Saint_clark

Guess the club really are planning to go back down and get promoted again with a stronger side if we're signing another Brazilian who will need to go to Goztepe for a year before he can play for us. Next summer in the championship we'll have 4 or 5 players coming back from loan to them eligible to play for us all of a sudden.

He's agreed a contract so all I need to do is load the game and progress one day and he'll be announced.

What are we calling that then, the wishbone formation?

We'll have to coach that out of him before he can start. Should have cut inside and laid it off.

Brighton could end up being this seasons Villa. Them and Fulham have made some excellent signings.

Lallanas?

Now you're just trying to manifest the picture appearing...

If only we had an AM with attacking intent, someone who likes to get the ball and drive forward with it or run in behind, someone who managed to get a decent amount of goals from midfield last time we were in the Prem.

Of those 12million people, how many signed Bijlow when playing as a Premier League club? Check. Mate.

Irony is that the players we do have that aren't being utilised at the moment, Sulemana, Alcaraz, Onuachu, Archer, would probably thrive in a system of direct running, passing, getting the ball down the wings and cutting it back/crossing it in. Even Smallbone would look better if he was picking up scraps on the edge of the box instead of having to look sideways for a pass all the time.

Archer is already being set up to be the latest young player that we'll all write off at the end of the season despite only actually having a handful of starts weeks apart at a time and cameo sub appearances in between. You spend money bringing a player in, you give them 5-10 starts in a row to see what they can do.

I get what you're saying but we're still in the early stage where crazy results can mess the table up. Two games time we could see Brentford top of the league, or United bottom.

He'll get 20+ in Italy I said it already, physical strikers always do well over there.

Makes you wonder doesn't it. They've spent more than they've brought in every summer since 2019 and yet still whatever financial fair play is in effect allows them to keep spending.

He's only got a couple of goals and assists for us granted but he's still young and hasn't even played the full equivalent of a season for us yet - he's only got 20 starts since coming here. He's also shown plenty of pace, dribbling ability and can shoot dangerously. Long story short, he is erratic but causes problems. What we're doing at the moment causes no problems at all, and it frustrates the hell out of me to see big money signings being frozen out and not even trying to utilize their strengths in some way because we've committed to a style of play that we all know is going to get us relegated.

I can. I'd say that's part of why we'd go for him over Ramsdale - cheaper and less likely to demand a starting spot.

He was. But the point I made was that he was outstanding at a job that we could get by with someone doing "just enough". We spent a lot of our budget on someone who isn't a match winner, and may not be up to doing the job he does in the Prem anyway. Would have rather we went for Smodzic for example.

If it's gotten that close to running out already something tells me he's letting it run down intentionally. Get him in the starting line up immediately. We need to abandon the safe set up and get some players in the side who can actually create something, Dibling, Alcaraz and Sulemana.

Careful. I said that I wasn't sure spending that much money on Downes, when we needed a goalscorer badly, made sense as he is still unproven in the Prem and got shouted down for it.

Can't use the excuse of learning the style or getting his ideas across, he's been here a full season and two full pre-seasons now. I think Saints will stubbornly stick with him past January then panic and sack him when it's too late. He'll end up floating around championship/scottish jobs for his entire career.

Promotion was the worst thing that could have happened for Martin after the season we had. It inflated his ego and gave him justification to arrogantly proclaim that the style of football was the right one all along. His comments about Stephen's and Smallbone show how naive he is to the level of player required to stay up in the Prem now.

Of course not, but we're not competing for Europa league places like those teams were.

Martin just absolutely underestimating the quality of the Prem. Some of us predicted it when he stated in an interview that he couldn't understand why Saints loaned Stephens out the last season we were up here. Spoiler alert...it's because he wasnt good enough, Russell.

Fucking sick and tired of Martin's obvious bias towards British "lads" with beards and banter galore.

Unless you can spend a billion quid like City, no you can't be playing this way.