Wurzel

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

Cutting down your mammoth post to address that single issue. We have heard from Gao. I think it was just the once but he emphasised the club must be self sufficient. This has been reiterated several times by Semnens & co in various interviews and forums. That IS" his strategy". That IS the "direction he wants to take the club". For some reason you, and many like you, choose to ignore that and/or not accept it because it's not what you want to hear. Once you accept that point you will realise that every other point you made in that post is either nonesense or unrealistic . We are not going to turn into a Man City overnight even with new owners. We will continue to sell some very good players. We will replace them with what we hope turn out to be decent replacements that we can afford. We might get some wrong but we won't deliberately buy crap. We will try to win every game with what we have. We won't win every game. If 17 out of the other 19 teams in the league finish higher than us we go down (unlikely in the short term IMO but it could happen to anyone outside top 6 at some stage). If it happens it won't be deliberate, and we'll be doing our damndest to get back up again. Accept the owners strategy for what it is, stop trying to project what you'd prefer that strategy to be onto the club, accept every club has ups and downs, accept how good those good times feel when they did/do come but only because we had/will have a few bad times to contrast with them, and maybe, just maybe, you could enjoy supporting Saints. If you can't do that I suggest there's a few clubs collectively known as the big 6, take your pick.

Don't knock the padded seats. I sat in one for the first time at the recent Queen concert at SMS. Soooo much more comfortable. First time I've left the ground not feeling like I'd developed hemerrhoids in the previous 90 minutes.

I'd still like us to break our normal transfer policy of only signing youngsters (maybe with Walcott we already have proven to be a bit more flexible) and sign an older experienced central defender/sweeper. Someone in the John Terry mould can actually play, who knows the game inside out, will encourage and help out the younsters around him but is prepared to bawl out his tream-mates when it's needed and happy to be a dirty little sh|t when the occasion requires it. That's the type of on pitch prescence we've been lacking for quite a while now. Unfortunately no idea of anyone available who fits that remit.

He may be but is he likely to score 3-4 times the amount of goals/assists per game that Ings will given the same level of service? I'd say that Man City fan recognises value for money.

Your question makes me wonder...if he runs down his contact with us, then decides to stay, could he demand a signing on fee from us for a new contract? Could there already be a gentlemen's agreement between player and club to that effect ? Are there any tax and/or FFP implications in paying a large signing on fee alongside reduced wages ?