gecko

Bit of a kick in the nuts, that. Come on against Norwich, score a worldie, then get shipped off elsewhere He'd be a capable backup to Azaz from what I've seen in preseason. Would rather have him around than not.

Careful, or this will be hailed as another "10/10 window" - we're only just shifting the last of the previous 10/10 purchases

To get an assist, someone has to put it in the net... on the current showing from our strikers, we're more than likely about to ruin these new guys' stats. Jokes aside, this transfer window has finally got interesting.

Incomings notwithstanding, if we actually manage to bin all of those players, when you consider which personnel we've already ditched, it'd be a pretty successful attempt at "getting rid of the dead wood" Just need to replace all those players with fewer, better quality players and we'll be golden. Piece of piss.

Did I miss the "monumental" part of that article? It's lots of words to say his agents are talking with West Ham (who'd have thought it given they'd made a bid) and nothing more as far as I could see, and I'm not re-reading that tripe to verify.

Yeah my immediate thought was Boufal 2.0 - a load of spins and tricks w/ very little to show for it. I notice most of the clips show him beating his man (fair play, he looked pretty good at this) but the clips cut after that, so one can only assume he ended up passing it to nowhere.

Massive deja vu for a second when talking about last year's "trauma" - If he'd mentioned "scar tissue" I might have lost it

iirc, Still likes a lot of crosses into the box too. And for all Sugawara's obvious shortcomings defensively, he did seem to put a decent ball into the box consistently. Nothing against Bree, but I'd be surprised to see Sugawara be the one that goes

agreed. Although thinking of it another way, it's not much more than what we've sold Tall Paul for, and I'd wager this guy looks better suited to the systems we expect to be seeing from Still (and Spors) guess we'll have to wait and see

I'd just written out the exact same thing, but longer, without checking the replies. I like the simplicity of the original suggestion, but there's no way to know how these guys will perform until they actually start playing. So it's all just a guess for me Would be nice to see someone close to a dead certainty for goals coming in - like we've not really had since Lambert joined - but I don't see that happening, and since we're apparently shopping in the unknown section for now, I suspect "on paper" most of us will end up thinking we look worse than our rivals.

I've seen a few tenuous Piroe -> Saints links floating around, but none of them looked particularly reliable - do you know something that others dont?

The comparison of the two players, based purely on "time spent at medical" should be at least one reason to prefer to hold onto Armstrong. The guy is almost always available and always gives his all. I appreciate the numerous arguments others have made for him to go, but I can't see him going anywhere other than to another Champ team because that's his level. And likely the only people to afford him will be in direct competition with us. So it just doesn't seem worth it to me. He's about as reliable at this level as you can get, so if we're keen to offload I just can't agree that it should be this summer. I don't care for the "motivation" argument myself, I think he'd give it all regardless.

I'm always nervous when old names come out of the woodwork, but having looked at his stats... https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/dusan-tadic/leistungsdatendetails/spieler/36139 He's 36.... but he's still playing ~45 games a season (across all comp's) and contributing 10-15 goals, and 15-20 assists. Fine, the Superlig isn't great, and I guess those stats don't really show how good he is at "pressing" these days, but I'm confident that Still would be pragmatic enough to make him work I'd have him back.

Final day performance. Wasn't the 4-4 Liverpool game the last of the season too? Looked decent in that one as well iirc

Happy if that's the case, as long as we end up with a manager who prefers even the most half-hearted of presses... 6 points incoming.

SKY blog still doubling down on Still being the main target (for now at least) - https://www.skysports.com/football/live-blog/31771/12476234/transfer-centre-live-football-transfers-news-updates-and-rumours Seems a bit cruel of you to post this, with no context, and then just bugger off. I was just starting to like the idea of Still instead of Rohl, so hoping this is just WUM behaviour.

I definitely see what you mean; he's not exactly the born leader you'd come to expect at that position. I'm sure plenty of players, as with the fans, make their mind up immediately. However, I think it's possible for him to get them on side if he turns up at training and actually does that properly, i.e. not like Jones, who you could tell the players thought/knew he was a total simpleton from minute one of the training. Perhaps a Lallana type, recent retiree, as a coach is enough to help on-board him and keep the player mutterings to minimum to at least give this guy a good shot. From a team perspective, he seems to me to be relatively adaptable, as shown through losing multiple important players and still just about getting results. Although he admits that you can only lose so many of those calibre players before your results start to show it. If he wants to be here, and Spors wants him, then I'd be happy to see what he can do in the Champ.

I don't think they should/would either. But he was rumoured to be of interest to them only a month ago since Marco Rose's departure, all hearsay of course.

I think we're an excellent prospect for someone like Rohl - we're clearly not good enough for the prem at the moment, sure, but we are likely to be one of the auto-promotion candidates for sure. A promotion on the CV always looks good, regardless of whether it was "expected" - and we're a better chance than most to get one. It also (arguably) looks better than taking some mid-table German lot to.... mid table again? You might be right though. The call of a Leipzig (or similar) may well carry other importance to him.

Totally agree. Interesting that people have generally come to the realisation that players like Mane/Van Dijk (and soon to be Dibling/Fernandes) are basically too good for us to keep long term. And we seem to appreciate that the longer term situation with players is that we simply need to be successful in replacing those that we lose to the higher-ups. It's whats Brighton, Brentford, B'Mouth etc have done well at in recent seasons. Now counter that with how quite a few people seem to be talking about hiring an excellent manager, that we'll probably lose in the near future; kinda weird isn't it. Same thing applies here imo, managers need replacing and replacing well, just like players. And that means pre-emptive scouting so we're not completely sunk/scrambling when the inevitable happens.

I admire your optimism, but I would have very real doubts about him getting you or anybody promoted again. I'd go so far as to say there'd be a very good chance with your squad, but I would fully expect that if he did manage it, that it would be far less comfortable than last time. Lots of needless goals conceded; lots of unnecessary points dropped against crap opposition. We can certainly agree on the following relegation though :-D

Jordan https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/sport/25117398.former-premier-league-chairman-claims-southampton-sale/

Guessing you mean Reims vs PSG? who are much superior to PSV, and makes the achievement that much more impressive. I've definitely enjoyed watching that, and the one from Sky the other night. He seems to be a pretty clever chap, very willing to adapt his team's shape to the opposition. He is obviously keen to press as well, so appears to tick a lot of Spors' boxes for now. My concern is that I've also seen Dyche do one (or two) of these masterclass vids. Don't get me wrong, I actually think he's a competent Champ/Prem level manager, but Dyche isn't the guy that anyone really hails as a genius manager, but he comes across incredibly well in these videos. So I can't help thinking, therefore, that most top level managers go into this level of detail in training anyway (our last few notwithstanding) - we as fans just don't tend to see them talking like this all that regularly. So whilst I think Will Still might do a job for us, I'm not necessarily going to give these videos a huge amount of weight. I think I could get a little excited if he were appointed, but I believe there are other names in the hat still of equal/better calibre. Link:

I was going to say the same thing - the only thing that swings me slightly to Cooper is his history of promotion. If we choose to stick with him upon promotion, then history says he has kept at least one other club up. Or... if we then chose to cut him loose in the prem and replace with someone more ambitious (kinda Adkins/Poch) then so be it. Anyway, I'm not sure Cooper's what the board are after, but I'd be pretty happy with him or Rohl.

Fair to say that Rohl is probably seen by many as the more "glamorous" choice - young, up-and-coming, worked in far more high profile/calibre clubs than Cooper, possibly expected to have a "higher ceiling" as a result. He's also well known by Spors, so fits the mould pretty well. It's definitely still a gamble though; as are all managerial appointments. He's worked under some excellent managers in his time already, but his own personal management is obviously pretty short and therefore not necessarily guaranteed. With Cooper, he is at least a fairly known entity - his record definitely suggests he could improve the squad and should get promotion with a team like ours with time to spare. Does he fit the "high press" desired by the DoF; perhaps not. But I think we would see some consistent performances from a team of his. I loved watching the early high-press from Ralph's team, but honestly couldn't give a crap about winning with a high tempo, vs winning with a more pragmatic style, as long as it's winning more often than not. I'd be pretty happy with either tbh; but my head still says Cooper is the better option to get us promoted first go, even if he feels a little boring to many.