chiknsmack

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.

Meslier is no better than Bazunu. With Ramsdale still on the books we were never going to be spending up on another proper #1, and with McCarthy on the wages he's on we were unlikely to push him down to #3 and make him the highest paid cone-picker-upperer in Championship history. Ryan on a free made perfect sense to me, but otherwise it was always going to be a random warm body to be #3. If you're looking for a positive, some people want Sargent from Norwich and the fact that we've picked up a player from them means our recruitment team is talking with theirs. He's their captain and has scored four in four this season so I don't know what our chances are, and on the negative side I'm wary that no PL clubs have come for him so they must not think he's good enough (though maybe 15 goals in the equivalent minutes of 28 games last season wasn't enough; this season at 25/26 could be the one where he scores 25/26 in 35 and gets his PL move whether his club gets promoted or not). He required surgery last season and missed a couple of months, so he has the perfect injury profile for a SR signing. And he speaks American so he and Downes can help each other settle in.

Someone posted his name (and nothing else) earlier in the thread. Probably just planting some ITK seeds.

We did it in the second half against Brighton, and won that half 2-1. On that occasion the two in midfield was Fraser and Charles, with Robinson, Archer, and Armstrong the front three. Obviously you want Fernandes in there somewhere too, so that forces Fraser out. But Still appears to want Fraser on the pitch, so that forces Armstrong out. BUT Still also appears to want Armstrong on the pitch, so that forces Archer (or Downs, or Stewart) out. If you want both Fraser and Armstrong in your front three (I don't, though it seems Still does for now) you either play Armstrong up top or you play him on the right with Fraser on the left (benching Robinson) and a striker up top. 3-4-3 also only gives you two midfielders, when our best three (Fernandes, Charles, Downes) are all very good. The more recent change is to play Fraser at wingback instead of Sugawara, which makes room for Armstrong on the right and a proper striker up the middle. But that still only gives you two midfielders, so instead against Stoke Still went with Fernandes on the right of the front three (it was more of a 3-4-2-1 than a 3-4-3), Downes and Charles as the midfield two, and Armstrong up top. Personally I think the correct 3-X-X formation with the squad we have is 3-5-2. You get all of Fernandes/Charles/Downes on the pitch, you can play Fraser on the right of the five, and you play two up top (so even if Armstrong has to play its him plus another striker). Though the downside of this is that Robinson doesn't fit; he's not a striker in a two and he's not really a wingback. It's difficult to accommodate Robinson, Armstrong, and Fraser in the same lineup. Especially if you also want Fernandes, Charles, and Downes. With three at the back you have those six plus one other as your midfield and attack, and with four at the back it's worse (you go down a CB but presumably go up two proper fullbacks rather than playing Fraser at FB, giving you six spots for those six midfield and attacking players). The obvious answer is to not play both Fraser and Armstrong, but it seems like Still rates their workrate and experience. Maybe that will change with Downs and Stewart being fully over their recent illnesses and the Stoke performance being pretty average with Armstrong up top. What does a 4-4-2 look like? Well for starters there's only two midfielders so Downes is on the bench. Then your wingers are Fraser and Robinson with zero depth (BBD? Edozie? Sugawara? We tried Armstrong on the right of the 4 in preaseason and he looked lost) behind them. Robinson shouldn't be asked to play 90 minutes 35+ times in his first year of senior football, and if you were to ask that of him he'd have more of a chance on the left of a front three than on the left of a midfield four where he'd have more defensive work to do. So 4 at the back means 4-3-3. All three main midfielders, and a front three of Robinson, a striker, and someone else on the right. If Fraser and Armstrong are nailed-on starters, one of them's your striker. So the difference between 4-3-3 and 3-4-3 is that in the former you have four defenders, three midfielders, and both Armstrong and Fraser in the front three, whereas in the latter you have four defenders (three CBs and a defensive wingback), two midfielders, Fraser at wingback, and room for a striker in the front three. Basically, do you want Downes or Downs? Of course, all of that changes with an injury (If any of Robinson/Fraser/Armstrong is out the other two play alongside a striker and the full midfield three, if any of the midfield three are injured you can make the like-for-like swap and bring in Smallbone or drop Fraser into midfield and play a striker) or new signing (maybe a midfielder leads to a return of Ralph's 4-triple 2; Charles and Downes behind Fernandes and the new guy behind two high-energy high-pressing forwards). And it all changes if Still doesn't see a need for both Fraser and Armstrong to play.

He starts the game with one striker and ends the game with three. Martin wouldn't be so flexible.

We have a Premier League quality player willing to play for us in the Championship, at a fee that's less than half of what he'd cost if he was English (or even coming from anywhere bar Russia), and a natural deadline of the transfer window SLAMMING shut. And instead of letting the player and his agent put pressure on the club president to accept the deal, you want to threaten to withdraw the deal and make the president even less enthusiastic about accepting it? We are one of the eight biggest teams in the second biggest league in England. They are the Russian champions who would be playing in the Champions League if not for the war. When framed like that you can see why the president might want a better landing spot for their captain and star who has been at the club since he was 17. We were hamstrung by PSR to a degree after the January window where Rasmus tried to keep us up. Next season that loss will have cycled off the books, so we'll be free to have a proper crack like Sunderland if we get promoted. We might not be able to spend quite as much as them because we already have a bit of deadwood on PL wages (as opposed to their now-deadwood on Championship wages), but we're also a chance to have a decent PL-level core (Ramsdale, THB, Charles, Fernandes, Dibling, Spertsyan, anyone else who handles the step up with a good Championship season behind them) to build around. Sounds like a job for Mark Bitcoin.