Midfield_General

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Opinions on Bazunu aside, the point is that this decision means that we are now one serious injury to Bazunu away from having McCarthy as our first choice goalkeeper for the season.

Bless you. Don't ever change, MLG 😛

No, you are completely wrong. Let's focus on after the window shuts which is obviously the point. The rule is EFL regulation 58. The EFL emergency goalkeeper rule only allows you to sign a new keeper, and only on a 7-day emergency rolling loan deal, if all of your senior goalkeepers are injured or ineligible to play. So if you have any fit senior goalkeepers, you are not eligible for an emergency loan and you have to play the one you have and cover the bench with a youth keeper. There is no rule that says you have to have three senior goalkeepers in your squad. So if Bazunu breaks his leg or gets a serious injury on 2nd September, or at any other point during the season, McCarthy is our keeper for the rest of the season and Long is the second choice. And I couldn't give a fuck if McCarthy had a few competent games 18 months ago. He has been average his entire career and is now 18 months older than he was then. He is obviously not good enough to be picked as a starting keeper for a team expecting to go for automatic promotion. So this decision means that if Bazunu gets injured, we are absolutely fucked.

To use an analogy, in a critical position we have now put literally all our eggs in one extremely unreliable basket. Why would you voluntarily take such a risk? I’m actually stunned at how pointlessly risky and inept this is. It is a huge, huge gamble that we didn’t have to make. We’ve just been given £40m. Spend £3m of it on a solid, proven Championship keeper like any of those who have been mentioned who is better than McCarthy and capable of pushing Baz, alleviate the risk and move on. But no. Instead take a massive unnecessary risk and fill the squad with more dross. Also what the fuck has Bazunu done that’s so special that he gets to be the only player in the squad with no competition for his place? Has he got photos of Spors or something? No club does that, especially not in such a key position. To all those saying it doesn’t matter because it’s only a third keeper, this decision now basically makes Baz undroppable for any game that matters, regardless of form. I hope you’re comfortable with that, but I’m fucking not. It’s an absolutely ridiculous ‘strategy’. Even if Spors pulls something major out of his arse in the next week, I am asking serious questions about his competence now, that he thinks this is a good approach.

No, making this signing is taking an enormous risk in a key position that can be the difference between getting promoted or not. It creates three issues: 1. The jury is very much out on whether Baz is a good enough no. 1 to start with 2. Now he has no credible competition for his spot, there is no-one to keep him on his toes, and we have no real options to swap him out if his form drops off 3. Let’s say he breaks his leg tomorrow. What then?

Dragan’s put loads of money in. He’s just allowed most of it to be spent really badly.

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.