Midfield_General

Exactly. There should be proper competition for all places. It's mad to have any player in any position where you and they just assume they are going to get picked every week no matter what. Every player in the team should have someone snapping at their heels so they know that they are likely to lose their place if they don't perform every week. Even in the training videos posted by the club after Still joined the new goalkeeping coach was jokingly calling McCarthy 'the old man'. As it stands it's pretty obvious he's not considered credible competition for the no. 1 unless there's an emergency.

It was in response to a post which mentioned him. But yeah I didn’t think you - or indeed anyone - could possibly believe that, hence the clarification.

Sorry, are you suggesting that the thing Adam Armstrong needs is more game time?

No - he actually managed to be worse than that by picking no striker at all, or picking two and having them out on the touchlines with literally no-one in the middle. Arma as a 9 is an absolute disaster, yet it still makes more sense than some of the things that that idiot did. And continues to do, looking at the absolute shambles he’s now created at Rangers as well.

I’d love to know what his coaching team really think/say when he’s not around. Obviously he gets them all nicely paid jobs by taking them with him to each new club but are they true believers in what he’s trying to do, or do they just go along with it to get paid and because they know it’s a waste of time challenging it? Pretty much any football fan off the street could set up a team to successfully counter a Martin side at this point. They are professional coaches, they must be able to see the glaring issues that repeat themselves week in week out. Are they just pure yes men looking to rinse a meal ticket for as long as they can at this point? Anyone on here ever coached at a decent level and experienced anything similar where you have to decide whether to challenge it and possibly get bombed out, or just keep quiet and get paid for as long as possible even though you can see how flawed it is? A penny for ‘Gilly’’s thoughts. Which is a phrase I never thought I’d say.

Just saw the St Mirren goal. Rangers on the attack, gave it away on the edge of their opponent’s area who were waiting for it to happen, two passes into the wide open spaces left in behind and the entire team turned around for a 1 v 1 - goal. How many times is he going to give that exact same goal away? It happens time and time again. The opposition are just waiting for the opportunity to spring it. Swansea fans talked about it and we saw it over and over again but he still doesn’t change it and clearly none of his coaching staff have got the balls to challenge him on it. It’s absurd.

BBC Scotland going in two-footed. 'Another day, another debacle for Martin': https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/cn0275y3ey8o

Excellent. Thank you for the clarification. I hope you’re right.

I'm not writing him off. That's not the point or the question. My question, for the third time, is: You said that Armstrong, Archer, BBD, Stewart and Downs were a good enough set of striker options to score enough goals to get promotion. So for the third time - do you stand by that, yes or no?

Why are you talking about positions or who Still picks? That is completely irrelevant to the point. The point is that you said that if Saints had BBD, Armstrong, Archer, Downs and Stewart as our striking options then that would be fine and we wouldn’t need to sign anyone else up front because between them they were good enough options and would score enough goals to get us promoted. Because BBD, Archer, Armstrong and Stewart had done it before at this level and Downs had done it in Bundesliga 2. You said that Adam Armstrong and Ross Stewart are 'prolific' at this level, and on July 5th (with our striking options the same as they are now) you said we have a 'top 3 squad'. Nothing about positions or who out of those players gets picked. Just that the forward options were strong enough and we didn't need anyone else. Do you still stand by that? Again, it's fine to change your mind and admit your judgement was poor, if you'd like to.

It’s got nothing to do with the other two. You specifically said that having those three strikers - Armstrong, Archer and BBD - was good enough to get us promoted because they’d all scored goals at this level before. Are you sticking with that? It’s fine to admit you were wrong.

So who still thinks Armstrong, Archer and BBD are good enough striking options to get us promotion, because they've scored goals at this level before? @Matthew Le God - still sticking by that?

Not one of our signings has improved on what we had. And what we had was fucking dogshit. Therein lies the issue. (Mads obviously gets a pass as it's too early to tell)

ABK hasn't actually gone yet. 'A deal is reported to have been struck', so it's promising, but we've been here before with him. Similarly with Edozie and Aribo, there's obviously some proper interest but nothing is signed yet. Hopefully they will all go asap this week.

If I was Sullivan, after their terrible end to last season and absolute humiliation at home last night I'm not sure Fernandes at £50m+ would be the signing I'd be banking on to win the fans over. Their fans are going mental and want a marquee statement of intent. They are also less than impressed that acquiring a stream of players who have been relegated with us (JWP, KWP, potentially Fernandes) seems to imply a lack of ambition from their board. They also really don't like JWP, which obviously has no bearing at all on whether Fernandes is any good, but they just associate him as a failed signing from us for fairly big money which they don't want to repeat and football fan logic doesn't always make sense. If we stick to our guns pricing him at circa £50m I just can't see him going there. It's way too risky for them.

Oh cool. When's that happening then?

For the avoidance of doubt, the exact words of Russell Martin (managerial honours: one 13th place finish in League One, one 15th place and one 10th place finish in the Championship, one Championship play-off final win) were: "I’ve been happier with a performance when losing than I have sometimes when we have won, playing really poorly, and I always make that really clear to the players. Winning ugly every now and then is fine, but you don’t get away with it for long." It's a quote from this interview with the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/football/article/2024/aug/16/russell-martin-southampton-premier-league A counterpoint would be José Mourinho (managerial honours: winner of three Premier Leagues, one FA Cup, one League Cup, two Serie A's, one Coppa Italia, one Supercoppa Italiana, one La Liga, one Coppa Del Rey, one Supercoppa Espana, one UEFA Conference League, one Europa League, one UEFA Cup and two Champions' Leagues), who said: "Some coaches prefer to sell the idea of having a philosophy, but I think, the philosophy, you have to sell it after you win. First, you win, then you sell the philosophy and then you prove to everybody that your philosophy is correct, your philosophy is great, but you have to win. "If you try to sell your philosophy but you win nothing then what is the point? [If you say] 'I have a philosophy, I have an identity, my team plays very well', that's not true because if your team plays well, they win [trophies]." https://www.si.com/soccer/2019/03/24/jose-mourinho-trophies-jurgen-klopp-philosophy-win Anyway, this is the Will Still thread. Will Still seems sound, doesn't he?

In that top photo it looks like he's worn his full kit during the flight. Had no idea he was a full kit wanker. We don't need someone that unfashionable at the club. Move on.

Yeah the contract is the main reason. As soon as it was clear he wasn't going to sign it was obvious the club wanted him gone this window, as he would start to depreciate after that and it would have made no sense at all for a club like ours to allow that. I think Spors knew / decided this as soon as he came into the club. One of his key beliefs is that you create the market for your players, i.e. set the narrative early as to what they are worth, and then the market will follow. Sure enough, soon after he joined we started getting the statements out of the club that Dibling was a £100m player. He knew straightaway that he would be off, so he started the game early, getting a conversation out there about his sky-high perceived value so that when the window came around that perception had already been in place for a while. Then perception becomes reality. No-one ever thought we'd get £100m, or that he was worth anywhere near that, but with that headline figure floating about it meant that it was easier to make potential buyers believe that offers of £40m+ actually represented some sort of bargain.

Out of the frying pan springs to mind

Getting ugly for West Ham Keeper’s head’s gone on crosses We want 9!

No mate, did you not hear - he's been packed off to fucking Everton 🤣🤣🤣 Poor bastard. But if some desperate gimps are actually going to pay £42m plus 20% sell-on for a kid coming up to a year left who's career total is 2 goals and 2 assists, then you're going to mug them off for it aren't you?

It's hearing the steady stream of common sense like this that is the reason why I'm starting to develop the first twitches of a man crush on the modest, straight-talking, Tintin-looking little scamp. Very early days but so far he just feels like a great fit for the club and the fans - for me the most natural fit since Ralph came in.

Probably for the best. Seems a smashing lad, sadly crap at football. Welcome to the Mad Man

Not trying to be an MLG style pedant but making an approach doesn't necessarily mean they've put in a bid. Could mean they've just contacted the club to register interest and find out what the asking price is etc, in order to weigh up whether they want to make an official bid.