chiknsmack

Jelert and Long loans cancelled, Bree returns and Peretz brought in on loan. Minimal financial cost, doesn't tie us to anything long-term, improves the squad. That's the type of movement I'd expect in this window. (I still like Jelert and would want to see more of him, but he was supposed to be back from injury late last month or early this month and yet hasn't made a squad.) Bayern are disappointed he's only been playing in the cup. https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/25691801.southampton-fc-linked-loan-move-bayern-munich-keeper/

GK: we have two mediocre (at best) options, but won’t be buying one when we have Ramsdale on the books. Sell him in January and I still don’t think we’d bring in an upgrade. Had Pope kept him on the bench maybe we could’ve gotten him back in January, which would’ve been nice. RB: Roerslev hasn’t impressed, Jelert hasn’t had a chance, Edwards CDAJFU. Bree is back from loan in January and would help, especially if Jelert’s loan is cancelled as is rumoured. CB: THB and Wood look broadly competent. The others don’t. In preseason I was calling for a veteran leader who has played at a higher level; Spors decided Jack Stephens fit the bill (I was looking for someone who was actually good enough for the Championship). Unlikely with the numbers we have but would make sense, especially if we want three on the pitch at once. LB: Manning can’t defend but is decent in attack and has free kicks in his locker (but so does Scienza). Welington is probably better. Jelert can cover here. DM/CM: Bar Romeu we don’t really have any DMs; we have CMs who can tackle. Charles and Jander are too good for the Championship, Downes is good for this level. Four for two spots is plenty, especially when you have Aribo/Edwards and Bragg/Sesay as depth. Number 10/AM: Azaz with Scienza as cover. Without those two it gets a bit messy (Matsuki and Fraser?) but if you can only buy one player it’s not going to be and upgrade on either of them, nor a third-choice Number 10 when we don’t play with one. Left Winger/Forward: Scienza, Robinson, Edozie, Fraser. Plenty. Right Winger/Forward: For wingers, it’s Fellows then nothing. In the current 3-4-3 it’s Fellows and Manning as wingers/wingbacks, so Azaz/Bree/Jelert are all right “winger” options. Without Fellows the better option would be changing to a 4-3-3 and playing an extra defender and midfielder instead of wingbacks. Four at the back, then Downes+Charles+Jander behind Azaz+Armstrong+Scienza. Centre Forward: Stewart great but injured. Armstrong too good for this level. Archer in theory is up to this level but isn’t showing it. Downs is probably a busted flush, at least as far as this season goes. Robinson’s an option, Oyekunle has handled the step up to U21s and been around the squad, Dipepa has 30-odd games of senior football under his belt. The attack and midfield are good and have decent depth. The defence and keepers are questionable. I suppose that’s borne out in the recent results when we’ve scored plenty but haven’t kept a clean sheet. The fullbacks are okay. The keepers probably aren’t for changing whether we want them to or not. We have the numbers at CB to put together a decent enough trio. I’d be fine with bringing in no new players in January, but gun to my head I’d want a Fonte-like figure at CB. I’ve actually thought ahead that if we go up we could look at bringing back VVD (and it’s not just pining for a former player who moved on to bigger things); in the last year of his contract, being trashed as not good enough for an elite side anymore, but done enough to garner respect from his teammates when he tells them what to do and clearly good enough to anchor the defence of a mid-table PL side. So it’s the main hole I see in the side. Tomiyasu is a free agent and could maybe fill it, but is an injury risk and apparently close to joining Ajax. I’m not watching enough PL this season to know of anyone who’s been benched but is still in that “too good for the Championship” range.

In addition to sitting back and inviting pressure late we're also back to the old habit of having no-one on the edge of the box, both from corners and in general. Downes and Romeu were both dropping into the backline and leaving Zone 14 empty. For their goal Gray cut inside and Downes wasn't there to close him down. Had he chosen not to shoot he had two unmarked players he could've passed to. It could be intentional (three at the back isn't thought to be enough defenders when the opponents are chasing the game so Manning has to play narrower and make it a compact back four - which would explain why he isn't being dropped for failing to close down crosses - and Downes has to drop back as an extra defender). But it's not working. We'd be better off either trusting the three CBs to be good enough and taking pressure off them by closing down crosses and midfield, or changing formation to four or five at the back with at least one proper fullback instead of Fellows and/or Manning. Fellows off (or Scienza off and Fellows pushed up the pitch as an outlet) for Romeu, Manning to LB, a CB to RB, 4-3-3.

Exactly. How people thought someone calling him a shit Joe Rothwell was anything other than a joke I don't know.

*whooosh* My tongue was firmly in my cheek, though if you want to take it seriously Rothwell came on against Huddersfield and scored two goals when Saints were 2-0 down, then made the cross which became the own goal to equalise when Saints were 3-2 down. He then came on against Sunderland when an early 2-0 Saints lead had been pegged back to 2-2 and scored another quick double. What has Azaz done? Scored against a Wednesday side in administration, butchered a chance to open the scoring against Charlton, then scored the fourth and fifth goals against Charlton, the last being poked in from an inch out. Boro fans did warn us that he can go missing in games when it matters...

Flat track bully. Until he conjures up a couple of goals when they're desperately needed he's a shit Joe Rothwell.

It'd be interesting to see this analysis if the x-axis was creativity instead of attacking performance. Saints are on the far left on a Wasteful/Clinical spectrum, but I imagine they'd be on the far right on a Uncreative/Creative spectrum. Which would make it clear that the problem isn't the manager, the formation, the tactics, the midfield, or even the defence (which according to the above is a touch above average rather than the calamitously shit I thought it was), but the finishing. So the correct move from SR was to say "Still is our manager for at least the next three years regardless of results, and ideally will fall in love with the club and continue to develop to the point five/ten years from now where he's rebuffed approaches from bigger clubs to lead Saints back to Europe". Then it'd be on the players to either play for him or not. No more of this "We don't respect the manager so we're going to half-arse our job until he gets sacked like the last six". Whoever the next manager is, I hope he's an upgrade on Still (but who in their right mind who's better than Still wants the job, unless they're happy to be unemployed six months from now?) and gets the requisite support from SR that the players know that if they don't perform to the best of their abilities they'll be gone before the manager is.

It's a relatively new tactic employed by pressing teams. Put the ball into touch down the opponents end, press the fuck out of them as they mess around at the back, and score from their mistakes. PSG are credited with starting it. (The one in the video was poor because MLS is of a poor standard in general.) As Saints fans we know pressing a team obsessed with possession and playing out from the back can pay dividends. This is taking it to the extreme: "We know Saints will mess around at the back and make mistakes, so let's just give them the ball and let them shoot themselves in the foot".

A first XI midfield/wide attack of Lavia, Fernandes, Alcaraz, Scienza, and Fellows is decent for the PL. A second XI of Downes, Charles, Brooks, Edozie, and SAA is top of the Championship. Add in Jander, Aribo, and Azaz, and you have good depth in midfield. Ramsdale is a PL keeper. The problems, as we all know, come in defence and in the centre forwards. ABK and THB are supposed to be £15m players with the potential to become £50m ones. Edwards and Quarshie are supposed to be £5m players with the potential to rise to £15m then £50m. Unfortunately, none of them look like being targets for the big six anytime soon. None of our FBs are worth writing home about. I haven’t seen enough of Jelert to be for or against him. The others are “too good for the Championship” at best. Stewart was an Ings-like gamble on a talented but injury-prone player at a discounted price. He looks to have the Ings-like ability when fit, but “when fit” is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. TL;DR SR can find good, young, relatively cheap midfielders and wingers but can’t do the same at GK/FB/CB/CF and are – Ramsdale aside – unwilling to drop big money on the finished article with less room for development/price appreciation.

There was a staff message for Mr Stapleford? to meet Mr Saint in the Kingsland, then a later one that Mr Saint had left the building. (I'm watching a stream with no commentary; usually I can't make out the message or the chants. )

Just goes to show how hard done by Will Still was when you can't find 11 players whose performances this season qualify them as good or better. On paper the squad should be challenging to win the league, but the game's played on grass and on grass they've let him down badly. He managed to figure out a few things (McCarthy > Bazunu, Captain Jack sucks, Azaz doesn't have the workrate to play box-to-box, none of our fullbacks can defend, none of our attackers are clinical in front of goal) and tried to work around them, but it's hard to get anything done with an adequate keeper, two good CMs, four good wide attackers, a good-but-fragile striker, and a bunch of players who should be good enough but in practice just haven't been. Hopefully the new manager doesn't spend the next two months tinkering to learn the same things and then spend another month integrating some January signings before finally getting some results. With Still the discovery period (bar finding out what Aribo can do) was done and he (or Trollope, or Romeu) could focus on getting after the players who aren't playing well enough.

That sounds plausible; Scienza is a bit of a stat nerd/computer game favourite. I think MLG was posting graphs on here before he signed showing that he was an extreme outlier in some attacking stats, and the YouTube channel Sincere FC has a couple of videos applying the NBA metric usage rate (how often your team's possessions end with you) to football, where Leo stood out. When comparing "end product" (goals, assists, and shot-creating actions) to this usage rate (both stats being per 96 minutes played and adjusted for team possession stats), he was amongst the highest in Europe for both stats last season. For CAMs he's in the same region (but ahead of) players like Bruno Fernandes and Eberechi Eze. That is, his teams possessions end with him a lot, and he creates a lot with the ball. Paul Onuachu also got a special mention in one of the videos. His usage rate last season was higher than players like Mbuemo and Saka, but his end product was practically non-existent (ie. his high usage rate came from him losing the ball a lot as the only target man for a shit team, as opposed to Mbuemo/Saka/Scienza getting theirs from attacking and shooting a lot).

Three at the back, three at the front, four in the middle to help out with both. I imagine Welington will be the most attacking and Jelert the least, so plenty of opportunity for Jander and (more likely) Charles to get forward. It'll be interesting to see how the back three line up. Wood is clearly the best in the air of the three so should be in the middle, the other two are clearly better with the ball at their feet than Wood so should be out wide, but they also both want to be on the right. (Some would say that THB had been finding himself out of position a lot early this season when playing on the right, so stick him on the left and even if his positioning is shit it's just par for the course.) Having a right-footed LCB - whoever it may be - means he's more interested in playing into midfield than down the line. Instead of long balls down the line or to the striker, Jander can get a chance to get on the ball in midfield.

He was signed from the German second division. Sporting Director Johannes Spors has come here from the German second division. Head of Scouting Tim Lederer has come from Hoffenheim, where the first team is in the German top flight and the seconds (who he was more involved with) are in the third. There are plenty of situations where SR have used stats and data to help with recruitment (as every side does nowadays), but to say Downs (and Quarshie) are anything other than signings where Spors used his eyes is retarded. If you're going to do that you also have to give credit for finding Tadic and Pelle to "computer data" and the "black box" rather than Koeman. It's just as obvious that they were signed on the back of Koeman using his eyes as it is that Downs and Quarshie were signed on the back of Spors using his eyes. Maybe Spors should've gone to Specsavers, but that's another argument.

They pay us the £15m they owe, AND they pay us £80k a week to cover most of his wages? He then comes back to be what, Azaz's backup? Or does he replace one of Azaz/Charles/Jander and deprive a youngish player we have on a permanent contract of valuable developmental minutes in the Championship? Neither of them are good enough for West Ham. We want to be better than West Ham. Neither of them are good enough for what we want to be. So I'd prefer neither and another Charles/Jander/Fernandes/Lavia YHGTI gamble instead. Gun to my head I'd say JWP, though it's close. But the answer is neither.

How much?

He was good, but in the wrong area of the pitch. He needed to get further up the pitch so the side as a whole could play further up; him playing so deep is part of the reason there was so much "Russball" in the first half. If Fellows pushes right up and pins the fullback back, there's room for Azaz or Jander to drift out and pick up the ball where Fellows was and then look to play forward.

Still doesn't have a preferred style, his preferred strategy is "whatever wins". At Reims it was Ralph-style counterpress and playing long balls in behind after a turnover to send a pacey striker (Balogun) through one-on-one with the keeper. At Lens it was a 4-2-5 (with the keeper as part of the four) when being pressed, with the front five a long way up the pitch and looking to drop into the massive space between them and the holding midfielders to pick up the ball. Or a 3-2-5 when further up the pitch (with the keeper staying at home). The wingers pushed right up to pin the fullbacks, which meant if Plan A (AMs dropping back from the front five into central pockets to pick up the ball from the back five) wasn't working, Plan B was the AMs dropping back and wide where the defenders and holding mids couldn't follow them and fullbacks couldn't go to them for fear of leaving their man (the wingers) free. Even on the occasions where "wingers whipping in crosses" has been a thing, it's been from Plan B and the crosses have generally been low crosses after an AM has drifted wide and worked an overload on the opposition fullback. It hasn't been "float one to the back post and let the big man go get it" type crossing. Archer, Downs, and Armstrong are all well-suited to the Reims plan, but that plan overall suits an underdog better than one of the (allegedly) best teams in the league. You could try to force that plan by consistently punting the ball long to the opposition (forcing them to have most of the possession and try to play though you) and then pressing the fuck out of them, but at this level and against us they're more likely to just punt the ball back and maybe win it with their Moore/McBurnie-style CFs. So I'd expect the Lens plan (pack the central areas, play short passes, if playing through the middle isn't working force overloads in wide areas and fire crosses/pullbacks into the box) to be more like what we see. Tall Paul isn't built for pressing. He also isn't built for tapping in low crosses (there's past evidence of him getting into good poaching positions and scuffing them in, which is a little better than Downs so far who gets into the right position but whiffs the shot entirely). There's no evidence of him running in behind and scoring a goal like Downs did in preseason. So no, we shouldn't have kept him.

The (default, flat) 4-4-2 doesn't have a four-man midfield. It has a two-man midfield and two wingers. Variants of the 4-4-2 like the 4-box-2 (Ralph's 4-2-2-2) or 4-diamond-2 (with two CMs playing narrow and FBs providing the width) do. The line you quoted also specified a "two-man central midfield".

Had we not had Juric you'd be saying he's "good enough for Atalanta but not for Saints".

I threw together a 25-man squad with mostly the most valuable free agents (according to Transfermarkt) and it came out to €89.4m. That's around €3.58m per player, which in the Championship would fall between Middlesbrough in 7th and West Brom in 8th. The values of the free agent players would be depressed by the fact that most of them are past their prime and have no "potential" left to realise, so on talent it's probably a better squad than those two. (The average age is 30.6, three years older than any other team in the Championship). On wages they'd probably want considerably more than they're worth (a former Barcelona/Inter/PSG/Al-Arabi player with a value of €2m like Rafinha would want higher wages than a young prospect valued at €2m like Matsuki) , and most of them have zero sell-on value. So it'd be a disaster financially. A first and second XI in a 4-2-3-1: Or in a 3-5-2: A decent number of players who in their prime were well above Championship level, and who even now cdaj at that level (though probably not for 90 minutes a game and 46 games). If the motivation was there and the injuries didn't hit too hard, is that a Championship playoff side that could go on to get 12 points in the PL?

Mateus Fernandes vibes. A little older, a little less hype, a little behind on the path (Fernandes had a year on loan in the Portuguese top flight before we signed him, Jander hasn't had any top flight experience yet) but the potential for a similar outcome.

He won a lot of defensive headers. That was the first time I'd seen much from him to get excited about.