SNSUN

What a save. Great free kick from AA

AA (no hyphen) with the ball...

JWP territory.

Aribo on for Stu. That'll speed us up.

I don't want to jump on the bandwagon but I'm another who hasn't been that impressed with Manning so far. Poor today, poor against Norwich. Perraud has to start soon but I can't see Martin dropping him. Ooh Che offside. Would have missed anyway. Come on Saints, ten minutes and it is all very pedestrian.

Cross bar. Not our day?

Come on Saints, we're going to have to outscore them if we want to win this.

Back to the drawing board

Wtf

Goal! Tella... Nice start this half.

Edozie close

Bright start

Champions win shit games 1 nil. 😁 It beggars belief we are probably going to need A-A and Doyle on here. Talented youngsters but enough with the outs now, we need some ins.

This needs changing for sho. Russell made good subs against Norwich, need more of the same. We have little midfield and what we do have in Stu and Shea have been booked.

Corner. We need the first goal here, I think if Plymouth score first we'll crumble. Charles booked for handball.

Manning can play CM right? Cos Doyle aside we have few options if we need to change things.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-12421503/amp/Southampton-keen-850k-valued-midfielder-Luca-Kerber-German-tier-club-Saarbrucken-Championship-look-replace-Romeo-Lavia-James-Ward-Prowse.html Reminds me of the 90s when we'd sign players like Dryden from the lower leagues that nobody had ever heard of.

I didn't know Bournemouth were going for Tyler Adams. Fair play to them they're doing some good business this summer. Well over £100m spent and some good players there.

He means to find Downes, not just something you do as a hobby. 😉

What difference would it have made? Not much. We beat Wednesday playing some of the best passing football the Championship has ever seen and he wouldn't have played against Gillingham anyway. Only against Norwich may he have added steel to the midfield by which time this transfer was well underway. This is an amazing deal for us and the reason SR went down the "buy youth for profit" route, but even though it has happened successfully with Tino and now Romeo, I still think it was a risky route to take with our Premier League place on the line. Good luck to Lavia though. He really will be a top player in a few years time.

I remember when poor Emiliano Sala disappeared, the Cardiff fans forum were researching every tiny island south of mainland England in the hope that he'd be found there. Sometimes you just gotta go overboard on the conspiracy theories.

So Downes not looking imminent and Smallbone out for a long time. Edozie may not start if he still has a tight hammy. So possibly a few changes here. Baz, KWP, Bednarek, Stephens, Manning, Charles, Stu, Alcaraz, Tella, AA, Adams? Or Manning into midfield and Perraud at LB is the other thing I can think of, without relying on Doyle. Definitely need a CM brought in sooner rather than later or we'll be resigned to sticking Aribo in there.

Smallbone could be injured for months. Charles is young and untested even at this level. Alcaraz is more suited to attacking positions. We absolutely need Downes and one other. We don't want to destroy the youth pathway but Doyle aside we don't have a lot of kids coming through in CM right now and we have a long, hard season ahead. "Banging them in" is not the phrase I would use. Armstrong has scored 3 goals, one he knew nothing about and 2 were penalties (though decent, it is still a free shot on goal). He works hard but he wouldn't be my first choice (unless he played wide). Che has 2 (admittedly good) goals but I wouldn't expect him to be prolific over the season. We definitely need another striker already IMO, we're just too heavily stocked with crap. If (and probably when) Che goes, and if we can offload Onuachu and/or Mara we'll need two. Ballard as 4th choice should be fine. Line up with Piroe in attack instead of AA and I think he instantly improves us. I quite like AA for work rate but he's currently our modern day Shane Long.

All clubs thank Sheffield United for signing Tom Davies.

Jump up, jump up and get Downes. House of Pain - appropriate name for SMS last season.