Midfield_General

£30m each for Stephens and Smallbone and I’d reluctantly let them go

ETH has just been sacked. HCDAJFU?

I think it’s a combination of things: 1. He only knows how to coach one system, so he doesn’t have any choice 2. He is stubborn with it, so probably wouldn’t change it even if he could because he doesn’t like to be seen to be bending to pressure from others 3. He wants a CV that shows that all his teams have the right possession-based stats in the right places, so that when the time comes it will impress teams bigger than us who want to play possession-based. So that regardless of whether he’s been sacked for the approach not translating into results with little old Saints, he can point at those stats at the next interview and say ‘See, if I can get a limited group like them to do it, imagine how effective it would be at a club like yours with more money for better players to implement it’. Football’s such a mental business that I have a feeling it will work too. It’s worked three times so far, as he’s moved upwards each time. (MK Dons > Swansea > Saints). I could see a decent-ish foreign team with European aspirations going for it. I absolutely agree that it’s all about him though. He literally said as much in his post-match interview after City. ‘I don’t want to stand and watch a style I don’t believe in’. That’s all about putting what he wants over what’s best for the club (which at this stage is points at all costs). It’s the definition of a vanity project.

Can you cunts carry on arguing please, it’s way more entertaining than the football’s been cheers x

Add in KWP, Sugawara, Downes and Ramsdale and I still maintain that there is enough quality in that core to compete. I think we’re weak at centre half generally but if that core gets picked every week, properly coached and managed there is enough ability there to pick up some points against the weaker sides. It’s how those resources are being deployed that’s the problem. But then we know that.

He can fuck off 'n all. Patronising twat.

Reminds me of that bit from I, Partridge when he's talking about whether it bothers him when people shout A-Ha at him in the street. "I don't mind. It's fine. It doesn't bother me at all. Honestly, I couldn't give a fucking shit."

In another season - one where we're doing alright - that would feel like a pretty decent result. Didn't fold after going a goal down early, defended pretty well (aside from the goal which was poor), carved out one or two chances and hit the bar, rattled them a little bit in the last 10 minutes, and by keeping it to 1-0 stayed in with a puncher's chance right to the end. There are plenty of teams who'd take a one goal defeat from City away if it was offered. When you're where we are though, unfortunately it doesn't really mean much. Even if you go in fearing the worst and expecting a drubbing that doesn't come, a respectable defeat is still just another defeat and another week with no more points on the board. Honestly, they didn't really need to get out of second gear and regardless of how many pretty little little triangles we managed in meaningless areas, they just pinned us back or held us at arm's length to get the three points without expending too much energy. If it felt like the positives from that respectable defeat were something that we'd learn from and build on, then maybe it would feel more significant. But unless we use this to work towards a settled team, and get wins from Everton and/or Wolves, it doesn't mean anything. I want to take some encouragement from it, but really all I feel is relief that that fixture is out of the way and we haven't been pumped by 6 or 7, which I thought was on the cards when they scored from their first attack of the match.

I was looking at the last relegation squad and what was noticeable was how many players we had that season for whom playing in the Premier League for Saints that season will probably be the peak of their career - ie they got a lot of game time but have since been proved to be lower level players, and in hindsight just were never good enough for that league. Players like Diallo, Mara, Lyanco, Caleta-Carr and Elyonoussi, plus some of the more borderline ones like Perraud. That got me thinking about the reverse though - which players have we had in recent years who looked average for us, and no-one really cared when they left, who actually went on to prove they were decent players that we maybe just couldn’t get the best from? Tadic feels like the obvious one. Felt like his best performances for us had tailed off and there were plenty who weren’t sad to see him go, then he tore it up for Ajax in the Champions League the following season and is still playing at a high level with Fenerbahce. Lemina appeared to be a complete waster but seems to have done alright and is now captain at Wolves I think. Hojbjerg maybe? Never really looked that special for us but went on to look an important player for Spurs for a few seasons when he had better players around him. Who else has proved us wrong to an extent?

His Blackpool side beat Liverpool home and away, went to Newcastle and beat them, beat Spurs, went away to a Wigan side who were decent at the time and beat them 4-0, and also beat Wolves, West Brom, Sunderland and Stoke. They went down, but got 39 points which would have kept you up by a mile in any recent season.

Would be the perfect absolutely disastrous fit

FFS. One less top replacement option now available: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c98dyp82n3zo 11 Premier League victories under his belt. I reckon he could have been tempted. WAKE UP SR.

In a season full of increasingly weird statements and decisions, this Smallbone thing is starting to look like one of the weirdest. I've got nothing against him as a competent, tidy enough Championship midfielder, and he played Armstrong through for the play-off winner of course so he'll always have a tiny bit of Saints history for that, but who, who has actually watched him play at Premier League level, looks at him and thinks "I feel so much better when he's on the pitch", let alone actually vocalises that thought, and let alone a professional manager? I don't doubt that Will's a great lad to have around the place. The more limited players usually are because they know they've got way fewer options elsewhere, so they have to try and hang onto their places in as many other ways as possible. But beyond that it's so hard to see any form of rational justification for that sort of glowing tribute. He doesn't really run, doesn't tackle, doesn't win headers, has got a reasonable eye for a pass but isn't exactly Pirlo, doesn't score many, doesn't really track back. It's baffling. It's Elyonoussi all over again. Even if we mere mortals can't see it, what would his stats show that RM Is so impressed by? It can only be racking up short, safe, sideways passes to drive up that all-important possession %. I literally can't think of anything else. JWP had his limitations but had something of a trump card in being worth 10 goals a season from free-kicks. Aribo will also never be the greatest but he has had some good spells (he was excellent first half against Leicester for example), is increasingly getting stuck in and winning physical battles, has good close control to retain the ball and can play out of some really tight situations. I just don't see what Will's 'thing' is meant to be. I do think that maybe RM is running out of ideas now that his only style of play has been found wanting, and now he's falling back on 'the lads he can trust', so those are the ones he's bigging up ahead of the inevitable backlash when he puts them in the team over better players. Trust to do what though, I'm not sure, because the ones who seem to fall into that category (and we all know who they are) are the ones who have been proven time and again not to be up to the required standard. Very odd indeed.

Just watched the press conference. RM: "We just have to keep on doing what we're doing". "It's the last thing they'll be expecting! Over the top lads!"

Sadly I think it will be more a case of turning round, bending over, closing our eyes and taking it like a bitch.

It’s an interesting question though - No-one could argue that they weren’t successful with Brentford, and from the perspective of a club the size of Brentford/Saints they’ve had perfectly adequate financial support from Dragan, so why have they not been able to replicate that approach and success here?

True. Another way of looking at it is that as it stands we could get out of the bottom three by winning one game. That's how poor the four bottom teams are this season, not just us. Obviously we won't, but it's nice to dream.

Telling the coach driver to get to the Etihad early so he can get a cheeky selfie sat in the home dugout

RM's tactical plan for City has been leaked online. "Doing precisely what we've done 18 times before is exactly the last thing they'll expect us to do this time!" Give it up for Melchett Martin and his Suicide Saints.

I’m not sure Pep Guardiola will have the tactical nous to work out how Russ ‘Keep ‘Em Guessing’ Martin is going to play, or how to counter it.

It’s such a bizarre concept that it’s almost surreal. It’s even more surreal that anyone other than the person spouting it wouldn’t just dismiss it as madness. A football manager who wants to be defined by an approach that loses every game. I build these amazing cars. They do everything except start. I build these amazing planes. They do everything except fly. I build these amazing football teams. They do everything except win games of football. Admire me! It’s almost Orwellian.

Our policy on recruiting managers is just generally odd. We have no problem spunking £6m in fees and four years-worth of wages on players like Wood and Edwards who can't even get in the match day squad, or £8m plus wages on a striker who's only fit to play 20 minutes a season, but god forbid paying a fraction of that for a manager who might actually make us competitive in the Premier League, with a prize of £100m if he finds a way to come fourth from bottom.

Exactly. Jimmy Case. Three European Cup winners’ medals, four Division 1 (Prem equivalent) winners’ medals plus one each for winning the UEFA Cup, European Super Cup and League Cup. Paid thirty grand for him and he bossed the midfield for years.

I was at that game too - I would have been 13 for that one. It's burned vividly into my memory for two reasons. One was that we were at the very back of the very top of the uncovered concrete family stand, what felt like miles up into the freezing night sky on a Tuesday night in February and it was to this day the coldest I've ever been at a football match. It was brutal. I remember my sister's boyfriend was wearing a Campri ski jacket (as was the style at the time) and we found out that you could unzip and remove the arms so we did that and turned the arm sleeves into makeshift ski hats as a desperate attempt to stave off hypothermia. The other was that Matty scored those world-class goals and destroyed them single-handedly - I'd never seen an individual footballer that good before. When he put the second and third ones in we soon forgot about freezing to death and looking like twats and just watched in awe. What. A. Player. Peerless.