Wurzel

That was the points the 18th team had each season, you needed to better that to stay up ( which I know you'll now point out you could still stay up on those points as long as your goal difference was better but that's cutting too fine for a safety target) Personally setting a points target can be a dangerous game, it depends on other team's results. I'd prefer it if we aimed for safe by game 35 for the sake of our blood pressure.. Weird to think with hindsight we were actually safe in early January last year, we just didn't know it.

We've also lost out on our hard core of Japanese tourists since Yoshida left

FotMob app on phone is amazing. Pretty much every pro league all around the world available . Pick your favourite teams and/or leagues and have them arranged in any order you want. Shlt hot speed for goal and other incident updates as well (always quicker than any stream).

He does seem a really down to earth guy, not the stereotypical footballer. A few years ago he was posting videos on instagram of his walks around Southampton, Winchester, New Forest etc describing the places and their history as he walked. Sort of bloke you feel you could bump into, have a pint and still be chatting hours later.

Just got to the end of the first section that Kindle allows you to read as a free sample. Went straight to the Buy It Now button to download the rest of the book. Looking forward to reading the rest.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure Chapel was the intention, but club went for a "let nature take it's course" approach, and it soon became apparent once tickets started selling who was buying where.

The irony of all this is The Chapel end was the area the club envisaged as our "Kop End" when the stadium was being built, with enough room to accommodate all singing sections from The Dell and more all in one place. Of course our fans decided to split so they could "intimidate" 🤣 the away fans from both sides, diluting our support and consequently being outsung by almost every visiting team. Got to agree though, an all standing all singing Chapel End would be great.

Just a heads up. Although it has nothing with the club either, expect to see a Santa hat perched at a jaunty angle on the club crest around mid-December.

Good post. Till now he has had to fit square pegs in round holes and play with much of his squad taught to play and/or bought to play other manager's systems. This is now "his" team. He's managed to re-educate those willing (or able) to learn, got rid of most of the deadwood (still concerned over the 2 GKs) and bought in excellent young ( if you're good enough you're old enough) players to fit the system . I've always been an optimist, but after this window I genuinely see a new dawn for the club on the playing side. We're not going to storm the league overnight but I think a lot of the doubters are going to be pleasantly surprised

Yes. He's keen to get back into football but the only job he's been offered so far was turnstile repair man.

Disagree. They should stay wide and the full backs make runs inside of them . Has dual benefit of stretching the opposition defence wider and slightly reducing distance the full backs need to cover to keep goalside of opposition when they have to get back in a hurry. Trouble is Djneppo and Walcott aren't very effective themselves either as wingers or covering the full backs/narrowing the midfield when defending

He's more of a short corner specialist

Clutching at straws, but with in-match betting available, waiting for us to take the lead then betting on the opposition could make us all a small fortune.

As opposed to last year when the lines where thinner but the officials were thicker.

Am I the only one looking at the line up and seeing 10 round pegs in 10 round holes. ? (Would have gone FF over AM but neither justify the starting position)

Technically you are right from an accounting point of view , but for all intents and purposes the way @Dusic is describing profit makes more sense in this scenario. Ignoring underage players we have a fixed number squad of 25 players. They all have to be paid wages whether they've been here years or are new signings, so, inflation aside, we could regard wages as an approximate constant. But every time we sell a player they have to be replaced and, unless by somone coming through from the Academy, paid for. So (ignoring transfer inflation) we need to at least recover what we pay for each player to replace them with someone of similar quality just to stand still. Running down contracts until their value is nil or next to nothing leaves nothing to replace them with. So we fall further and further behind either financially or in quality of playing staff (or both). We got really lucky with VVD and sold him for a large profit , which could have covered several losses. Unfortunately the losses it covered seemed to come from everyone we purchased with his sale money and took us right back to square one again. Thankfully the last 12/18 months of trading show we seem to have started getting things right again.

A year ago I'd have said AM without a doubt, but he seems to have gone backwards . Definitely go for FF now, if for no other reason than he hasn't had a chance to let 9 in yet . (Is the 5 away to Spurs still his personal worst?)

How does one apply? Asking for a friend.

Someone - possibly Argentina (?) - done that once with their World Cup squad..

More often than not due to lack of runners/movement ahead of him. A bit more intelligent pace in our front line would definitely give him more options for a creative forward pass now and again

Wish my wife was always, sadly she's more like little and often. Back on topic, in just a few short days we seem to have gone from a "what's going on?" window to one where a cohesive plan seems to be taking shape. Actually sarting to get excited for thecoming season now

I'm not usually one to make a knee jerk reaction after 10 minutes of a pre-season friendly but........looks like we've got one hell of a bargain there !

Adams not even on bench. Is he injured?

Hopefully him missing a sitter early on will result in a resounding "Champions League? You're 'aving a laugh". Unfortunately we just know that'll come back to bite us on the arse and he'll probably end the game with a hat trick.

Think this forum would be improved if we were all limited to 3 posts a day. It would be like a soap opera cliffhanger, eagerly waiting 24 hours to see how Turkish v MLG develops whilst spending the rest of the day reading other things infinitely more interesting