The Kraken

He stands at nearly 6 foot 3, Kotchap Kotchap He says he fucking hates Pompey, Kotchap Kotchap Signing him is a compliment His name sounds like a condiment Armel Bella, Southampton’s stopping machine

Exactly.The Tories go on about their desire to pay high pay for high skilled jobs. Then it’s a race to the bottom: “be grateful you’re getting paid a decent salary because look terribly we pay other occupations in the public sector!”.

Armel Bella-Kotchap and Arma better catchup.

This is it for me. ‘Ambition’ is a word that gets thrown around a lot, as you say often the expectation of it is for the club to spend loads of money that they haven’t got on players. It’s not sustainable. Having owners who are engaged and have obviously done an evaluation of the whole club is very refreshing. The coaching situation was known to most but is now being actioned. This chap in recruitment has obviously been working to different parameters with City, but we know that Saints are going to be looking at a lot of young players to come in, so perhaps he’s a really good fit for that. With SR’s background I’d have thought all scouting will be done on much more than the scout’s eye test, so there’s lots of small positives which will all hopefully make a difference. At the end of the day though, it’s the quality of the first team and their results, so proof is in the pudding. But yeah, so far some encouraging signs throughout the club.

£25m would be a decent deal.

I don’t think it’s funny, it’s really just a natural comparison of male sports versus female sports. High school boys will, on average, be faster and stronger than adult women. With football it’s kind of difficult to make a direct comparison, because it’s skills plus strength/pace/fitness, but nonetheless it’s still a valid comparison. https://boysvswomen.com/#/ There’s another chart, which I can’t find online now, but shows the womens world record for athletics events and what the lowest male age group equivalent is. In some instances the male record at 12 and 13 years old beats the womens equivalent. Just biology innit.

The only way a lot of crowds are going to grow is by bolting on to the mens teams. I don’t have a problem with that, it’s a pretty logical step really and the best way to quickly grow interest in the game. The FA fucked over the womens game for long enough, so they’re not exactly starting from a level playing field, a bit of a leg up isn’t unreasonable.

I find it sad that he’s gone so far off the reservation. He’s clearly not the brightest star in the sky but he’s gone so far down the rabbit hole there’s just no way out. Utter crank, which saddens me.

Tbf the black socks we had in 89/90 were absolutely brilliant. They had a little Saints badge stitched into them. I bought a pair for 1.99 from sportskit and used to always wear them for kick abouts and 5 a side. That kit was the best stripes kit that saints ever had Imo, and saw the 4-1 dismantling of Liverpool at the Dell.

No thank you.

No thanks. White socks. Never liked it when we had red socks.

More importantly, what does it look like when worn over a hoody?

Yep, that’s a pearler. I reckon we’ll get it at some point.

One would hope that the idea of him being on loan is that the club he’s at pays all/most of his wages, so that it’s a very low risk approach. Hes been signed from division two Polish football so I can’t imagine he’s on a huge amount as it is.

I don’t think anyone would suggest getting someone crap in just because they have experience.it’s just good to have a proper starter with experience in key positions through the spine of the team. We’ve got that with JWP at CM. A proper “captain” at CB would be really good addition. But they need to be good enough too. Not easy to find and maybe not cheap, but a key addition IMO, especially so when the club is focused on bringing on lots of young talent in other areas.

Agreed, I’d like to have a decent experienced CB alongside Salisu. I think we’ll only sign one CB this summer, unless Salisu goes. Bednarek and Valery may go, but Stephens and Lyanco maybe likely aren't going anywhere, so we don’t have too much to work with. So if this lad is the CB we get in and we do lose Bednarek, it’s a pretty young pairing.

More likely Caballero moves on and Lis becomes number three IMO.

Fucking hell Jamie, have a word with yourself sonner.

I’d probably disagree about the Forster comparison, though I was (and still am) a fan of Boruc. Forster in his early years at Saints was IMO a very solid keeper and a little bit of an upgrade on Boruc. He lost his way a bit, then showed this season glimpses of what a good keeper he can be. But they were both two decent glovesmen for us and not much in it.

Don’t like that much, it’s like an Arsenal / Denmark hybrid.

Me neither, but it’s (likely to be) a low cost gamble and an opportunity it’s to see if he can be a step up on Harry Lewis and therefore actually reasonable enough as our third choice keeper.

Like plenty of others, I’ve always said that I’ll be concerned if Alex McCarthy is our number one glovesman at the start of the season. That doesn’t mean that Bazunu may not be a cracking signing, it sounds very optimistic on that front. But we’ll find out if he’s been targeted as an immediate number one or if the club want to give him some time as understudy first. Personally I think he’s been signed as the new number one and will be the starting custodian come season kick off. So, yeah, I guess I’d be concerned if it turns out to not actually be the case.

Two keepers in one day #noholdsbarred

The apartments look like they’re being done as cheaply as possible. It’s a real shame they’re not doing something to incorporate the gasworks, there’s some lovely buildings built or proposed around the UK that have done it.

Oh god, you just know that will actually be sung