coalman

Given how much better we've played this season without him and how poorly he did on loan to WBA last time out - I'm not sure the argument that Armstrong is "good for the Championship" holds any more. His game seems to have been being largely anonymous then lashing the ball at goal if it drops to him anywhere near the goal. Whether they'll be able to play him off a number 9 or from the sides and he'll be able to recapture his previous form is open to question.

Or their data is incredibly noisy. Or, the more terrifyingly likely option, they're doing the kind of data analyses where they don't have a clear hypothesis but want to check the correlations of as many variables as possible so they can pretend causal relationships and make terrible decisions.

If you think about it, working for a charity that re-homes unwanted pets bought in error has a lot of crossover. Our football club has a lot of players bought in error that we need to find new homes for.

If you watch the slowmo of the penalty he won against Leicester the way he drifts past the defender and twists to get his body past is a thing of beauty. The defender thinks he's gotten between him and ball and then finds he's wriggled past by cleverly shifting his body past the block. https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxODlg3ZTcRkfXBbFjVElCvf3ODtoOqqYS?si=AWfqYLnu_qs_r1A9

£6m a year on these three 😮 McCarthy - 40k Roerslev - 40k Archer - 40k Then wtaf Aribo - £70k who is at least off our books at the end of the season At least Stephens and Azaz are key parts of the team. Stephens - 40k Azaz - 50k We were paying the fat end of ten million a year for 4 players who couldn't get a game. That's terrifying.

I'm pretty sure Portsmouth is still a rat infested hell hole where 6 fingered freaks do unspeakable things to fish.

Agree we've totally mismanaged him. When he came back from injury we'd already signed Brooks on loan and he barely got a look in after. We didn't give him a chance to come back because Russ had his favourites. Then Russ preferred BBD to him and loaned him out straight away the next season.

Tonda had a good start then got found out. I said at the time the true test would be in whether he was able to adapt and learn. Which he has. The negative was how long he persisted with something that clearly wasn't working. That doesn't make me a convert (yet) but he's heading in the right direction. If he keeps learning then we've got a chance at the playoffs which nobody would've believed a month and a half ago.

He's just keeping the seat warm so Martin can join in the summer after his honeymoon.

That was the 2025 edition Saints. This is the new 2026 edition where we have multiple players in almost every position and a settled formation and tactics. Not that formation or tactics make any difference mind you.

It has to be Wolves so Armstrong can show us what we're missing.

I'm surprised his girlfriend lets him post on social media.

Am always nervous when former players or managers come back. Will be interesting to see what Jones has left in the tank after a truly magnificent box-of-frogsing last week at the final whistle. As possibly the fittest man in Europe I expect him to bounce back though. There's actual competition for places at Saints for the first time in a long time. And not the who can be the most frustrating player on the pitch kind. Is this what it feels like to begin to look forward to football matches again?

Armstrong "inspires" Wolves to victory over Grimsby. We're totally getting Wolves in the next round of the cup.

He's fine for the FA Cup against Grimsby.

I think that part of the problem with Saints over reliance on bad statistics is that we treat players as stat generating machines rather than individuals with strengths and weaknesses. So we move them around interchangeably and play to a team system rather than to the players' strengths then are surprised when we don't get the most out of them. Archer is very much affected by this as was Armstrong this season. Playing someone whose strength has always been playing off the shoulder for through balls and expecting them to win balls leading the line and get on the end of the crosses that we built a team to supply is naive at best. Add to that, the fact that we chopped and changed our attackers constantly for the first half of the season and it's easy to see how any player is going to be played out of form or demoralised. It also makes bringing new players into the side harder because they're coming into an unsettled side where they're going to struggle to make an impact and where we were (up until the start of January) inviting teams to come and play in our half without any kind of out ball to relieve pressure. It's made our attacking players look a lot worse than they actually are. That's not saying I think we should persist with Archer. We've burned that bridge pretty thoroughly to the extent I don't think he can succeed at Southampton any more and based on his current form he's a liability we can't afford unless there are no other options available.

Each club gets 25 medals to distribute as the club sees fit to players, staff and officials. Players need to have played 25% of matches to be eligible and the club can purchase more medals if it chooses to do so. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that Rangers aren't going to bust a gut giving Martin a medal if they win.

As will Ruben Selles and Nathan Jones 😮

Congrats Russ. Now get back in the management game. Your time at Rangers was far too fleeting. LOLcester desperately needs a manager that knows his way around the Championship and you owe Lineker for that kitchen interview PR he did when he thought you were going there last time.

It may well be he wanted out in the transfer window and his heart isn't in it any more. It's quite a comedown from a £15m transfer fee to a newly promoted side to barely playing a game to playing yourself into 4th choice striker (with Armstrong gone) behind one of the U21s. Players have bad games and they have good games. Archer only seems to have bad games. His first touch is painful to watch. His passes find the opposition and he can't score from right in front of goal. When he tries to challenge for first or second balls he bounces off the player and falls over. It reminds me of Armstrong in just how easily he's knocked off the ball. He doesn't seem to anticipate where the ball is going and just runs to where it's landed. It doesn't help that we play with one striker up top and Archer is best playing off a big target man. In our preferred formation he is a passenger and that's not going to change. Even with a big target man beside him he's reliant on the rest of the team to create for him. When he joined his pace and finishing were decent but he seems to have lost both.

Can we change the thread title to "Saints 2-1 LOLcester", please?

I was just coming here to beg for a thread title change. Well played.

And there's the answer to today's question of "what's the most humiliating and inconvenient way for LOLcester City to get knocked out of the Cup?"

He set this game up to lose whilst being as annoying as possible to Leicester. Must be gutting to be risking being thwarted at the death.

Bree! Ahahahahahahahahahahaha