The Kraken

‘Academy manager’ seems a bit of a misnomer. He was academy loans manager, or Player Pathway Lead as it was officially dubbed. Sounds like it was a bit of a research and player/clubs liaison role rather than coaching.

This does seem more likely tbf.

I think you might have missed the point on this one grandad. The normalisation of women’s football at a young age has always been a target, and having their own role models is fairly important. There’s plenty to disseminate about that side of the game in general, this really isn’t one.

It’s literally the best fun as I had as a saints fan, when we were in the championship and league 1 and going to games on a Saturday then Wednesday. All teams around us are in the same boat as well. And we all know that we’ve got a squad that is large but mediocre, so we can swap like for like at will.

fucking fuck me,

Stars are about similar to Elmo when he was at Celtic but meh, Cheggars can’t be boozers.

Fuck it, he’ll do.

If true then there’s a bit of positivity to it. Just hope it doesn’t lead us on a wild goose chase.

Yep. 2012 Jack Cork would be straight in for me, Lallana and lambert too. 2012 Fonte probably gets a game too though he was a bit error prone, his first season in the PL was a massive breakthrough in terms of quality and consistency. Interesting that Schneiderlin wasn’t in the starting team, IIRC he had quite a few games from the bench that season as we had Hammond as skipper and Jack Cork very much a favourite. Guly would obviously get minutes due to his contract agreement.

I’d be very happy to see Chris Wood come in but I don’t see how we’ve got a chance of getting him, if we did it would surely have to be massive wages. Newcastle have recently signed a new striker, Isak, but Calum Wilson seemed to get injured at the World Cup and has always had a flaky injury record. Wood has played 14 league games at Newcastle this season, albeit 12 appearances as a sub. I can see Newcastle wanting better than him, of course, but they’d be risking it a little letting him go without having a replacement. Nice idea but I can’t see it.

1 goal in 27 appearances for Everton suggests it’s not the very recent past.

If the Stoke message boards are anything to go by, we probably shouldn’t be basing too much around Smallbone, he’s not proving to be too popular there. https://oatcakefanzine.proboards.com/thread/306819/why-smallbone-keep

According to the man himself (albeit from a few years ago) he described himself as a midfield attacking player. He says he never played as a defender when he was young and recognises he isn’t/wasn’t very good at defending. I think we need to dispense with the idea that he is a holding midfielder as he just isn’t very good at it. Tuesday night was his worst game ever for us playing there, I’d have rather had KWP doing the holding role and AMN at right back where he actually looked ok (not an actual suggested solution, just highlighting how dire he was). https://www.skysports.com/watch/video/sports/football/competitions/premier-league/11813263/maitland-niles-right-back-not-my-position/more/22

I’m fearful we’ve wasted a month. In the summer we had a pre season of mostly playing 3CBs, it obviously wasn’t working but we carried it through to the regular season before ditching it almost immediately. I just hope we haven’t spent the past month preparing to play 3 at the back again, only to realise it’s a terrible solution for this bunch and they can’t play it. I’ve seen literally nothing from Jones tonight to suggest that he’s brought in some bright, new ideas. It’s exactly as we were on the opening day of the season. Can only hope he’s seen enough to fuck off the 3 at the back and get on with working out how to sort out our misfiring central midfield, and have more scoring options than Che Adams.

Not confident, no. It seems like we’re back to exactly where we were at the start of the season. We may grind out a dirty win or two against the lesser lights but we’ll get torn to pieces by anyone half decent.

Let’s not be silly, we were a lot better than them. It doesn’t stop us being rubbish though.

Holy shit 🤣

Phew. Good move.

There a bit more urgency and fluidity with this formation, but still a distinct lack of quality. We’ve had 3 shots on target all game. Simply not good enough.

AMN at right back is about the best place for him that isn’t on the bench. great cross from Theo.

Hard to feel optimistic about Saints right now. We’ve had a month to work on a solution and we get…..this. If the transfer window solution is to bring in Messi and M’Bappe then we might be ok, otherwise we’re pretty close to being fucked.

Well, apart from one good move for our goal that was an absurdly shocking half. Our team has struggled for an identity this season, and that performance was as bad as anything under Ralph this season. 3 at the back is turgid shite, we lose the midfield battle, AMN is hopeless, and we have little creativity. And Salisu is still taking long throws. I’m struggling to see what Jones has brought to the party, it seems we’ve reverted to what we were at the very start of the season. Just abject.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Nice goal. Noticeable that you can hear Jones shouting “pass, pass, pass”, we do, and actually do something with it. luckily no VAR.

20 minutes in. 3 CBS looks worse than ever, just a massive gap between defence and the rest of them. We are losing the battle in centre midfield, AMN is fucking useless. And Che Adams just missed a sitter. Same old same old.