Tom57

I think it was a calculated risk. He obviously wants to improve his chances of going to the World Cup. He's never doing that playing in the Championship, and probably wouldn't playing for a team at the bottom of the Premier League. He's essentially gambling on Pope getting a big injury and him playing well for a large part of the season for a top third Premier League team, preferably near the end. He probably knows it's a chance in a million, but he likely thinks it's his best bet.

Edwards did have a very bad game, but he showed last season he can definitely do it in the Championship, and the QPR fans were practically worshipping the ground he walked on so I think we can give him a few more chances. Downes and Charles should have controlled midfield but obviously didn't. I don't know how fit Downes was after his injury, so hopefully he'll do better over the rest of the season. The first game for a promoted side is always like a cup final for them. If you watched our game against Newcastle last season you'd never think we'd only win two games all season, and Birmingham ran Ipswich ragged yesterday too. They will have been psyching themselves up for today since the fixtures were released, so it's no surprise they played beyond their quality a bit. Were they a Premier league quality side they would probably have finished 3 or 4 of their chances today, but they're not and we won't face a Premier League quality front line this season in the league. It was very laboured for most of the game though, and we didn't seem able to shoot anywhere apart from the centre of the goal most of the time which was very annoying to watch! I trust we'll get some wingers and a CAM in by the end of the transfer window, but until then it looks like our only strategy to chase a game is to just play every striker at once, which I can't imagine being 100% effective! Ipswich next week will be a very interesting game, we definitely need to play either Downs or Stewart through the middle from the start though, as Armstrong will never be much use through the middle. I'm also not giving Will credit for the Manning substitution as good as it was as I think it was one forced on him by injury haha

We need to put either Downs or Stewart on so we have some kind of physical presence up front

This is going to be very confusing for the commentators if we keep Flynn and play him with Damion lots 😂 I'm quite happy with this signing though

In terms of the two 9-0s I think the first was a perfect storm of a Leicester team who weren't going to win any cups or the league that season, but were still very good, combined with us being terrible. The record was a sort of 'title' they could actually play for and win, which they actually mentioned to each other at half time and were actively aiming for. The Man Utd one was a case of them almost not being able to not score that many goals. We had a very inexperienced team out that day with players like Tchaptchet, Ramsey, and Jankewitz who were also very low on confidence and in poor form as well as being down to 10 men very early, and 9 later on. The 10 that were left on the pitch being quite attacking too, with Ings, Adams, Djenepo, and S. Armstrong making up 40% of the team for most of it. When Bednarek got sent off, Martial was even telling the ref he got it wrong and the Man Utd players genuinely looked sorry for us. It's almost not worth it for the top teams to go for massive score lines as they'll never be remembered for that, rather for however they did in the leagues and cups, or maybe for any results they get against each other. We're obviously at the end of the season now so it doesn't matter as much, but imagine if against Arsenal they go for a massive scoreline, win 10-0 but Saka picks up a nasty ACL injury from overexerting himself keeping him out for a year and damaging their title push next season. It's better for them to sit on their 3-0 lead and just play out a safe game that doesn't affect their later games. We just don't register on their radars, and I think a lot of them and their fans would rather beat another big team 2-0 than a smaller team 8 or 9 nil. Man City beat Ipswich 6-0 but I doubt they'll talk about it much again, whereas Leicester and us will bring up our 9-0 and 8-0s lots of times. It's the teams that eventually finish ~7-10th you have to worry about with record losses unless you're playing half your U21s.

Onuachu is potentially out tomorrow, so I guess Archer or Dibling 😕 https://www.southamptonfc.com/en/news/article/onuachu-a-doubt-for-spurs

I think our only salvation may be that Chelsea won't care enough to score more than 6 or 7. First half might be like Tottenham though

I wonder how Rusk's input will affect how we set up tomorrow. If it's anything like the Fulham game we'll be playing very defensively

I wonder if this is more Juric asking for some help with new ideas after he's admitted he can't play the way he'd like, or if it's Sports Republic telling Juric he needs help and that he needs to listen to Rusk's ideas so we can at least pick up a few more points by the end of the season

I think Rusk saw what we did against Arsenal in the first half and said 'If I can't win a game I can at least draw one'. The fact there was no attacking presence was almost on purpose I think, with even our central striker in Armstrong being expected to be more defensive than attack minded. Incidentally, I think that may be why he wasn't taken off earlier for Onuachu; Armstrong was at least chasing back and helping out, while Onuachu wouldn't have tracked back at all or if he did he wouldn't have been as mobile at closing down. This obviously isn't how we can play forever, but at least we have something to work with now. I'll be very interested to see how we set up on Boxing Day. I think to stay up we'd need about 30 more points from the remaining 21 games, which over a 38 game season would equal about 54 points. That'd get you about 10th, so midtable form would be necessary for the rest of the season. I won't get my hopes up, but if Juric is as good as some say he is at getting results from limited squads, we could be ok. We could also finish on 10 points and take the record from Derby, you never know! 😅

There's The Shooting Star as well (but obviously that's just the sci fi other half of The Hobbit's fantasy) and the occasional Apocalypse night at the Heartbreakers or Sobar or wherever it is now. Not a metal fan myself but my friends are really into it.

I wonder how he'll do if he likes a target man and our only two are Stewart who has a default state of being injured, and Onuachu who may have already decided he's leaving in January. I guess we could buy one but Sport Republic may not be interested in spending in January.

I guess the question is, how fun is it being a Bristol City, Preston NE, Millwall or Stoke fan? Because if we're spending almost all of our time in the Championship and rarely if ever playing in the Premier League, that's what it'd be like.

Thanks for the advice! We'll probably aim for the park and ride at Mill Road and then get the train if we're struggling with traffic and don't think we'll make it. Is the parking free at those train stations too then?

My brother's driving us both there for this one and neither have been to the Amex before. Is it better to get the park and ride from one of the two places, or park in the city and get the train in? We'll be leaving Southampton about 4pm so I'd imagine we'll arrive in Brighton about 6:15pm to 6:45pm.