The Kraken

Is Forster injured?

I think you may be biased given your username….. 😉 But yes, he was good that season, especially so as he was at centre back.

Looks like the one on the left is definitely having her share of the spoils.

Disagree. They can offer players the possibility of competing, certainly more than Saints can. Granted, they’re not likely to win the title again soon. But they’re now a side who genuinely aim for a European finish and lower mid table is seen as failure. That’s a significant step up. It may be only a short term thing, we’ll see, but it’s a fair assessment of now.

They’re also ahead of us on stadium size and potential numbers through the door. They’ve had a season ticket waitlist for some time and have plans afoot to increase their stadium size to 40k. We are similar to Leicester in that our stadiums currently look much the same. Aside from that, right now they are clearly a step up.

Indeed. It’s a guaranteed way to success. Years ago an unwise old man always used to talk about Alex Ferguson and say that “it’s an easy job and anyone can do it, all he’s got to do is spend money”.

I’ve heard the ‘fraud’ accusation quite a lot, it’s quite common. Don’t get it myself.

You’d certainly be mad to say he’s done anything other than a great job of turning them round. I don’t think he’ll stay at Newcastle in the medium to long term but their form of late has been excellent.

🤣 not sure what’s worse, MLT losing his mind or this goon following him around and reporting back on his every tweet. It’s all a bit sad really, we all know MLT has gone mad so that should be a good cue to just shut him off.

Yeah I edited my post, I missed Valery out. Though I consider him a liability so I think I’d be worried if we’re to be a starting choice for us. I don’t see much money being spent in this area, it would be daft unless Tino’s injury is extremely lengthy. But a bit of a worry.

We need a backup though. If KWP were injured or suspended I’m not sure who our replacement RB is. I’d guess either Valery or Jack Stephens, or move JWP there, so not ideal. At LB it’s similar, Thierry Small is the only other genuine left back in the squad, and he hasn’t played a single minute of senior league football with us, but I doubt Small gets the nod so we could end up with something like Valery or even Salisu there.

It reads like it was written by someone who doesn’t really understand football. The photo is credited to an official Saints photographer who has a back catalogue of mens, womens and academy shots. Maybe they just got her to write it, and it’s not her forte.

While that is true, Ralph has since lamented some of the involvement of the RB brand on what he did at Leipzig. He said that he felt constrained by their direction and part of him leaving was to further develop himself as a coach.

Of course, yes. If that’s his ambition then he should absolutely do it. I just don’t see that with Ralph. He clearly lives and breathes the game. He may get out of being a manager but I find it difficult to see that he’d choose retirement. I may be wrong about that of course, just my perception.

Don’t think I ever thought that this season tbf. They’ve got a mediocre manager, some bang average players, and nobody in any form to consistently put the ball in the net.

It does bring up a conundrum, if Ralph is true to his word that he wants to leave at the end of his contract at the end of next season. We had it before with WGS aiming to work out his contract, and that ended badly just a few months into his final year. Ralph himself said, when at RB Leipzig, "The club are well within their rights not to offer me an extension, but we also stressed that going into the final year of a contract without a clear long-term future plan wasn't ideal". I wonder if there’s any chance that Ralph might move upstairs within the club. I very much doubt it will happen, but if it did it would allow a season to search for and groom his successor. Personally I think he’s too young to do what he’s said he’ll do, walk away from coaching.

Their run in isn’t good, they’ve got Chelsea Leicester and Arsenal to play. Saying that, they’ve also got watford Brentford and Palace, so they’re not dead just yet. Burnley’s run in also has its ups and downs, watford Villa twice Spurs and Newcastle.

This is a really ugly game of football.

Yep. The players were underperforming and he expected them to improve.

Massive sigh of relief! The staying up party can begin!!

Yes it was. The club agreed his request to terminate his contract a year early.

That’s a full time job lately.

According to a couple of sources I read, that £6M includes bonuses such as a title win. So never going to get paid. I thought I’d heard before that Ralph’s original deal was around £3m per year.

Fewer

Nobody said coming tenth requires a perfectly balanced high quality squad. Finishing inside the top ten, and doing it consistently, relies upon having decent squad depth to cover shortfalls through injury, suspension, and loss of form. We haven’t got that strength in depth, hence why we’ll likely finish outside the top ten again this season. Our first team is decent enough, most of our backups are not.