chiknsmack

Did he not do exactly this last season?

He could've done better (keeping his body open and using his left leg rather than his right might've helped), but "At fault again" is a bit harsh.

Looks good to me. Decent age, over 150 games at this level, would weaken another side in the division. The comments mention he's improved quite a bit lately too so there could be upside to come. I can't understand the idea that Smallbone would want to go to Sheffield Utd. They're odds-on to be relegated this year and probably pay less in wages than we do even after any 40% reduction for relegation. That's before considering any "one of our own" sentimental stuff. With Downes in he could potentially find himself 4th pick in a 3-man midfield (though personally I'd have Downes at DM behind Alcaraz and Smallbone, with Charles not being asked to be a starter as a teenager but getting playing time when we switch to two DMs and one CM to close out a game (subbed on for Alcaraz or Smallbone) or if we have injuries at CM/DM or across the backline.

Norwich looked pretty good (I'd say clearly the better team) against Hull last week and just drew with us. Given that nothing much has changed for them (Barnes replacing Pukki, Stacey replacing Aarons, plus Duffy and Fassnacht joining) and they only finished 13th last season, every team from 4th through to 15th from last year would be a chance. Anything could happen.

Adams doesn't seem to be pushing for a move but hasn't signed a new contract either. A handful of clubs rumoured to be interested, and Bournemouth had a bid rejected a few weeks ago. Sulemana hasn't featured due to a hamstring injury. Everton and French clubs interested in a loan or transfer, but nothing happening publicly.

Left foot Manning or Perraud, right foot Alcaraz or Smallbone.

He can tackle, he has decent technical skill on the ball, he's not good enough in the air to play CB effectively, and when he has one of his brain explosions it'll be further away from the goal. A proper midfield enforcer to go around smashing into opposition attackers when they're on the break is better than a Smallbone/JWP they'd be less afraid of. The reason Lyanco is as popular as he is is because he's one of the few players in the past few years to show a bit of aggression and passion and get stuck in. There's less value in that now that we're in the Championship and should be a big fish in a small pond (dominating possession and relying on a skill advantage to win games) rather than the reverse, but in the past couple of years having someone who could lift the crowd and his teammates by throwing himself into a tackle or two would've been considerably better at DM than Diallo was.

This is the problem with VAR, not VAR itself. Used for clear and obvious errors as intended (no drawing lines to decide if someone was offside by half an armpit) and it improves the game by eliminating obvious injustices. There's no reason every goal couldn't be checked by VAR in the time it takes the scoring team to celebrate and get back in position for the kickoff, and if an error can't be identified by then then it isn't "clear and obvious". So play on.

@Brissysaint@austsaint@Gingeletiss The only game from last night I can watch on demand with BeIN Connect is Blackburn vs West Brom. That may have been played earlier than the other (3pm) games, so it could be that BeIN Connect only has non-3pm games on demand. I'm not sure if the 3pm games were even available live.

It looks like there are BeIN Sports channels on Foxtel, which are different from the "BeIN Connect" streaming service. The streaming service looks like it has all games, live and on demand. Though I could be wrong. https://connect-au.beinsports.com/en/

$130/yr for BeIN Sports, which I believe has on-demand viewing for seven days after the match. That's what I'm using in NZ anyway.

This is the correct comparison for Sulemana. He may not get there, but he legitimately has the potential to. I'm not sure a dominant, possession-based team is the right fit for him (he could better use his pace in a more open, counter-attacking team) but there's potentially a very, VERY good player in there.

Same here in NZ. Crazy price especially when you have things like Onuachu at 25/1 or Sulemana and Delap at 50/1. The dangers are the goals being shared widely (Adams/Armstrong/Tella all around 15/1) and transfers (either Alcaraz leaving or Piroe at 9/1 coming in). On the plus side, Alcaraz could get free kick duty ahead of Smallbone on the off chance JWP leaves.

https://store.southamptonfc.com/replica-kit/replica-kit/goalkeeper-kit/

If we would already need to replace three (or more) CBs, there's no point in making it more. That said, even as a Lyanco fan, I've had about enough of him. I'm getting close with Bazunu too.

Good enough for the Champions League and then Europa League to some, not good enough for 20 games in the Championship to others. Yet another reason to ignore the "Remember when everyone on here said X" posts.

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No. I try to remember as little as possible of the Pellegrino era. As far as I remember It went Adkins, Poch, Koeman, Gabbiadini scoring against Swansea, Ralphball, Broken Ralph trying to play too defensively, a fever dream involving a cracked-out ferret with a Welsh accent, then Spanish Broken Ralph. I get what you're saying here. austsaint saying "he's young and passes well so he's just like Pochettino. Let's call him Scotchettino" is a bit silly. That said, he got the job at MK Dons (who had picked up three points from 27 to start the season) while he was still playing, and kept them up. The next year he got them to mid-table. He then, less than a week before the season started, took over a Swansea side whose parachute payments had run out (with all the negative impacts that has on the squad and finances). They finished 15th, then improved to 10th last year. It seems that all he does is walk into bad situations and improve things. Someone who can do THAT is exactly what we need.

Our new manager is... a shit striker all over again? Personally I'm not hoping Martin changes. And I AM worried that he has no Plan B and no interest in trying one (though the last 18 months of Ralph - when he went from "Plan A: high press and try to score quickly off a turnover" to "Plan B: try to not concede 9 in a game" - were shit). I'm just hoping that his possession-based Plan A - which is proven to work at higher levels than the Championship - when combined with a better squad than he had last year results in a better result than he managed last year (top 2 instead of top 10). Saints are a big fish in a small pond this year, compared to the past few where the opposite was the case. Chances are we'll have plenty of possession whether we intentionally play keepball or not. So having our whole gameplan and coaching be based on the idea of "we have the ball a lot; how do we score?" is a good idea.

You contribute more goals and assists than most midfielders in the league. It's the modern fullback (a la "Trent", the greatest right back the world has ever seen); defending doesn't matter.

SR have said the plan is to win the Championship this year. The entire squad has just taken a 40% pay cut. A couple of experienced first team regulars have fallen off the wage bill. SR chucked in over 130m last year, so the clubs isn't financially restricted like under Gao. If the plan is to get back to the Prem ASAP and stay there, we need to win promotion with a squad which has at least a handful of players who are PL mid-table quality. We have maybe two handfuls of such players now, and a few will obviously go (Salisu apparently doesn't want to be here, Adams didn't sign a new contract in the Prem, Lavia is top shelf, ABK is a German international with interest from multiple German top flight clubs) so we really need to be hanging onto most of the rest if we plan to have another 10+ years in the Prem starting in 2024-25.

The other reason to keep him would be to play him at DM where his defensive recklessness wouldn't be so costly and he'd get more use of his technical skill on the ball. No-one can say he's a boring player and, though boring is often preferable in a CB, in a DM/HM boring is bad (see this forum's opinion of JWP and his lack of attacking influence in open play).

It's Stu. AA is 33 x 6 (average carries per 60 touches, loses the ball at the same rate as Aribo). Though he's not really a midfielder, so not sure it's comparable. Alcaraz is 36 x 7.5, but didn't play enough minutes to make the graph. JWP rarely loses the ball, but it's not because he's press-resistant. It's because he passes it backwards or sideways to someone else. If he would ever turn to progress the ball himself, he'd lose it more. The reason so many people around here don't like him is because he's so far to the left on this graph, meaning he never tries to carry the ball and start an attack. Maybe it was his job to be a DM and never get involved in helping the team attack, but it shouldn't have been because a.) that's not his game, and b.) a team that needs to score goals to win games, and win games to stay up, can't afford to have a player whose job is to pick up the ball in defensive midfield and NEVER look to move it towards the opposition goal.

If Everton don't break the rules, perhaps we sign Tarkowski. If we sign Tarkowski, perhaps we concede half a dozen fewer goals. If we concede half a dozen fewer goals, perhaps we pick up enough points to stay up. Now do the same with McNeil. Now consider how much Onana added to Everton. Now consider who they'd have had to sell to stay under their FFP limits. And so on. There are so many knock-on effects from Everton's alleged cheating that you can't cleanly unravel it. We know being in the Prem versus the Championship is worth about $100m per year. So Saints, Leeds, Leicester, Burnley, Norwich, and Watford have been robbed of some part of $100m ($200m in the case of the latter two). We don't know who has been robbed of exactly what (and perhaps Everton would've stayed up both years even without cheating) but you could maybe try to make things right financially. Making the assumption that Everton have stayed up in the past two season because of their cheating, they've benefited to the tune of $200m over the past two years. So while a $200m fine to be split between the six relegated teams wouldn't fix things, it would help and serve as a deterrent to other teams thinking about cheating. Relegating Everton to the Championship or League 1 also doesn't fix things, though it again does help and does serve as a deterrent. Relegating Everton to the National League North AND making them pay Saints/Leeds/Leicester/Burnley $100m each AND pay Norwich & Watford $200m each still wouldn't fix things. There's no clean fix when you can't figure out the degree to which Everton's cheating harmed the other clubs.