Midfield_General

Last night wasn't about lack of effort, it was about lack of composure and basic ability, and making tactical decisions that made us worse. When you have a poor coach managing poor players, that's what happens unfortunately. Also, was it me or did Sugawara come on playing left wing, ahead of Welington? I thought that was what it looked like but the resolution on my stream wasn't great and it was hard to tell.

They didn’t rob us, we handed it to them. Shit substitutions that handed them the midfield. Shit headers from THB. Stephens lost his man. Ramsdale should have stopped it. All self-inflicted, as per usual. Palace were poor, but knew they just needed to keep playing and plodding on, doing the basics because they knew we’d shoot ourselves in the foot eventually. And we did.

Well we nearly put a spanner in the Sunday night relegation plan there, but since normal service was resumed in the 91st minute it’s still on.

What I don't get is that he did do that, and it was largely successful, but he bizarrely never went back to it. He changed to four at the back and an extra man in midfield at Liverpool, and away from home at one of the best teams in the world we did really well, took the lead and generally looked like much more of a competent football team than we have all season. We actually acquitted ourselves really well in that game despite losing it. But despite that, he completely changed it again the next week, and we haven't gone back to it. And lo and behold, we instantly went to absolute dogshit again. Why on earth would you do that? Surely the thickest person on the planet would think 'that was a lot better, we should keep doing that and maybe we can build on it.' It just doesn't make any sense at all. His decisions defy logic or common sense and that's why as far as I'm concerned he can go with the rest of them and let's just start completely afresh next year. New players, new coach, new sporting director, new league, let's have it.

Ooooh a whimper! What I wouldn't give to get relegated with a whimper!

It would be more Saints-like to go on a blistering run of victories once it's completely irrelevant Was it Forest who got relegated with three to play and then won all of the last three? I always remember when we played Derby last day of the season years ago, when we were comfortably safe and they'd already been relegated, and they pumped us 6-1

Sammy Saint holding Can't be any stupider than putting Joe Aribo at fucking centre half

It stands for "(R)asmus really fucked us up" Or "(R)ussell" - take your pick

So as I calculate it, we can be relegated by this Sunday evening. If we lose against Palace tonight, Wolves beat Ipswich on Saturday, and then we lose against Spurs on Sunday, then we'll be on 9 points and Wolves will be on 32 points, meaning we'll be 23 points behind them with only 7 games/ 21 points left to play for. I think that would set another exciting new PL record, as no-one's been relegated before with seven left to play? Derby went down earlier by date in 2007/8 (they went down on the 29th March), but only had six matches left at that point. Huddersfield also went down earlier by date in 2018/19 (30th March), but they also had six left. Roy Castle would be proud of this side.

On the last day of the season, having been relegated in April, we'll stuff an on-the-beach Arsenal 3-0 out of nowhere with a pressure-off, free-flowing, virtuoso display in front of a rocking St Mary's. SR will say that 'all the hard work behind the scenes is paying off' and that 'we've finally turned a corner', and will reward Juric with a new 4-year contract. Then we'll have a terrible start to the Championship and they'll have to sack him in October.

Yep. Fell out with Howe at Bournemouth, then burned all his bridges and refused to play in order to push through a 5 year deal at Newcastle under Steve Bruce. Then, less than a year after he signed, Newcastle canned Bruce and replaced him with Howe. Howe gave Fraser a year, then not only dropped him but permanently fucked him off into the under-21s, never to be seen for them again.

Very much doubt he’ll be here next season. Feels like he’s thrown his toys out, which he’s got a lot of form for doing - he refused to play for Bournemouth, and then fell out with Howe at Newcastle as well. Now Russ has gone I think he’s having another sulk, the precious little darling. Just one of many bang average players who needs to go from a horribly bloated squad stuffed with mediocrity that needs gutting and clearing out from top to bottom.

Sheffield Wednesday are having a cashflow crisis, have failed to pay their players on time, and now face a transfer embargo and a possible points deduction. https://www.stokesentinel.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/sheffield-wednesday-wages-transfer-embargo-10070263 If ever we wanted to approach Rohl and get him lined up to replace Juric for next season, now would be the time to do it.

What's the Italian for 'handball'?

Meghoma starting for Preston against Villa in the cup. Interested to see if he has developed and how he gets on against good quality oppo.

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Cool We should hire an open-top bus for Rasmus to proudly drive down Shirley High Street while from the top Phil Parsons scatters ticker tape made of shredded copies of our FY25 financial statements

It’s absolutely a game of opinions mate and of course you are very welcome to share yours but with the greatest respect, did you see some of the mental shit that Martin was doing in terms of formations and players out of position? I can’t be bothered to list them all out but two very obvious ones were: 1) Forest at home with that absurd U-shape with Armstrong on one far touchline, BBD on the other and no-one at all in the middle, and 2) Bournemouth away where he had five strikers on the bench but started Fernandes (a midfielder) and Dibling (a winger) as a two up front. We were a complete mess in both games. In terms of ‘self sabotage’, it’s hard to think of any manager who self-sabotaged more than Martin with the way he forced our very limited players to play out and put themselves under immediate pressure in our own box when it was entirely unnecessary. As a direct result of that we gave away more goals from errors than anyone else in the league, and gave up more goalscoring opportunities to the opposition than anyone else in the league. That was all self-inflicted and was entirely on him. He was the absolute definition of self-sabotage and that’s why so many people were so furious with him. Yes we had a poor squad, yes we probably would have gone down anyway, but the way he made us play meant that in most games we were having to do it with one hand metaphorically tied behind our backs so we couldn’t even give ourselves a chance of grinding out a few confidence (and points)-boosting 0-0s or 1-0 wins early on in the season when we still had a bit of hope that we might be able to compete, at least against the bottom sides. But no, we pissed those games away, the players realised it was hopeless and gave up, and here we are. Juric has been awful too but that doesn’t change the fact that Martin was completely out of his depth, was in cloud cuckoo land thinking that this awful squad could play out like Man City against premier league opposition, and he absolutely had to go. I also didn’t hear any contrition at all during his Sky appearance. During the bit I watched he had the sheer brass neck to criticise Spurs for playing out, and said how surprised he had been that premier league players were fast and physical. At that point I switched it off before I did my telly a mischief. All just IMHO of course. (Welcome to the board btw )

Yeah the level of interaction between the fans and the players/ staff is another brilliant thing. We went to an away game and were basically the only away supporters there. We were still in the bar after the game when all our players came in. They recognised us and brought us over to sit and have a drink with them to say thanks for coming out to support them. We were absolutely made up afterwards, it was great.

Two words: non-league. I live too far away from Southampton now to get to St Mary's very often, so I go to my local non-league club instead to get my Saturday afternoon fix and it's brilliant. 3pm Saturday kick-offs, turn up and pay on the gate, £10 to get in, £4.50 for a pint you can drink while you stand on the rail by the touchline with your mates, close enough to the pitch to hear the players abusing the ref. Decent quality football and every game is competitive. You don't have the same burning passion for the club of course, but you still get invested in the result. Saints are in my blood and will always be my club but if you just want to watch a game and have a few beers and you miss the traditional football experience then you can't go wrong really.

There’s no way he’s staying to play in the Championship, unfortunately. At this point it’s just a case of how much we can rinse someone for him, and hoping we can get a manager in who is decent enough to be capable of influencing these buffoons to spend it wisely.

Given that he's only got a year left on his contract, I'm going to go ahead and suggest that that may be a little punchy. Obviously no-one's going to pay that, but as it's the Telegraph it's probably been fed by the club to set the bar at an appropriate £50m+ level for bids, given he's young, English, has Premier League experience, clearly has a ton of potential and has now had his breakthrough season and got enough of the big boys* interested to the extent that there would probably be competition among them for his signature. Hopefully it offsets some of this 'we'll probably let him go for £20m' nonsense. SR have royally bollocksed up many, many things, but they've got reasonable form for getting decent prices when selling talent. (* and Spurs)

Who would you go for?

I'm surprised O'Hara could work out which end of the microphone to use to share that red hot opinion, he's that fucking dumb. Him, Cundy, Jim White, Alan Brazil, Andy Townsend... Christ, there are some thick people given airtime on TalkSport. It's like their strategy is to put together a dream team of the stupidest people in the world, and that's before you even start with the people who call in. I wouldn't back any of them to sit the right way round on a toilet seat.

I think Charles is going to be an important player for us next year as well, presuming that he actually wants to come back, which I would say probably isn't a given just yet. So I wouldn't write him off as a dud, albeit he'll be performing at a level lower than the one we presumably intended to use him at.