Gloucester Saint

In a nutshell, why our fans can’t stand SR. Priorities are all wrong. Get the core club and first team right, then you can celebrate the marginal gains.

It’s the best deal we could’ve done. No quibbles. It’s how it’s used and who is using it as ever that’s the cause for pessimism….

If Mendes was investing it, 100%. Sadly it’s Johannes Spors and Rasmus Ankerson…

Not quick enough for a 4, hence Quarshie I guess?

We did, WBA had the no-smoking sponsor logo. Owen their Canadian ex-Man City midfielder scored. They were as bad as we were last season.

Edwards back to QPR would make sense as well. JS, THB, Quarshie and Wood - plenty.

Fine, and did need pace back there. But still Wood, Edwards, Stephens extension - too much clutter on top of THB as well. Young French lad Sanda as well. No clear sense of what they are trying to do.

Baker was very bad and had the obvious horror at the Dell v Vince Hilaire but defensively he was still better. Only just and IMHO of course!

Sometimes it’s just about easing some of the clutter around the dressing room and training ground and also a response to the ‘well, we can’t have three senior keepers’ so you resolve the issue. Same as Hurlock and Magilton on the same trancing pitch would never work so Terry was paid off and it was BIG money as he had quite a bit left on his extension by Branfoot.

Only one club came in for a loan, whose DOF already knew him. Rasmus thinks he’s world class though.

This post isn’t unreasonable in isolation until you then factor in Downs and Quarshie who are nowhere near top 2 or top 6 quality. Maybe in 2-3 years but we needed now players, not more squad ones which all we’ve signed under SR bar Ramsdale really. More waste. Lavia turned a profit but barely played half the games. And we’ve lost the few stalwarts like KWP, JWP and esp Romeu.

If the club had brought in a first choice target man and central defender with pace, rather than two more of their ‘projects’ to bloat an already huge and very crappy squad, this might be fair comment (second line, not about Gavin). But they haven’t, so therefore it isn’t at this stage. The chances of any incomings which would actually be automatic selections and top of the league signings (given the financial advantage) seem very remote. By all means return with your duck and cigar emoji when Azaz and three other very high quality incomings are confirmed by COP Friday.

Essentially you are right, Long is a metaphor for how appalling these owners are, but I think we are too far gone between the fanbase and SR. People are expecting any signings to be more very poor squad filler and can you honestly blame them? I think the Pompey game will be the absolute final watershed. Handful of knock out signings for this level this week, Championship record for a transfer fee, and a heavy derby win is probably only thing that could save them.

Or admit the error, pay the 12 months up (couple of mill), use the loan on a first choice keeper as competition for Baz and a mid-30s L1 keeper as third choice (Cheltenham let Evans go because of wages, he’s no worse than Long).

Agreed, and that’s on him. We had the facade of change with Kraft going, Spors and new scouting team coming in. More promises of wholesale change but all there’s been is two more kid fringe players and a Brentford right back. Clear and obvious who is still in charge and Solak lets him do it. A lot of people posted saying this summer was SR last opportunity with the bulk of the fanbase and I think things have travelled too far now as they did with Lowe to be reversible. When you see the level of lampooning and piss-taking, and not just from the usual suspects and moaners, sooner or later it’s new ownership time.

Or, logically following from @s-clarke above, you pay Macca up. Done it before with Hurlock, Dixon, Speedie and Osvaldo to clean the stables, probably Carrillo. And those comparatively would have much more expensive than paying Alex up a year. Writing off does have to happen sometimes. It was crazy decision at the time with no business rationale and the SR board should take responsibility for leaving Martin and Ankerson in control of transfers.

This is the crux of the issue - George Long isn’t very good but is all of the frustration amongst the fanbase about him per se? Of course not. It was abundantly clear that there is an oversized squad of very poor - for SFC standards with a history of MLT, Bale, Williams, Case, Moran, Channon, Mane, Lallana, Tadic, VVD - and another three squad signings doesn’t do anything but expand the rubbish heap. If Long had been signed today but we’d already signed a £15m/exciting PL loan prospect focal point striker and a good first team centre back, there might be a few grumbles but I’m not sure most of the forum or X even notices tbh.

Kat did her best and had fantastic seasons up to 2017. Jisheng Gao was the death knell really, and once the club was hollowed out SR have done the rest of the demolition.

Do you think they’re capable of bringing in four outfield players of automatic promotion calibre by the weekend unless they are more Brentford cast-offs Rasmus knows (not saying the RB is a bad signing btw)?

If they use the Dibling money and MF fee to pay off the Covid debt and sold a solvent club on an even footing, I’d prefer that to more of their junk coming in with more tossy marketing videos to disguise the stench. I’d actually respect them for something then.

I’d rather they just paid down the Covid debt and sold up, rather than any more of their garbage brought in.

We’ve been generating money from selling on players since before I was born, right back to Chivers and probably before that. But the emphasis was mainly on using that profit to re-invest back into the club including the playing squad. Whether we always agreed with how Reader, Woodford, Askham, Lowe, Cortese, Kat did that is another matter for debate but the club was the priority. Hard to say with Gao, void period really but it did let Ralph down. With SR, I get a clear sense that player trading profits are 💯 how they measure themselves and don’t think the individual club’s performances actually matter whatsoever. It’s a bonus Goztepe have done well, off Saints’s backs to an extent, but I don’t think the fact that Saints and Valenciennes are having some of their worst post-war seasons even registers. There’s a window dressing restructure and then Rasmus carries on as he was, aided and abetted by Solak.

Sooner SR are out of Southampton Football Club, the better for everyone it will be.

Although I dislike five at the back, I like Will Still. The owners are fairly and squarely the issue, particularly Phil Giles’s ex-colleague still pulling Spors’s strings. Can’t wait until they sell up and go.

Sugawara managed what I thought was impossible - dislodged Steve Baker from the Saints worst ever top flight XI at right back.