Midfield_General

Davis, Fox and Hooiveld all started the season as first choice - all three of them started the first four games of that season. Then when we got off to a terrible start he realised they weren't good enough and started to change it. Davis played 10 games that season, Fox played 21 games that season, Hooiveld played 25. Boruc didn't join until the end of September. Gazzaniga played a few in between. That's my point - after a terrible start, he dropped those players who had got us promoted, and replaced them with better ones, and as a result he slowly started to turn it around. When he was sacked in January he had got us outside the relegation places by 3 points. But his goose was cooked by then. Cortese wanted an upgrade, and to be fair to him, he went out and got one.

Yeah. Under Adkins we were poor when we first went up, as he showed too much loyalty to the championship standard players who had got us up but who clearly weren’t good enough for the top flight (Kelv, Fox, Hooiveld etc), but he looked like he was just starting to steady the ship and get things under control when Poch came in, and when he got canned it felt quite out of the blue. With hindsight it was absolutely the right call, but it felt very harsh at the time. I don’t think he’d have done as well as Poch, but I think he probably would have kept us up.

Parker’s an Interesting one. People tend to scoff at him a bit but he has got three different clubs promoted to the Premier League. He gets a bit found out once he’s there, but he is a decent manager in the overall scheme of things. The Adam Armstrong of managers.

Sounds like he was very close to joining Rangers on loan in January. If that fell through at the last minute it may well have affected him mentally. Tonda alluded to it after the game in the week when he defended him in the press conference afterwards.

Yep. In the same way that Liz Truss can always say she was a Prime Minister, Russ can say he was a Premier League manager. Truss-ell Martin, if you will

Plus playing with ten men for a bit, just for a laugh

Him, BBD and Armstrong will get 20 each at Champ level you know, and at the other end Bazunu is more than adequate 🤣

Let's give them their very own very special thread title update then. A morale-boosting victory for the ten-man Saints under-11s today over everyone's favourite DVD enthusiasts. Lucky it didn't go to penalties, it would have been a lot of excitement for our boys and most of them have got school on Monday. The third win out of three this season was brought to you by the numbers 3-0, 4-3, 2-1 and the letters F and U. Do we get to keep playing them every week?

LOLeicester City

Long looks poor. Shite for the goal and nearly gave them the game there, Quarshie bails him out. Better pray Peretz doesn’t get injured. Impeccable squad planning from Spors to basically have two third keepers and no proper no. 2.

Don’t be so Sillah

Archer somehow actually managing to plumb Downs levels of shit. Misses his second open goal in two games, terrific stuff

😂😂😂

pingpong29

Good pen. Didn’t smash it but put it right in the corner along the ground. Refreshing after watching Armstrong’s easily saveable waist-height jobs.

4/10

Good from Long Outstanding from Manning Then love Romeu’s casual little flicked pass to himself over the attacker’s head in his own penalty area to clear it

Well this is the thriller we all anticipated

No Brooks? Anyone know why?

Valentine's Day so I booked a table for me and the wife. She was shit, didn't pot a single ball.

Maybe they could take a few screen grabs and put them on their next DVD?

Of course - a 3 point buzzer beater

What’s that then

Winks is rumoured to be on £90k per week, and obviously no-one else would be foolish enough to pay that so he’s not going anywhere. It’s deals like that which will absolutely screw them if they do go down - double screw in fact, as they can’t sell to get the transfer fee for a player who might otherwise raise a few quid, and are also being bled dry by having to pay those massive wages for the duration of the contract, potentially with League One levels of income next season and owners who as you say appear to be pulling back. I’m really intrigued to see who agrees to go there as manager because it is a proper poisoned chalice at the moment.

That is mental. How can a 10 year old boy playing Football Manager know that it's just a basic thing to put relegation clauses in, yet they have a board full of professional businesspeople who are highly paid to focus on nothing but running their operation worth hundreds of millions, and not one of them thought to do it? That sort of thing just boggles my mind