trousers

Imbeciles that don't spell Hallowe'en correctly. Twats.

Yep, not backing Koeman at that point in time was our 'sliding doors' moment and, ultimately, why we find ourselves where we are today...

Didn't he revert to a back 4 vs Hull and that resulted in one of our worst performances of the season? That seems to have spooked him into playing 3/5 at the back when perhaps he should've seen that match as a one-off blip...?

Given our main problem is not creating chances but converting said chances, how does a "half decent manager" get more goals from such a profligate set of forwards?

Exactly, we're relying on a broken part to fix another broken part...

Fair point, but my fear is that fixing one component won't have any significant effect without fixing all the other components... (I'm sure there's a car analogy there somewhere).... That said, no harm in trying...

Highlighting the key word there... Not sure why we've got a debate going on as to who's to blame... The players? The manager? Spors? Ankersen? Solak? No need for a debate IMO... Can't we just agree that they've all played a significant part in this woeful start to the season....?

Indeed, which is precisely why its reasonable to question his judgement... P.s. it's a pretty significant "only" given everything else ripples out from that trust...

Yep, people would be daft to blame the guy at the top who's crap at choosing the people that work for him... It's almost as if people think we should rate him on how good he is at doing his job... (Apologies in advance for the raised sarcasm levels there )

I thought it was supposed to be a realistic game...?

To be fair, being a contraian is not as easy as it looks

If Rosenior is too good for us and the manager that's 5 places below us isn't good enough for us, how many realistic candidates does that leave...?

Indeed... Saying that SR and/or Spors did a good job in the last transfer window despite not addressing two crucial deficiencies is a bit like claiming you've got a royal flush in poker but without the ace and king... We can pat them on the back until the cows come home about the six hundred creative midfielders they brought into the squad but none of that matters when they've neglected two of the most pivotal positions in the squad. (As always, other potentially dodgy analogies are available) P.s. none of the above excuses Will Still btw... I have serious doubts about his managerial acumen too.

Ha, fair point

I thought Carrick was a sideways / backwards possession type of manager? For those advocating Carrack, why would you prefer that to the alternative high-intensity / pressing approach to the game? (Which we were promised with Still of course but is yet to materialise).

I watched the second half, and highlights of the first, and was suitably impressed. I did however get a bit of a 'spiritual home' vibe from him in the post-match interview, which made me think of those managers that do really well when in a relative comfort zone but then struggle when they move on to other clubs... And as others have pointed out, coming to a basket case of a club (as we are at the moment) could ruin him!

Reminds me of that chap from Glasgow (or was it Bournemouth?) that used to post on here a while back... Before your time Willo, so you won't remember him, but he used to like an insurance bet too....

Yep.... Pretty sure we started off playing Aribo as a forward when we first signed him too.

Indeed. Shame we're too good for him...

Ha, fair point... 😁

Seems to know his stuff... But obviously of no interest to Saints as his team is currently a massive 5 league places below us...

Aye...

Oh, go on then.... Source? Ta 👍🏻

Any chance of applying your expertise in football management to predicting where certain managers will end up...?

MLG and Dman both have valid points: a) appointing a DoF that nobody else wants = not great b) appointing DoFs that keep getting enticed elsewhere within months of joining Saints = not great Is there an answer to this conundrum? Who knows. I'd probably look at other similar sized clubs to see how they manage to keep hold of decent DoFs and perhaps use them as a template for what we could/should do...