Gloucester Saint

Certainly scoring plenty in one sense.,.

Changed it for you. I’ll admit Smallbone can be only if he’s part of a central three and Charles/Downes do his tracking back and physical work. Unfortunately the Stephens extension doesn’t offer any confidence that the club knows what a very good Championship player with a higher ceiling looks like.

Not to mention wages - West Ham won’t be contributing £90k pw to those.

The departures don’t bother me as much anymore, although the Ramsdale one is a practical concern until a #1 is recruited. But the lack of incomings sends a troubled signal. Pretty sure Charles had signed by now and as others have pointed out, Livramento, Lavia, Tella and JWP left quite late.

There needs to be a market for them for a start and the wages poor players are earning at SFC prices them out of the clubs that are really at their level and ability.

Didn’t hurt Ipswich, won’t hurt Brum this season if you have an owner who wants to have a proper go. Also, I’ve a feeling we will see the likes of Brentford coming down and being more like Luton. Leeds will stay up I reckon - just.

Season starts next Saturday and the fixtures are harder at the start. We got some early points in August against weaker teams last time and then a horror September which meant we were always chasing. Possible we do the play offs but a big ask to go all the way. We don’t agree about squad strength - Downs has a lot riding on his young shoulders, hopefully the Espanyol cameo is a portent of what’s to come. KWP was a big attacking as well as defending factor last time. If THB was fit I’d be more comfortable but the defence lacks experience and goalkeeper doubtful. Downes injury hopefully is short-term. If Still can wring a couple of wins out of what is there in August and a draw, that keeps in the top two picture if there’s some quality starter incomings and a #1 keeper, Ryan will do nicely, for this level.

Hope you’re right and the Jan 2023 splurge should’ve come off of the PSR calculations by now but who knows. Any activity is probably a bit too late for this season now but get rid of Brum and Ipswich, and 26/27 might be able to have more of a go at the autos.

He’s one of their own after all.

Alfie House made it around £40m including the SAA money before Dibling is sold. Fernandes will be going as well so that should take it over £100m. Issue as per 2023 will be the incomings. Probably will be a couple of PL 19 year old ‘projects’ on loan, I can’t see any Charles-type incomings this time. They should be recruiting a #1 keeper, even if it’s a Ryan on a free but I’ve a nasty feeling that they won’t even do that.

I wouldn’t believe anything coming out of the club any more than I would Starmer, Badenoch, Davey, Farage and whoever the Green leader is these days.

Yep, if you want to feel some sense of interest in someone’s professional sporting career and that they value the support they receive, cricket, rugby, darts - they’re the sports where that still happens. I only follow what happens at Saints in the same way someone’s been watching a soap opera for 40 years plus in TV and although it’s really not very good now, you can’t quite push the off button entirely. I feel sorry for the youngsters though as they won’t have that sense of identity with Williams/Moran/Wallaces, MLT/Shearer/Case, Antti/Beatts/Killer, L1/Champ promotion sides and the Poch/Ronald/EFL Final sides.

Moyes was on their pre-season tour in the States complaining about how difficult the transfer market was this summer and that they finally had some money to spend, the new stadium but that their league position over the last 5-6 years wasn’t helping.

There’s a few towns in the south Midlands where there’s not that much custom and looking iffy. Still no excuse to accompany raid videos with music though. Comes naturally to someone who commissions real estate videos in Gaza.

Much better day so far, Baker took two early on with looseners but bowled very well after that. Big thunderstorm and heavy rain here so if that heads north there might not be much more play today.

Good from Jess Glynne https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/clyjggjplyqo Whilst the boats do my head in, this is really tacky even for the GOP and MAGA. I’m sure BNP/Reform voters will like it though.

True, there’s not much of a football club pulse there these days.

Ha! Farage is going to regret her getting elected in Runcorn even more than Starmer regrets moron Mike Amesbury punching someone in the street. The Tory reject gift that keeps giving and doesn’t have an off switch. Marvellous. Funny how they’re not in favour of their much vaunted freedom of speech all of a sudden when the speech doesn’t align with their racist views.

Given the record of both those players in terms of going down it was a miracle the plane landed safely!

The shithousery from JWP to Zaha was classic. It was like watching a wind up device about to go off at any moment.

That’s top two for you - Taraabt produced it for QPR for example. If he’s asking Shea and Flynn to do his pressing, tackling and intercepting, and a lot of his running which he can’t do in a central two (and we all know this), he has to be regularly winning games as the advanced midfielder if Fernandes goes as expected. Taraabt was an arse but because he delivered the goods and the title, his fellow midfielders could live with it.

Smallbone is effective but only in a central three. He simply cannot do what is physically needed in a two. So if Still wants to use him, that locks him in on formation.

He did have a decent season last time but needs to be scoring double figures and similar assists if Still builds around him as Will simply cannot perform in a 2 man central midfield. There were enough examples where we leaked like a sieve and the opposition charged through gaps (see Norwich home and many others). He locks you into a 3-man central midfield, you sell him or use him as an impact player if Still changes formation, Smallbone will want to play at his age so selling is the obvious answer with only a year left. Aribo’s only got a year left also and surprised he hasn’t gone yet. Can at least play in a central two in the Champ, albeit not the PL, but he will go.

Given John Curtiss reckons 85% or so of support to Reform is leaking from the Tories, and 10%, at most 15% is from old Labour, it would be a medium-level issue that anxiety ramps up if you’re a 2024 generation Red Waller in say two-dozen seats. What Reform voters think of Badenoch is more of an issue than what they think of Corbyn. They might think Corbyn is honest but none of them voted for him on a very left wing platform in 2019 did they? In fact this demographic ran a mile to Boris and got royally shafted. The question no pollster will ever ask because it’s a poor reflection of our society but could be important is whether the Tories reclaim some support from Reform with a non-ethnic minority leader. Of course it shouldn’t matter at all but it bet it really does with a sizeable minority of Refotm voters. From a Lib Dem perspective, there’s very few people that would switch to Reform and vice versa because of Brexit. Very few Remainers would ever vote Reform and nor would ardent Brexiteers vote for us.

If you type Matt Ryan and Southampton the most frequent finding is an academic at the University.