Midfield_General

Still very early days, but that’s a pretty uninspiring list. Proper bargain basement stuff. But we’ve not had any major fee-generating outgoings yet so I suspect we’ll start showing interest in ‘bigger’ players once the decent fees start coming in for THB, Downes, maybe Ramsdale (although it sounds like they’re looking for him to be a loan and stay our player), hopefully the 17m 🤣 from Atalanta for Sulemana etc. I’m not mentioning Fernandes as I’m still choosing to delude myself with the fantasy that he’s our next club legend in the making and will turn down all offers and stay to lead us back up as captain.

Just to repeat what I said on the other thread: At still only 28, he'll be a very shrewd free acquisition for someone. Superb player, superb professional and a lovely fella too. I met him in the players' lounge this season and he couldn't have been nicer, stopping to have plenty of photos with the kids, chatting to them and so forth, which was especially good of him as it was after a defeat (obviously). One of my favourite players of the last ten years. A grafter and a class act who will be sorely missed, and I wish him all the best wherever his career takes him next. Would love to see him back in some capacity in the future.

Sadly he will be a victim of the forced relocation of all current residents and businesses, because that spot is earmarked for the dedicated monorail stop for the DraganWorld MGM Grand Casino (sponsored by Castrol).

Max Aarons completes a season-long loan deal to join Martin at Rangers: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c4gkz7d5j3zo Feels like a good signing for them. Surprised he has gone up there as I would have thought he would have had some decent offers down here, but Martin tried to sign him before (for us, last summer) so I'd imagine he will have played up that long-standing admiration to get him to sign. With KWP gone, I wonder if our apparent lack of interest indicates that we're seeing Sugawara and Bree as plenty in that position for next season, because if we were in the market for a right back, and he was affordable by the likes of Rangers, you'd have thought that we'd have been all over Aarons.

What they haven't mentioned is that it will be somewhat aggressively priced at £58,000 per pint. Need to offset the investment in the DraganWorld St Mary's Leisure Experience, Retail Park, Hotel Complex and Northam Estate Tour ™ development somehow. So get drinking - the city's ambitious infrastructure vision needs YOU 🫵

Official confirmation that KWP and Lumley have gone: https://www.southamptonfc.com/en/news/article/walker-peters-and-lumley-to-depart KWP still only 28. He'll be a very shrewd free acquisition for someone. Lovely fella too, I met him in the players' lounge this season and he couldn't have been nicer, stopping to have plenty of photos with the kids, chatting to them and so forth, especially good of him as it was after a defeat (obviously). Derrick Abu, Josh Lett, Josh McNamara and Lewis Payne have also been released.

https://www.southamptonfc.com/en/news/article/new-additions-boost-stills-coaching-team Bit harsh on Rusk maybe but Still needs to be able to shape his own team. Onwards and upwards.

There's his next TED talk sorted. Just need to get him a piano and the hat 👍

Regeneration of five areas of the city, an innovative mass transit system*, investment in public transport and development of a sport and entertainment district near St Mary's. Billions and billions and billions of pounds worth of cost there. Unless Southampton City Council is slightly more flush than I suspect they are, who's paying for all this? As a guide, Stratford cost £9bn which was raised by a combination of private investment, £2.2bn from the National Lottery, £600m from a GLA Olympic council tax precept, and major contributions from Transport for London and central government because it was for the Olympics. And that was to regenerate one area of a city, not five plus a waterfront. Obviously Dragan's hundreds of millions will be more than enough to cover the new Northam Estate tourism hub near the ground, we've established that, but what about the rest? (*please please let this be a monorail)

Definitely. We've got hundreds of millions to spend, which is more than enough to buy all the land in the entire SO14 postcode, relocate everyone who currently has a home or business there, raze it all to the ground, rebuild it as a gentrified tourist destination with and then do all the development work to St Mary's to add the 6,000 extra seats. We'll definitely need a train station, so we'll add one of those, and then I was thinking maybe a small airport? Doesn't have to be a big one, just one the size of Luton or Stansted would be fine. Space for the runway might be a problem but we can just fill in that part of the River Itchen, reclaim the land to build an artificial island and then put it on that. They did that in Hong Kong and it worked really well. Then once that's done I reckon we should have enough left over for Josh Sargent. Because we've got hundreds of millions.

Yeah sorry about that, I was just passing the time before my official guided tour of the cement plant started

How many shops do you think there will be?

😬

Sweet Jesus. Stratford got £9 billion in investment to host the Olympics, they didn't just decide to put up a football stadium and some shops

Plus of course for the reduced price of £275 per person every tourist can get VIP, 24-hour access to the hippest, happeningest nightspot in SO14, The Knightwood Lounge, where the sophisticated hues of emerald green and rich forest tones immediately transport you to a serene woodland, a state-of-the-art DJ booth sets the mood, and it definitely doesn't just look like a shit Caffe Nero.

First 50 to sign up for the tour get 20% off entry to one of the quaint local massage parlours and a complimentary sexual health check afterwards Call it the Early (Rough) Bird scheme

All of those things would be removed? So they'd buy up the entire postcode and all the land for miles around and level it to the ground to make way for this awesome new development? How many billions are being spent on this? East Street, the Bargate and Town Quay weren't just made up of 'shops' either - they had bars, cafes, restaurants, entertainment venues and whatever else, and they weren't miles away and surrounded on all sides by an industrial wasteland and a football ground. And no-one went, which is why they all fell empty, got boarded up and then got shut down completely before being bulldozed to make way for flats and a few offices. Unless you first build - and then successfully sell - thousands of new homes in that area first to create a new permanent population concentration of affluent professionals, no-one is trudging all the way down there for a splendid day out or a delightfully bijou city break. It would be commercial suicide to try it.

So the High Street is dying on it's arse, East Street Shopping Centre (in the centre of town) went because no-one went there, the Bargate Shopping Centre (in the centre of town) went because no-one went there and Town Quay Shopping Centre (in a prime waterfront position) went because no-one went there, but people will flock to a new retail development which is 25 mins walk out of the town centre and surrounded by a gas works, a concrete plant, a run-down industrial estate and a red light district. Righto. Outside of a match day, the only thing I'd make the effort to travel to St Mary's to buy would be crack.

Just discovered that Rudi Skacel’s full first name is actually Rudolf. Which seems appropriate as he did go down in his-tor-y, and is only ever talked about for 3 weeks of the year.

How about the bang average loans hall of fame? Not the Maxwel Cornet/ Mason Holgate-levels of absolute shite, or the invisible men like Gronbaek or Caceres, but the utterly nondescript players who maybe contributed enough to encourage an initial flash of optimism that they might be OK, but otherwise didn't do much and were either quietly dropped or were packed back off to their parent clubs once their loan spell ended and were subsequently missed by absolutely no-one. Kevin Danso, Jan-Paul Saeijs, Chris Lucketti, Iago Falqué, Phil Ifil, Jordon Robertson, Maarten Stekelenburg, Ryan Smith, Filip Djuricic, Neal Trotman, Dany N'Guessan, Joe Rothwell, Adam Hamill, Jacob Mellis - this is for you.

I always really felt for Gorman. When Burley went he made it clear he didn't want the job but took it on anyway to help the club out because it was an absolute mess at the time. He had recently lost his wife after a long battle with cancer, the team was shit and the club was skint and in freefall on its slide down to League One. You could see at the time the unbearable stress he was under trying his best to do a job he didn't want with zero resources and a personal life in turmoil.

Big Ange in before the Christmas decorations are taken down

The argument seems to be that Frank was an internal appointment who no-one had heard of at the time, and he worked out, so they must know what they’re doing. But surely they’re well enough off now that they don’t need to roll the dice on a low-cost, high-risk gamble. Very odd.

This does look like it's happening: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/articles/c3w48p7n014o That is one hell of a risk that surely they don't need to take. Loads of decent managers would love to have a shot at that job.

Takumi Minamino looked like a shrewd bit of loan business at first. Was excellent on his debut, played the full 90 straight off the bat, scored a very decent goal and just generally looked like a threat. Then I can't remember any other single thing that he did after that. Wiki says he scored two goals in 10 games for us in total, but I don't remember the second one and just seem to recall that he dropped off fairly spectacularly after that good start.