Midfield_General

In the not-too-distant past, clubs being willing to pay those sort of fees for young players generally without PL experience would have been a massive plus for us, rather than a negative, because it would have been our youth academy products who were being bought for silly money, helping us to stay financially competitive. Poor recruitment has hurt us badly on the buying side, but on the selling side you could argue that the way our academy has dried up in terms of no longer producing great young players who get snapped up for big fees has hurt us equally badly. We've gone from being strong at both recruitment and development and being able to 'win' twice, to being poor at both and 'losing' twice. Hopefully Dibling and/ or SAA will help address that negative trend this season.

Leicester did 'kick on' quite significantly in that they won the Premier League and got to the quarter finals of the Champions League, to be fair

Tripping over his own feet while turning inside and running backwards?

See that’s what Lallana should be on, and he should be grateful for it

Jon Stark, Football Mercenary, was a match winner for hire on a game-by-game basis who used to get paid by the goal in Roy of the Rovers. There was “No payment for a lost game” so we should sign a few on that deal, we’d be minted by the end of this season. Nice trousers too.

Cardiff away

Until we sell someone we don't have any money. Does that help?

Leeds playing the classic Saints-in-the-relegation-season suicidally high line with no idea how to actually play it. Should be about six down at home. Panicking and throwing on 5 subs at once, just to concede another immediately afterwards. Hilarious.

Yeah it's obviously a nightmare for all concerned in the short-term, but it doesn't have to be career-ending. Kanu had heart surgery and went on to win African Player of the Year twice.

Also is it slightly weird that Hoffenheim have tried to sign three different centre backs and all three have failed their medicals?

Wouldn't the first choice 3 CBs be THB, Bednarek, Stephens*? (*Not mine, but RM's)

Re-signing KWP on a new contract to play LWB would be a boost at this stage. Not sure it will happen though and if it did I’m not sure where that would leave Taylor

Yeah I was originally thinking about who the last one was, but it’s interesting to hear either way. Says a lot that quite a few haven’t been excited by a signing since Keegan 44 years ago - I suppose if you’ve witnessed Saints sign the twice European player of the year, literally anyone else is a bit of a comedown!

Still, good news about the chocolate oranges

Yeah I got very excited when Hughes joined. Then for some reason we seemed determined to play him in midfield, and he just fouled people all the time. Apart from the phantom ‘goal’ against Leeds that hit the boards and came out, I can’t really remember a single thing he did. Kanchelskis was another one. A massive name where I remember thinking ‘wow’ but we got him too late and he had too many injuries to ever really make an impact.

Rak-Sakyi in the crowd at Sheff Utd vs. Wrexham, ahead of signing for Sheff Utd.

Wan-Bissaka completes his move to West Ham. One less KWP shaped hole that needs filling elsewhere.

I had the formation the other way up actually, keeping it tight with two keepers, eight at the back and Stephens as the false nine, but this way works too

Funny to think how divisive Tadic was amongst some of the fanbase before he moved on. Then he went to Ajax and had a hot spell where for a while he legitimately looked like one of the best players in the world.

Yeah he was a weird one. Really felt like we’d pulled something big out of the bag and brought in some highly experienced international class, then I don’t remember him ever actually playing for us. Don’t remember ever hearing that he was trouble or even that he had injuries, he just never featured. Very odd.

Feels like there's a general lack of excitement about the place at the moment, which made me wonder: who was the last player that got you genuinely excited when you heard they'd signed for us? I don't mean players who turned out to be good, or who we'd already had on loan like THB or Downes. I mean players who you saw get announced and thought 'wow, I never thought we'd get him', or who you'd not heard of but got really excited about when you read about them or saw their YT reel. Seasons of signings of 'potential', damaged goods or solid Championship-level performers has got me reaching back a bit. My last one was probably Boufal. Had never heard of him before, but his skills videos were off the charts and he'd just scored 12 in 35 from out wide in France. Genuinely thought he was going to be a Mané-esque world-beater. Before that it was probably Pelle: a proper physical, goalscoring centre forward, brought in by a great manager who rated him, who'd got 26 in 33 the previous season and had hair to die for. Who was yours?

That plan in full: Stephens Taylor - Manning - Bednarek - Edwards - Woods - THB - KWP - Sugawara Lumley - McCarthy

Remember when Pelle had to make the difficult decision whether to stay at Saints or go to China and become the 7th highest-paid footballer in the world on £350k per week? No loyalty, these modern footballers.

I mentioned it before on a different thread but there is no issue with his feet - I have a mate with an Arsenal season ticket who says he is excellent with his feet and his range of passing is fantastic. Apparently the main issue is that Ramsdale has come out before and has admitted he has problems with his concentration when he has to go long spells without being needed, which Arteta didn't like at all. Then he made a couple of errors which appeared to be linked to that loss of concentration, and that was that. Given that playing for us he would see rather more action every week than he would playing for Arsenal at home to Ipswich or whatever, it's probably not something we need to be quite as concerned about. He would be an unbelievable signing for us, whether loan or perm, but unfortunately for the reasons given above I think that he's probably out of our reach financially.