone in but the mere fact of bringing someone in who isn't deemed better than what you have and who you aren't prepared to use doesn't improve things at all. If MC had been signed by Hull, was playing for them, helping them pick up points etc then that would prove he's a competent PL defender so yes people probably would have wanted us to sign him. The fact is that's a complete hypothetical as the club clearly don't think he's a competent PL defender, if they did we'd be using him.

Fair enough. Just a bit surprising, given the rate at which we are conceding goals, that he's genuinely considered not good enough. It was only a few weeks ago that Puel was banging on about being surprised by his fitness/quality. Maybe that was BS but either way we'd have seen him for a week or so in training prior to the work permit getting sorted.

We don't because he hasn't played. Only way to find out is to give him a go.

Fingers crossed they are serious investors looking to take us forwards. Haven't read a single thing about Lander that makes me feel positive about them.

It would be 'interesting' to know how many times Claude has used the word 'interesting' this season. Said with my tongue in my cheek as his English is a damn sight better than my French and at least he is making an effort.

Fair enough. My own personal view was that those players wouldn't get us enough goals and sure enough they didn't.

All I'm saying is that if the justification for playing Stephens over an "experienced" player is to blood youngsters in a harmless environment (which seems to be what Lighthouse is saying here) then by extrapolation we could have used another youngster (Jones) in the event of another injury. Our transfer business was inadequate. I wanted a CB signing but we didn't get one. The signing of MC was done at the last minute and was done IMO out of sheer panic. If we have no intention of using Caceres over our own youth players then we may as well not have bothered with him. I would, of course, have preferred us to have signed a good defender with pedigree who could have been first choice but we didn't. Just because we panicked and brought in a player on a free doesn't make our transfer business adequate and all I'm saying is that given we apparently have no interest in using him we may as well have saved ourselves the trouble.

Fine but how do you know Stephens is better than Caceres? I've only seen Caceres play at half speed in an U23 game so wouldn't like to make a call on who is the "best available". My point (in direct response to your point about the benefits of blooding JS) was that there really was no point in signing MC and paying him any kind of wage if we didn't think he was better than Stephens. If Stephens or Yoshida were injured we could make use of Alfie Jones who is next in line (and clearly a player the club have high hopes for) and we could then reap the benefit of Jones getting earlier PL experience in a season where we are safe and will finish mid table. From what I've seen of the U23s I don't see Jones as too far behind Stephens if I'm honest.

Exactly. Especially that some of the criticism of Puel seems to be mitigated by the fact that he was let down by Les Reed and should be given the summer to mould the team as he wants. If we did good business and achieved all our targets in the market then Puel has to be judged on this season. Can't have it both ways. For me, Puel was let down by Reed and should be given the summer but then I think our transfer business last summer was inadequate.

New keeper. New CB. New DM. New Striker. Four players I'd like assuming no one leaves. Given that we know at least one player will leave it'll be another summer of mass changes I think.

All of the above is true, its also irrelevant to the point I was making.