Gloucester Saint

Their manager has a bit of Pochettino circa 2013/14 about him. Not sure why Foley wasn’t in Semmens viewfinder when Gao was selling, far more switched on about the football industry than SR will ever be. Apart from Semmens being a total smug and complacent plank. Fitted well with SFC post-2016 then.

No, I think he meant before that. 2013/14 IIRC, I was at the home game where Osvaldo and Lambert scored, latter a free kick. Ian Holloway was manager, actually a mutual consent departure and Pulis came in and kept them up. Don't know if it was 0 from 10 but was as bad as now after they also won the play off final. The first four games was De Boer in 17/18 when Palace and Saints were considering him and Pellegrino. What a choice 🤪

Getting relegated with double digit points though would be sending the club into free fall. Whereas getting over 20 points from here with somebody with a modicum of organisation would at least give some hope going into next term. The season died at 5pm today in a competitive sense but we can enjoy a few decent moments in what remains by making a positive change now, even if it’s a month later than it ought to have been professionally-speaking. Also, gates would plummet before the end of the season and the atmosphere would be very toxic from those who did still attend. Look at how we struggled to get sponsors under Branfoot and later on Lowe. Replacing the manager is an obvious decision for someone with an ounce of commercial acumen. The even better follow-up is a Director of Football for SR with Saints focus mainly to start with.

If that is true then it shows how out of their depth SR actually are. Martin Fucking Semmens again selected this shower. I don’t know why Dragan doesn’t just set fire to tens of millions of pounds on a Scottish island like the KLF did rather than tortuously throw it away constantly via Rasmus, Kraft, Russell Martin and other clueless cretins. If I was him, I’d try for a former top level manager who fancies a director role, bit of overseas travel and understands how medium-large football clubs work, and give Rasmus the heave-ho, if he can.

He can’t sit there and say ‘Rasmus warned me we must win the Leicester game or I’m gone’ tbf. More likely to be Dragan saying it, must be fed up with Rasmus and Russell and really ought to be parting company with both on Monday morning. The player trading has been dreadful again, 5 or 6 too many deals when two more Ramsdale level signings of quality were needed. Better value on PSR too.

We said that in 22/23 though, get the next appointment right finally and can see us being top 6, a lot of those players are proven in that league. The parachute payments give you a huge advantage. Rasmus must not be part of that process though, experienced top league football professionals only making that decision. He’s proven his judgement to be very poor consistently with anything SFC-related.

My sense is the former e.g. upper Championship/parachute players fit, but not 17th and above PL fit. To genuinely compete this season, we needed WGS/Adkins/Pochettino/Koeman/early Ralph fit, and the numbers and outcomes clearly indicate we are nowhere near that.

The amount of late goals conceded is not an accident. In the same way we were that bit fitter and scored a lot of late goals last season.

I don’t think he’d join as head coach and can’t blame him. Replacing Rasmus as Head of Football at SR might be different though, as long as Rasmus can be parked at Goztepe and kept away from Saints on a permanent basis.

Too true. Years beyond getting cross about it as well. Club has been rudderless since Ronald left with a lack of drive and a complacent ‘we know better than you’ attitude to both supporters and pundits alike. Well, look at the league table again tossers. I doubt they will learn though, Rasmus will appoint Michael Flynn from Cheltenham or someone from the Bulgarian fourth division who likes the same vape flavour as him to be distinctive.

I like some of the things they do but it has to correspond with the outfit you represent. And that outfit has been complacent, sloppy, self-satisfied, lacking drive and direction, thinking it knows better than everyone else and taking its fanbase for granted ever since Ronald left.

As someone else posted, it’ll be like WGS when he took over and was appalled at how unfit the squad was.

The Pochettino double training sessions need to come back.

Agree with all of that MLG - not paying attention to those small but important details at Staplewood has cost him two home wins, 4 points. That’s without the stupid playing out error at Newcastle, Bournemouth tactics with Tyler as lone striker, self-confessed Forest and Brentford tactical disasters. However, Rasmus has also made omnishambles mistakes. Dragan needs an experienced top leagues DoF to pull the strings at SR, be in charge of the SR board with Dragan and get the core football businesses right, starting with Saints. Start with the first teams and then the infrastructure. The player trading smart sheets and moneyball strategies can come again once Saints are re-established as a regular PL outfit again in a few season’s time. Otherwise Rasmus will just keep gambling and hoping to fluke an appointment and the odd transfer. TEDTalks do not make a DoF.

I sense some irony/gallows humour…

It’s more of a social observation than the beer per se - it could be a Thursday Dandelion & Burdock club instead - about the importance of social connections. I really like the fact that their debates can get heated at times but all still leave the pub as mates https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgj4pl878pwo

Agree with much of this. Would make sense for SR to have an overall DoF with top leagues experience and expand the leadership group so that Rasmus and Kraft are outvoted and outnumbered.

Agree, but not sure most of the fanbase understands how much Rasmus has been at the root of the club’s rapid decline, compared to Les Reed or Rupert Lowe. At least the latter two did have some successes to point to.

Talk about him not reading the room. All the fanbase cares about is three points vs Leicester. We couldn’t give a flying fuck if THB, JB and JS have a 50-strong passing string between them progressing us 5 yards up the pitch to meet ball possession targets.

There’s some good points here. I nearly agree with the last paragraph except I see the same continuation for the GOP as well as the Democrats. Tariffs aren’t going to revive the economy in blue collar states though. The populist and nationalistic sentiment I understand, but it’s like Gordon Brown’s comments about British jobs for British people at Ravenscraig. And then the lack of delivery leaves the communities feeling even more left behind. Reminds me of the ex-miners voting Reform because regeneration and levelling up projects they don’t see as relevant to them so they’re frozen in time. Economies evolve and it’s about retooling communities to be able to tap into it - look at the healthcare technologies and digital literacy hubs in Detroit opening up https://michigancentral.com/michigan-central-and-henry-ford-health-announce-partnership/ Wonderful to see those grand buildings dormant for decades back to productive and new use. The gaps in economic and cultural issues are getting so polarised though that I’m not sure either party can stitch together a broader Cameronite or Starmer voting coalition like you see here.

What the attached demonstrates is a need for more American African-American men to push on beyond poverty into good careers and enterprise in what is a more diverse country post-civil rights era. Regarding women, Trump can’t run away from the fact that his judges, whom he appointed, have taken away control over their bodies in many states by rolling back Roe Vs Wade, which is inexcusable. Vague boasts with no evidence ‘I’m the King of IVF’ don’t cut it when his judges have been rolling back the access to that as well. Which given how petrified the GOP and far right groups such as the Proud Boys are about White Displacement theory is insane. Not only is Trump’s past economic record dreadful but his proposed new tariffs will screw manufacturing and automobile industry in many of those marginal Electoral College seats. Harris isn’t the best candidate we’ve ever seen and yes, Biden should have stepped down well before. But voting for Trump is a very deliberate choice.

Harris has run a tidy campaign since coming into it late. For me, it’s far more an indictment on the American public, their education system and a lack of self-respect that some categories of the population vote for him. If the leader of any of the main parties stood on a podium and said ‘all middle aged white men originally from Southampton are rapists’, would you or I vote for them? Of course we wouldn’t yet millions of Latinos - we all know Mexico was a shorthand for a whole region with the ludicrous comments from him and Vance on Venezuelans taking over apartment blocks - are queuing up to support him in places like Florida. His economic record was dreadful and he’s a bankrupt several times over yet tens of millions of people seem to think he’s going to put more money into their pockets. Yeah right. As for some African-American voters supporting him after some of the things he’s said (and meant) - words fail me. And women with the sexual assault comments. And isolationism won’t keep them safe with Putin/Xi/Kim - another myth. White male supremacist non-College educated voters - that’s his core demographic and I get why they vote for him. That’s logical.

Would any of the people posting false equivalence actually want to leave their kids in her care? Thought not.

I forgot about the civil service quote which she tried to backtrack on https://news.sky.com/story/badenoch-joking-over-claim-10-of-civil-servants-should-be-in-prison-13226045 Sometimes, she can speak sense but it gets drowned out by culture war garbage like that, the autism comments and maternity pay. I don’t think there’s much of a filter nor any intention of developing one.

Potential opportunity to defect - 18 already did https://kyivindependent.com/18-north-korean-soldiers-already-deserted-positions-by-ukraines-border-intelligence-sources-tell-suspilne/