The Kraken

Kalvin Phillips. Now, I know I’m old and deeply unfashionable, but wtf?

Yeah, slightly strange from Ralph. A perfectly good full back option in the bench in Perraud but Livra played and played the full 90.

Ok, I think you’re saying we’d be no worse off with our other strikers in place of Broja. Can’t argue that we’re in a very poor run. I’m content to abide with Ralph’s decisions on it. We’re extremely limited with options so we are where we are. I’d like to give Armstrong a proper chance, would be good to see him prove himself. Don’t think it’ll happen this season though, if anything Armstrong is going the other way in the pecking order, and Long / Tella are just not the answer either.

Well that’s just a silly statement, saying we’d be just as well with ten men than with Broja.

This season does matter though. There’s prestige for finishing higher up in the league, and there’s over £2m a place, both of which are very important come summer. Ralph is to be trusted, and he clearly doesn’t like something about Armstrong. Same with Redmond. I don’t think we’ll sign Broja, I’m not sure we really want to (we made the right noises but know we’ve not really got a chance). Dropping Broja for either of those two, fine, not sure it tells Ralph much more than he already knows. I hope Armstrong comes good, when he’s on it he looked like he’s got something about him. He just looks a bit startled by the lights too often. Almost seems to me he’d be better playing alongside a Pelle or Lambert type of striker.

None in 9 is poor, but you’ve massaged the 3 in 17 / 4 in 18 to suit your narrative, haven’t you? In any case, what’s the answer? You think one of our starting strikers is in an abysmal run of form. What’s your suggested solution to that?

4 in 18 is about 8 or 9 over a season. Which is only slightly under what Che Adams had last year (9 from 34). Would you describe that as an abysmal return? A 20 year old hitting 10 goals in his debut PL side would, IMO, be an extremely good achievement. As has been said many time, Broja needs to not start every game, but in reality he’s far and away the best option there as there no real depth behind him. I think your criticism of him is a bit over the top, he’s not abysmal by any stretch.

I think it was Bobby Charlton who said that, when he signed with Man U, he was told that he needed to be much better with both feet. So he spent hours and hours practising just by hitting a ball against a wall, one hour with his left then one hour with his right. Nowadays it’s just accepted that professional players might be entirely shit on their wrong foot. Paul Merson exemplified this, really good player but simply had no left foot ability at all.

Thought our tactics played into Leeds hands a little. Their defence and especially midfield is often manic in its pressing but their downfall is that if the press doesn’t work they leave themselves hugely exposed. They’ve conceded 68 goals so far which shows how open they are as a side. I feel we set up to solidify our midfield rather than to exploit the gaps in theirs. Can’t complain with a point though.

He’s 20. He’s really starting too many games. I imagine at the start of the season Ralph thought he could rotate his strikers, so for some games Broja could sit out or make an impact from the bench. The Adam Armstrong signing clearly hasn’t worked out well and Ralph doesn’t fancy him, and Shane Long is Shane Long. We’ve basically got Broja plus 3 other “second” strikers. If we don’t keep Broja there’s definitely a lot of work to be done up front as none of our others look like they’ll regularly hit double figures in the league.

This was a mock up done last year but the red and white halves idea is very much my favourite and I’d love for us to adopt it on a more permanent basis.

Aside from the Cortese kit disasters, we’ve not really had a proper recreation of the centenary kit. I’ll admit I was never a big fan of it first time round, but there’s likely to be some scope to do something decent (Hummel have done a red and red stripe recently).

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Good luck with that. Given the shirt numbers used today the poor old official is gonna have trouble holding up a 2 and 2 board to tell Salisu he’s coming off, whilst also holding up the two and a seven board for Diallo coming on. What’s that, Nathan Tella is coming on for Will Smallbone? Dammit. Has anybody got any spares 2s??

Not sure I quite agree with this idea at this point. The women’ game still has a long way to develop and it needs to do so organically within some sort of structure that shows that it may live within its means. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t need a little bit of a helping hand from the club at times, and I don’t think it would be unreasonable to expect a member of the media team is assigned to accompany the team for all home and away games to provide live updates and a decent match report with photos of the game. Other clubs are already capable of this, whereas our OS is still in the habit of showing “game not started” on the OS when it is either underway or even finished. The last game against Crawley saw fans logging in to the opposition’s Twitter feeds for score updates, Saints seemingly did nothing.that’s really poor, and easily fixed (could potentially even do it on the cheap by having a tie in with Solent Uni and get journalism students to do it as a project, accompany the team on away games etc.). Not sure if it happens already, but from time to time it would be nice to have one or more of our coaching team attend women’s training and pass on some hints and tips. If one or two of the first team players could spare an hour of their time to do this every now and again, it might create more of an idea that the sides are integrated and follow each other’s fortunes. Perhaps St Mary’s could be made available for more than a game or two a season. Again this may generate wider interest and start to attract more of a following at games. If the games could also be daytime games that allow children to attend (I see the next game is against Pompey but kicks off at 7.45pm, which is going to be difficult for those with young kids to come along). Get a bumper daytime game on the go and it could even start to bring in new generation of young fans and future players to the womens game. Just some thoughts, I think there’s probably a few more things we can do better before loading the wage bill significantly. Media exposure during and after games seems the easiest fix, if the club genuinely can’t get this done either by themselves or volunteers then I’m left scratching my head.

Sounds more to me like he’s engineering himself a move away. Either way, big loss if he goes.

Four points in the game, three substitution windows plus the half time break.

OS still reporting that the game hasn’t started. Good work media team Ffs.

Uncanny. I’d never heard of this method of telling left and right in my life, and in the last two days I’ve heard it twice. Spooky. What happens if you turn your hands palm side up though? Hmmmm?

It only brings us into line with IFAB and other European leagues so meh, just get on with it.

Yes, there is that. You’re correct, teams will try to exploit it. Football teams are genuine shithouses. That said, this is too important an issue to continue to ignore. I’d rather have teams trying to game an advantage by getting a fourth sub on, than I would team forcing a player back on the pitch who is genuinely in peril for his health.

If anything, the FA acquiescing to this nonsense does more damage to the cause of head injury prevention than it does good. I genuinely find it sickening the FA get on board with this pathetic charade of pretending they’re actually doing something about a well chronicled disaster in football.

Dear god.

It does seem that way. Chris Sutton has been excellent in championing this cause, given his personal situation with his dad. The lack of reaction by the authorities is shameful. Itsxall very well bringing it to people’s attention by this thing (I wasn’t even aware of it, mind). The authorities in charge of it need a fucking rocket up their arses as they’re literally killing their players, and some half cocked no-name campaign isn’t going to make a slight bit of difference. I remember you bringing this to the forum about your dad before, so I know I’m preaching to the converted I this respect.

Who was the organiser of the nameless shirts? If the FA or the premier league were in any way involved they should hold their heads in shame. Concussion protocol in football and general head injury injury reaction is pathetic. We’ve seen year upon year where football goes out of its way to avoid bringing in proper rules that allow head injuries to be immediately assessed without the side being penalised. It’s very simple: allow a rollin subs for head injuries, do a proper assessment that doesn’t take just two minutes, give clubs that temporary sub the whole while that the assessment goes on, and force players to stay off if a neutral doctor advises so or allow them back if the doctor gives the thumbs up. premier league sides are shit at managing this, and the league/FA are equally culpable in continuing player risk.