Dangermouth

I always thought creative writing was, well, ... creative, a bit like stories and things. At least this explains where the press now get their stories from. Have you applied to SFC to get into their media/PR set-up?

Thanks for the info. Seems we're going down with the clown.

Are they American? I've not bothered with the link as I read the post below this one but I don't recognise a 'center' back as a position in English footy. Now when are we getting rid of Pellegroano and getting in some decent players and a manager with a clue?

Well done; best one so far I think.

Then the rest must be utter ****e, if you're referring to the voice that accompanied the highlights on the BBC that I had the misfortune to see while round someone else's. Usually only bother with the two who do it from the OS and they are ok most of the time.

Ralph: Are you sure this relegation device means single digit fans support, Les? Les: Mmmmhmmm. Let's just put it on Pellegrino again to stimulate his tactical awareness.

Which might have been a very good thing. He always came across as a 'leader' and we could do with one of them. The closest we probably have now is poor old PEH.

True. As soon as he left I forgot about him. We have bigger things (for ourselves) to worry about. Let's worry about them.

Not too sure I agree about KL although I expect she did invest in order to accumulate and only held on to her part of the pie because she couldn't get quite what she wanted as our new majority owner is too skint to be so laissez-faire with his own cash but as for the rest of it, yes, I like the certainty of a Saturday 3pm kick off and so on and we (at least used to) do quite well at that kick off time. If the city council were smart they'd tell Gao that unless SFC was in the top 5 of the PL every season for at least 5 seasons and then 4 seasons out of every 5 thereafter he has jack schitt chance of getting any planning permission. That might galvanise him.

Long term vision. Lose the battle, win the war.

Firstly, thanks Guan. I, like others, appreciate your insight and by that I mean the intelligent thought behind things rather than the fact that you do actually have an idea of what's happening. Again, like many others, for the most part my interest here is to actually learn about what is happening at and around the club and the few nuggets of information we get are much appreciated. As has been pointed out: the club are 'apparently' very wired up to being a 'modern' club i.e. a great deal of spin and marketing and waffle that only fools those who wish to be fooled and then it only works when things go well and when they don't and critical thought sets in then the charade disintegrates which does suggest that they would be very unhappy to receive negative publicity that they cannot spin e.g. someone burning the new shirts and just leaving the video on youtube. That would certainly **** off the kit provider now and while I don't think it would be enough to make them cancel their sponsorship it might have someone in the press ask Under Armour what they think and the secret discussions would let everyone at SFC know exactly what they think. That at least might mean we spend loads on good enough players to haul us out of our current mess. While some might laugh, more open letters - even if as stupid as that sent earlier in the season - would help as it's all negative although a good one couldn't then be thrown back in the writer's face so I think that Guan's message of hit them where they're vunlnerable is a good one. The most damning one could be a boycott of the Fulham game; many might at least save money on travel, food, etc and the tickets were cheaper and in the short term it ramps up the pressure. One thing I do want to address is what S Clarke said above about KL being a businesswoman. Is she? Yes, she inherited businesses but did she, like her dad and his brothers go out and start and run businesses from scratch? Cause if she didn't she's just someone who inherited a fortune, isn't she? I do recollect that even ML was said to have made bad decisions e.g. the printing business he bought that didn't do too well so simply as a matter of interest how does inheriting a business necessarily make you suited to run one (or more)? What has occurred to me is this. We had Cortese. He and ML put in clear lines and structures to assist the team. The end goal and results and outcomes were expected and the whole of the club was designed to achieve these aims. He went and we had LR put in place. Now what do we know about LR? He sucked as a manager; that I think the record does show as being a valid conclusion. He worked at the FA, which people assume means he's good; rather, perhaps, he is just good at interviews. He wrote a book. I've asked if anyone who can comment knowledgeably on coaching can say if it's any good, has any value and so on. Because otherwise, so what? His manual didn't produce much, if any, of a change or upturn in football standards/the success of the national team, did it? So it's a red herring. What we do know is that previous structures and people have moved on and if they're replaced by less capable people the structures become weaker and degrade so it is entirely possible within the timeframe with which we are concerned that ML/Cortese's structure has now been dismantled and LR has simply been carrying on as he thinks is right, but really he doesn't have a clue. After all, there is another assumption that LR actually does have a clue about any/everything and what real evidence is there that this is the case? The same goes for RK. Just because he's got a top job and talks incessant nothingness, does that make him of any real, pertinent, worthwhile use? As far as I can tell the rather (and possibly incorrectly) badly-thought of, by me at least, Gareth Rogers might actually have been the one who did all the work but took none of the plaudits. Certainly LR does as he goes round the world to conferences with people from Barcelona and tells them what a great academy we had (living off past limited success) or so it seems. As for the Gaos, they won't have a clue about anything like the man who bought Villa and he'll follow the experts and do business how they do in the West (lots of marketing spin making money for graduates from Solent Uni and the like) because that's what people who don't know anything do: they follow and believe the 'experts' and in this case the experts aren't people who either really get business or someone (like Cortese) who, or so I believe, while he didn't know anything did actually get in there and learn. Whether Mr Gao and family are concerned with 'losing face' is another matter and may again be something that could be of use if it means he'll react decisively and knowledgeably or it could mean he'll just try to follow the bloke at Aston Villa and get his daughter to tweet loads while getting in Di Matteo as manager. One interesting thing that may help is that if he (Gao) does have plans to make money through construction activities then he'll find it harder to do in a small, slightly depressed city with a second-tier status which is compounded by the football club being a second tier (and thus largely anonymous given how much the PL is pushed as being the entirety of English football) and which, in a society which is concerned so much with image, then automatically becomes looked at as dowdier than it already is. And compared to the 'big' cities, Southampton isn't actually a contender in terms of attractiveness especially when you consider its selling points are often proximity to the New Forest (when did the world become full of nature lovers?), proximity to London (i.e. the selling point is 'don't stay there') and it's the place where the Titanic sailed from before it became possibly the most famous expensive flop in British history. TL;DR - sack the board and the manager, throw money at the team and hope to **** to survive. Boycott Fulham and send lots of negative tweets with hashtags at the beginning of each game so the pundits talk about it while waiting for Kammy to tell us about a goal.

I'd look to get Nigel Pearson in from wherever he's ended up at.

At my most optimistic I see us getting another 17 points (without MP, of course). I think it'll go down to the wire, too. Anyone know how our run-in compares to the other relegation candidates'?

You emphasised the 'make a comment' point though as in you thought a comment should have been made (as I read it, anyway). From my and others' perspectives we'd just say 'ok' shrug our shoulders and wait and see as really that's all we do these days anyway. Me? I'm just trying to get up to 700 posts.

Then why not simply do as most do and say to yourself "I'm skeptical, as are we all until we know someone does have some valid information, but let's wait and see."? Then leave it at that. As someone else said there is a bit of detail to make it verifiable and surely the likes of Walcott would have been noticed and recognised if he was at the game so it probably isn't him.

Yep. Presumably this does mean he does some coaching rather than just putting out the cones or that really is paying for old rope. Thanks to Crab Lungs above to have explained that he probably got the A licence quicker than normal and would have probably got onto the B licence programme in preference to a non-pro even though said non pro might actually be better than him because the FA want to promote ex-professionals, presumably because they see them as 'better' even though as many have pointed out there is no evidence overall that this is the case. Actually, I think Monk said that too.

The people who coach can tell us how long it takes/took them to get the A licence, but this might give some idea: https://www.reddit.com/r/soccer/comments/6r6au8/how_long_does_it_take_to_get_all_5_coaching/ If he started in July 2016 then he can't have more than the B licence so ... not very well qualified and not much exposure to real coaching and thus externally I would say there's no idea of how good he is. Sounds a bit incestuous/nepotic (ignoring the lack of family, of course). If this is what the Gaos bring ... hum.

I think this is proof they aren't goalscorers.

Same as always. Natural sportsman. Too lazy to work hard enough to get to his best. Has lapses in concentration. Not good enough to be one of the very best. Still better than 75% of what's out there mainly because of his speed but if he was that good why wasn't he the first name on the Dutch national team teamsheet?

Once he's finished with Everton, probably.

Sounds like Monk's description of his 'philosophy' then. I agree his substitutions are pointless in that he simply wishes to swap players around but still keep doing nothing despite 20 odd games of mostly this proving to be a fruitless exercise.

Anyone know if there's a break clause?

Minus 5. Get rid of him. Don't put Jaidi in charge.

Have you got a link to these? I have only seen the highlights on the official site and from that I can't see his foot moves. From what I saw he just let his foot carry on its natural movement as though he thought it would clear the keeper. I haven't seen any evidence of any movement of the toes, studs, ankle, foot or knee towards the face. The keeper also had a cut nose, but not a broken one as you could tell given how little the rest of his face had changed. It could have been broken, but there should have been something more obvious like bruising going up towards his eyes by the end of the game I would have thought. Would still have been bloody painful of course. Either way as he's been charged, he'll be banned for a long while. I expect they'll make it as many games as they can.

You're right. In the last few seasons 38 points or one point a game is usually enough to scrape 17th. Unless we don't manage to get the equivalent of 1 point a game in which case we might not make 17th. That would be at the end of the season (when the final points tally actually matters).