Gloucester Saint

Plenty around the Cotswolds and some of the more notorious families are best avoided.

That’s Sheffield Wednesday and Saints down then.

It’s a telling comment too.

There’s a theme emerging @Smirking_Saint if that’s true…Saturday’s selection did not make sense in light of Still’s press conference beforehand. Could be on the manager and I’d never let a failed ownership group tell me what to do in my area of expertise, but easy to say where you’re older and more miles on the clock, rather than a kiddo in his early 30s (in such a high profile role).

He sounds like one of the Marzen beers that was in my Oktoberfest Lidl pack. Repeating the Selles mistake - marvellous. SR really are total cretins.

Selles mistake about to be repeated if that’s the case. Along with repeating the Carrillo mistake with Onachu. And before SR/Reed, Lowe with Gray/Wigley. In the case of Southampton Football Club, stupid does as stupid says.

And the core of this group of players. Correct decision of course but like @Turkish and @S-Clarke I do not have any sense of celebration, actually sadness. Until the goalkeeping and centre forward positions are sorted out properly, along with certain ‘senior’ players behaving like professional adults, the second half of the season will be as grim as the first.

Rasmus really did break it didn’t he?

Pity the Antiques Roadshow gig didn’t work out. Antique 🥄 can be highly valuable.

‘America First’ and no more getting involved needlessly in overseas wars. Ukraine - invaded by Russia, US’s historic enemy and threat to entire NATO alliance - ‘why did Biden help them?’. Nigeria - let’s carpet bomb some Muslims thousands of miles away.

Nic seems to meet as many different people in Thailand - if it is Thailand - as Soggy meets in Romney Marsh.

An experienced interim might well steady things short-term and keep us up, but until SR can identify a clear direction and aspiration for the club beyond making the odd profit on player trading (bar the odd fluke they aren’t even capable of that) then how can they decide objectively on the type of manager they need to deliver that? This accounts for the mixed bag of managers we’ve seen under them.

Fair comments, but if you look at Ings’s record in poor teams v Moran’s in very, very good ones, they are impressive numbers indeed. AA was bought to replace Ings….after several weeks of Semmens and Crocker very publicly patting themselves on the back for the £35m fee received from Villa with a year of Danny’s contract left. That was a key step towards the chasm. Wallace duo (not Ray) were different gravy, explosive pace and directness. The 1984 goal v Liverpool. Kelvin is miles better than either keeper now let alone Shilts, Timmy, Beasant, Taylor, Jones, Antti… Fonte, Hammond, Chaplow, Puncheon, Lambert - they’re more comparable as we had them in L1 and Champ. As players but most importantly characters they are x100 this current shower.

Always been the same with them, stems from Nicholson era. Always otherwise been a streaky cup kind of team, some superb individuals but Arsenal and latterly Chelsea with the shady funding the clubs in London who can grind out title challenges. Spurs are more akin to West Ham, just a bit bigger. They’d hate that analogy.

@S-Clarke and @Smirking_Saint whilst coming it at from different angles, are coming to the same conclusion - nobody truly knows who is responsible for what at the club and lines of responsibility are blurred. I’ve had this in my career but you can only make it work with a very experienced manager who can cut through it and make the core of their operation work. At 33 that’s such a difficult ask. The lad at Brighton wouldn’t be anywhere as impressive without the stable structure Bloom has built over time. Whether they agree with decisions or not, everyone should be clear - supporters, stakeholders, sponsors, players, managers - on who is responsible for what.

Alan Nixon to be precise. I’d trust Richard Nixon’s accuracy on football matters more, and he passed away in 1994.

Now that I can get behind.

Good and sad memories there. Good was David Hughes bicycle kick in a 2-2 draw under Bally. Sad was playing them the Saturday after their bright young striker Ray Jones was killed in a car accident that week. Won 3-0 but very subdued understandably by everyone.

I wasn’t calling you specifically pathetic. Let’s be clear about that. And it seems like there was some good ‘feedback’ given yesterday judging by Nathan Wood’s reaction, bit disappointing at the end but can’t blame people too much given how awful most of the last 8 years have been. The point I’m making still stands that this lot managing and running the club - that term used very loosely - don’t have clue until they either sell or recruit a DoF, CEO and manager/coaching staff who understand English football and give them autonomy. And it’s going to take a lot more days like yesterday and even more volume to do it. We are capable as a fanbase, we opposed Branfoot and Lowe respectively for years but it’s going to need to be consistent to have our club back as a football entity with its own identity that we recognise and love. A positive example is my local club. Protested loudly against Gary Johnson, a very unpopular DoF and the board. Now got Mike Garlick owning and legend Steve Cotterill back as manager. Their equivalent of Lawrie. And they are transformed. One of the aspects which turned Askham against Branfoot eventually being a finance man was the protests making it impossible to find a shirt sponsor. Dimplex as a local company and club guest helped out at the last minute in 93/94 to save the bacon but the gig was up.

Would have to agree to disagree at that point, unless a new manager performs a miracle and makes some of these players attractive to buying clubs again, they are worth a fraction of what we bought for them and the transition off parachute payment will be much harsher than 07-08 - and that was bumpy as a rural airport runway.

Danny apparently doesn’t like Ralph but as typical for players, he probably can’t see that the fitness work during the lockdowns got him fitter than he’d been for years and boy did it yield results. Danny Ings is in my top 25 Saints players as a result, superb, reminded me of one of my boyhood heroes Steve Moran and that’s some compliment to him, Ralph and the back room team.

Ings was a major risk with his knees but paid off staggeringly so well done Les on that one. Bar Stu, pity about the other £85m of the VVD fee he wasted including Carrillo….Unlike Stewart, at least Danny didn’t have a bad injury at the time we signed him. KWP didn’t look up to much before Covid on loan but came into his own over Project Re-Start. Unlike Ings who had been at Liverpool and scored for Burnley, I wouldn’t have called Kyle established at PL level at that point. But those two are the best signings we’ve made over the last decade amongst an ocean of mainly dross.

That reflects on how badly Still is doing, but also that we had Adams, the type of central/link up striker we severely lack (given Stewart’s wretched fitness record) plus Bednarek and KWP. Those three made a huge difference at this level. Martin is a better coach but that’s not saying much as Rangers fans will tell you. We still conceded 60+ goals which was a disgrace and thumped by 5 at Sunderland and Leicester. If we didn’t have those players, it would’ve been even more.