coalman

Good save. It's coming though.

We're ponderous. Keep passing it backwards. This is a bit of a throwback.

City of rats https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/news/people/watch-rats-infestation-at-portsmouth-block-a-year-after-complaints-causes-anger-for-locals-5232485

The Saints-iest thing that can happen here is we sign up Tonda as full time manager and then he gets poached in either January or at the end of the season.

I think he's a midfielder trapped in a left back position. I know that midfielder was his original position and he seems to enjoy getting forwards. That's a very strong part of his game. I've also seen him go missing in the defensive aspect of his game, particularly when we're on top and applying pressure. The trouble is that a decent team is going to exploit that as happened many times during our last Championship season. If he can add that defensive part to his game he can be a really good player for us. Otherwise he's a decent player that's also periodically a liability. It's the same as with Stephens who is a great backs to the wall centre back but can switch off. Or Smallbone who is great as passing and finding pockets of space but isn't going to win any battles in the middle of the park.

Eckert becomes interim boss. Lallana drops to the U21s. We start winning. Coincidence?

I'm not used to feeling like this at the end of football matches.

Need another couple of goals before I start feeling the win is safe.

Hopefully many more than one game like this.

4!

Oh my lord

This is rather good. Am I still dreaming?

Here's hoping Sky offer a picture in picture Nathan Jones cam.

Look at that spine. Bazunu, Stephens, Bragg, Armstrong. *sigh* COYR - I still want to believe in you.

I sincerely hope so. But it's Sport Republic so :shrug:

He needs to make sure he carries out Rasmus's tactics and formation as instructed and keep our superstars like Stephens, Manning and Armstrong happy. It's a balancing act few are going to be capable of as witnessed by Will Still recklessly dropping his captain and star 'keeper and losing his job despite playing regulation Southampton-ball.

I can totally see Sport Republic Board Meetings being like this.

The club has shown, with Lallana, that bringing back a former player who has played at the highest level can completely revolutionise the first team irrespective of whether they're fit enough to pull on the shirt. I really hope Romeu isn't the same but it's Sport Republic - their recruitment has been an omnishambles.

Apparently he's a great guy to have around the place. He'll be sorely missed. We're down to our last 10 or 11 guys who are great to have around the place. Lose too many more and we might have to recruit actual footballers and coaches.

"Jack Stephens has to be captain" is perhaps the most inadvertently brilliant sick burn of our playing squad I can imagine.

What stuff? Playing wall passes about the defence until we give the ball away? Hopeful balls up to a pint sized striker? Ball watching when players cross into our box? Throwing your hands in the air when we concede? Pointing at team mates when we concede? Are we really training that?

Is Romeu the new Lallana?

He didn't try to hit the ground running though. He lost me when he squandered the time off for the World Cup and didn't set himself up for the winnable run of games after. By which point the writing was on the wall. He had the potential to be magnificently crazy a la Mourinho but he wound up doing a Sturrock (who, if memory serves, asked someone else to take training first thing so he could have a bacon sarnie).

Tell that to Erasmus.

It's symptomatic of the culture of the club. Nothing is ever anyone's fault. Responsibility is a form of performative art. And this culture starts at the top - as a former boss used to say "a fish rots from the head".