Willo of Whiteley

My point is SR have been chaotic. A lot of the talk months ago was about being prepared going into the season, and whereas I think we have a decent Championship squad, this is going to be very competitive. There will be fourteen or fifteen teams going for promotion. Saints and Ipswich should be attractive propositions for players; I would’ve expected the club to get business done sooner than later. We’re going into next week with a mixed team, still fragmented from last season. I just hoped more would’ve been done by now to prepare us for what you’d think would be a promotion-chasing season.

I think the difficulty is we lurch from one set of transfers/style of play/signings every window. Summer of 2022 - sign all children from top six academies and throw them straight into the first team January 2023 - target man for route one football, but sack the manager six weeks later Summer 2023 and January 2024 - Probably the only time where it felt like good transfer windows in recent years. British players suited to a style of play for a British manager. A core home-grown backbone with a blend of top flight, Championship and international experience (Brooks, Fraser, Manning etc). Summer 2024 - a bit more bargain hunting, either that was because of Wilcox’s departure or financial reasons. January 2025 - non existent, damage was done. But who sanctioned Groenbak?!? Bizarre. Summer 2025 - so far Downs and Quashie, young and inexperienced in the UK. Are we going down the young route again? When you break it down you could actually see in the Russell Martin era there were some consistencies, especially the Championship season, you could see how we’d play and how these players would fit in. Now it just feels chaotic. I’ll reserve judgement until the end of the window but for a club that is supposedly in a decent finical position surely it makes more sense to get players in sooner than later and start building the squad?

That’s optimistic, I’ll believe it when I see it

But then where are some of these people on here’s proof of a player wanting to leave 🤷🏻‍♂️ There are players that want to leave, Will Still alluded to that; my point is no one on here knows who those players are 😂

I think one of Dibling and Fernandes will stay, and Fernandes is more valuable cash-wise so I think he’ll be the one to leave. A year in the Championship will be good for Dibling, who hasn’t pulled up trees significantly, just one of the best of a bad bunch last season. I’d be shocked if he wasn’t a Saints player in mid-September.

I don’t live and breathe football like when I was a teenager but a quick Google says nothing of Downes wanting to leave, Dibling wanting to leave, Fernandes wanting to leave. Just casual links. Most of it is lazy journalism. One account tweets so several other accounts jump on the bandwagon; and by that point everyone loses their minds and panics. 😂

We aren’t going to sell Downes for half the fee that we paid a year ago for him, but then again the board have done stupider things in their time.

Haven’t we already got a prediction thread on the go? 😂 We’ll finish 6th if we’re lucky. Armstrong to be top scorer.

Shame, thought he was about to leave

Smallbone new contract.

Obviously won’t happen, but….

Two months ago I was very excited for the new season, but now it’s come around I can see this being the first of many defeats. I think the first month or two will be reminiscent of two years ago, a slow, bumpy and inconsistent start. It’s so difficult to gauge what kind of team will play, there’s been a lot of chopping and changing through pre-season. Some things that look a certainty: Adam Armstrong and Jay Robinson I think are a shoe-in to start, both have had decent pre-seasons. As for the likes of Dibling and Fernandes, they could easily be on the bench for the first few games. Wrexham will come here to win, and I think they’ll put up a very good fight. Some of the signings are glamour signings for a club of their stature, and that will buoy them. I think it’ll be a scrappy 1-1.

How are we all feeling now then ahead of next week? 🤣

I mean once upon a time, some on here were absolutely fawning over him, a guy that scored no more than maybe 8 or 9 goals for us, all in a purple patch mid season, and was missing for the final three months of it. Burnley are more than welcome to over pay for him. 🤣

I honestly couldn’t give a toss in general about all this, I won’t lose sleep over it like some do on here. 😂 Would I have preferred us to have a good squad going into the season with a number of changes - yes of course. But as long as we have a good squad come the end of the window then fine, imagine the panic buying should we lose to Wrexham, Pompey and Ipswich 🤣

I really couldn’t care, if we keep one of Dibling or Fernandes then that’s a decent summer in the grand scheme of things

Still not entirely convinced he’ll go. Imagine him getting the hairdryer treatment from David Moyes, he’ll probably cry and run back down south.

Get the manager in early - wow well done Saints, massive tick Start building and moulding the squad so we’re ready for the start of the season - Hmmmm 🤣

The Ward-Prowse “rumours” I find very bizarre. I don’t see that happening, unless how’s mate Danny Ings has left maybe he’s changed his mind 🤣

We have a good Championship squad, but we need those sparks that can be the difference, at the moment we don’t have any real sparks

I thought his Dad was his agent? He’ll be a bench warmer at Everton. Apart from that random journo has he said he wants to go?

I’m more concerned at the lack of incomings. I hate the “scar tissue” phrase but Christ, at the end of last season there was only three or four players I’d have wanted to keep. Two of them look to be on their way.

He has a good start to last season but let’s not get ahead of ourselves like he was our Lord and saviour. I hope he stays, he’s a player with a lot of talent; all I’m saying is his age and the fact he’s English puts an immediate tax on how much the club value him, the fact he’s also from the academy bumps it up slightly more. He scored a couple of tap ins, how many of us expected him to kick on after his goal against Ipswich last season? I’m pretty confident everyone did. He then played in a poor team for the rest of the season, but it’s easy to be classed as a great player when you don’t have to do much because the ball is in our defensive third. His reputation is the first third of games under Russell Martin last season, he did extremely little after that. A year in the Championship would do him good, he’d probably kick on more and get a bigger club at the end of it. Signing for Everton is just a quick win to more money, would he be any better at this moment in time, I doubt it. He is one of the most talented players to come out the academy for years, but let’s not gloss over he was only decent up until Christmas, if that. If someone offers £40m, take the stupid amount of money and move on. Otherwise leave him for a season in the Championship and I think his valuation will grow.

If he was anything other than English, and the fact he’s a youngster, he hasn’t done anymore to warrant being a £10m player. It’s easy to look like a world beater when 98% of your teammates are utter crap.

Pretty much agree. If he goes to Everton I see him pending up like a Ross Barkley. Decent but never quite fulfilling what could’ve been. He admits he made a mistake leaving Saints for Chelsea a few years back, coming back a month later after many tears and homesickness. To jump at the first sign of things going south, a relation in his “breakout season” sums him up as the same as everyone else. Not entirely convinced he will go but we’ll see.