Saint_clark

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.

Well that's us going down.

Four at the back won't work either as we're too open. Problem isn't the formation - it's the style of play. Get it beyond the 30 yard mark and THEN start playing keep ball.

Got rid of Alcaraz for some reason though

Yeah, you don't really need both Taylor and Bree on the bench.

Great performance from Albion. Still going strong this season.

League one to prem a huge jump. Wouldn't be surprised if we've over estimated how good he is.

I don't think there's ever been a video on the internet I've been less interested in watching on a Friday evening than how to correctly pronounce the names of complete strangers.

Incredibly optimistic figures.

Why? Because he's a better centre forward than anything we have. He scored 11 goals and got 4 assists last season in a team that got relegated. And I believe we'd be able to get him for maximum of £15million.

100%, Carlton Morris for me.

Report is that it's an obligation to buy if we stay up, can't imagine Bazunu will come back in as number one if that's the case.

Best keeper we'll have had since Boruc, possibly even better but not much in it.

That's not how Whoscored calculates strengths and weaknesses. It only lists a strength or weakness if something happens often enough to have a decent sample size of success or failure.

🤷🏼‍♂️

Last season he was dispossessed less times per game than (again) either Stuart or Adam Armstrong, Aribo, SAA and KWP. He was only slightly worse than Flynn Downes. He passed the ball to opponents less than S.Armstrong, THB, KWP and funnily enough, Smallbone and the same amount as Stephens. (This is all using opta stats btw) I'm just sick of this transfer strategy of signing younger players to develop and then ditching them before they're given the chance to.

Last season in the Prem he got more goals than Stuart or Adam Armstrong Aribo, Sulemana. Last season he was shipped out before we even got going. I refuse to agree with anyone who says we are better off with Smallbone in that attacking midfield role than Alcaraz.

In the meantime we are down a player who has, at a very young age, shown glimpses of ability in the Prem and is one of our only naturally creative players.

Annoyingly working during the game tomorrow. Interested in seeing some clips from the other end of the ground to see how noisy the Northam can make itself tomorrow, if anyone is able to get some.