trousers

I'm half way through reading the Echo transcript and my head is in a spin trying to work out what he's going on about. Ralph has succeeded in out waffling and corporate mumbo-jumbling himself with this one. Bizarre.

As a CEO, he wouldn't be a like-for-like replacement for Reed, but we've not had a CEO since Cortese so maybe the idea is to bring back that role with Devlin and scratch the DoF role. Or maybe we'll get a CEO in as well as getting someone else in as DoF. Devlin's role in football has been more about business/commercial development than getting involved in the day-to-day football side of things a la Reed https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-devlin-43516710 Just off to check out Devlin's earlobes. BRB.

Not doubting your info, but makes me wonder why Fonte was included on the bench for our Europa League games if there was never any intention of him coming on?

Wouldn't surprise me if this has happened. Seeing Koeman at the Man City game did make me ponder why he would choose to be at that particular game (I don't think there were any Dutch players on show?). Thinking out loud, would it be feasible/practical to hold both jobs at the same time (i.e. international manager + club DoF)?

The timing of the announcement does strike me as a little odd. If things aren't very well advanced then a more logical time to have announced it would have been at the start of the international break rather than 48 hours before an important league game (IMO). Unless they see the Watford game as a "must win" and feel that announcing it now will somehow jolt our players into becoming goal scoring machines.... As such, my hunch is that things might be quite far advanced (in terms of installing a replacement), otherwise why announce Reed's departure today (thus putting Hughes in a potentially awkward position at his pre-match press conference) rather than, say, early next week?

Hughes: "Hoedt a doubt for the weekend (sore foot)"

Voted 'Yes' in the poll. I usually sit on the fence for such polls as it's impossible to answer an "Is the club right?" question until the dust has settled and enough time has passed to make a judgement. However, on this occasion I've gone for the gut feel answer.

I wonder if we could prise Cortese away from AC Milan and bring him back 'home'...? © CB Fry

Might be time to renew my membership on here....

That encapsulates a lot of my thoughts... so a starting line-up looking something like.... --------------------------- Gunn ------------------------------- Cedric ----------- CB --------------- CB ------------- Targett ------------ Hojbjerg --- Lemina --- Armstrong -------------- --- Redmond ------------- Ings --------------------- Long --- I can't see Hughes ditching Bertrand though, even though he needs a wake up call IMO

...

Fair point, but it's one too many straws that ends up breaking a camel's back and Bertrand's poor captaincy (IMO) is a relatively easy straw to deal with, so no reason/excuse why we shouldn't do something about it just because there happens to be an abundance of bigger straws. (That's a horribly long-winded sentence but can't be arsed to reword it)

Can't quite decide if that's Leo Sayer or Art Garfunkel

P.s. apologies for the sonewhat poor taste post. 3 and out...

Damn, missed off the photo. Doh. And can't edit now I'm not a member... Well that worked well. Back to the beer it is then...

Ok, I give up. Which one is Gao?

In the 'A day with Danny Ings' video the club published during the week, Ings said that he often has a load of mates around his gaff on a Saturday evening to wind down after a game and then looks forward to a 'massive roast' at a local pub on the Sunday. Did strike me as not being the best post match routine when I watched it.

# Devil's advocate klaxon # Most of those goals were down to p1ss poor play by Sunderland. Can't remember the last time we played a team in recent times that were anywhere as inept as Sunderland were on that day. Transport today's squad into that game and I still reckon we'd have won comfortably.

https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-1609480/Microsoft-man-to-bid-for-Southampton-FC.html

5 years ago today...

He hasn't "conveniently forgotten". He does it to get bites and succeeds every time.

Thanks for the offer sir, however, it's far more amusing sitting back and watching people chomping on your surreptitious bait whilst the mods are seemingly oblivious to it. Textbook

A nicely set-up "told you so" there Batman if I may say so sir. Be sure to resurrect this post in 12 months time if you turn out to be right, but keep shtum if things turn out differently of course...

How recent is "recent"? And why is he still being picked by Hughes for every league game if there's been a falling out? Cheers

No, I was going to Google a random hotel in Milan and pretend they had sponsored me instead