Gordon Mockles

You reluctantly seen your tedious Instagram influencers posting up all sorts of sell-out cr*p that you don’t wanna see. Well, here we have the fan forum influencers. Talking sh*t since 1996. :lol:

Hard to see the wood or the trees when you have your eyes tightly clenched shut. I can’t wait to see our new defender, Vileda, at LB when Bertrand is injured. He may trip attackers or actually tackle them if left unattended on the floor. At least an improvement on Valery’s marking or Vestergaard’s Maasai Mara style leaping!! Hey! Let’s just make excuses for possibly our worst ever owner. Let’s not sign any players. Save them money & maybe even have a whip around. Let’s have no ambition. Let’s make ridiculous justifications and appeasement and let’s get relegated!! F**k me, some of the low standards and zero ambition on here is just weird and I get stick for pointing out the obvious. Mind boggling. What’s funny is that someone else makes a contrary comment and you latch onto it with both hands. It’s embarrassing and beyond logic. You do realise the Premier League is a football competition and the teams strive to assemble the best team they can to try to score more goals than the opposition (whilst defending opposition attacks) and get as many points as they can manage over a season, competing to win the league?! or possibly even win a cup? This isn’t the dirty dozen when you are assembling a group of reprobates and losers. Our club isn’t the Event Horizon either. We don’t want another trip into utter chaos. We’ve been there and we’ve done that and it’s not that much fun. I’d like to remain where we are and compete like we did 4 or 5 years ago or is that unrealistic and really stupid of me to want so much? Is that my inherent negativity making me so intolerant of this absolute clusterf*ck management?! No ones answered the question. Where is Matt Crocker? I joked we are waiting till after the transfer window but I don’t think that is far from the truth. Is he still with the FA?

I'd rather not, no offence. I have said my bit (mildly tedious maybe but heart felt) and you don't need to moderate the thread. A forum is about ALL opinions. Not just diluted opinions. That’s like having a press conference with pre-prepared, soft and easy questions. I prefer real opinion, both testing, dissenting, optimistic and happy and often, miserable We don’t live in the Truman show, fortunately.

That's being a bit ambitious. The next article will drop another level and we will be talking of "possibly" be signing ONE Luton full back who is injured.

Speak for yourself. The fans I work with shockingly have the same mindset. Only online does the patience seem unrealistically abject.

Ok. Focus on what said. Ralph has changed tact to the press as he clearly wanted and stated he needed balance in the squad and he needed high energy, full backs. Ralph was likely lef to believe the club may support him in this huge urgency since the club profession sporting staff have submitted data to suggest we are dangerously thin in quality, numbers and depth in the full back position. The club, very stupidly, went into this season with one recognised LB (Bertrand), having no money invested so took a massive gamble in selling our only back up (Targett) to generate funds for new players. A naive and massively foolhardy move and clear illustration of how the club want to manage this club. Taking huge risks, running the team complacently and not putting any financial backing into the first team squad whilst alluding otherwise indirectly (then likely getting mindless sycophants to argue the point online) and basically making do with minimal effort and zero ambition. Incidentally, where is Crocker? Ralph - I believe - has been deceived because he and the scouts have likely identified the targets and gone to the management and Gao likely didn't sign them off. Or the club coffers are now dry and no extra funds are available. God knows where the 30 million war chest article came from. Maybe a disgruntled member of staff that did loads of work only to be told, "no money". They moved the goal posts or wasted the efforts made by the SFC recruitment team so Ralph goes back to the press to lower expectations from his previous position of mild optimism rather than talk about his employer and say "we wanted to sign full backs and I was led to believe we would but up to now, the owner hasn't invested a penny and despite selling a large number of players and shipping the others out on loan, the owner is still refusing to put any funds into the club. Insisting we sell what little discernible talent left to trade and the club need those players if we are to effectively compete". Now, Ralph and his team are having to make do and pushing up inadequate, poor and unready for the PLplayers as a mild remedy to cover this obvious lack of investment and embarrassment in light of his earlier comments. So, Ralph gives The Echo yet another article in a contradictory tact, as has happened countless times this season (and before), to lower expectations even further with each subsequent and ever diminishing in optimism, press release.

You're tedious. I'd much rather realistic people saw through the club's p*ss taking and took them to task rather than read drivel from those fence sitters, happy clappers and those possibly on retainers making excuses for our ever diminishing standards of quality while criticising those with a more realistic and ambitious set of expectations rather than settling for the sub standard recruitment and neglect we seem to suffer under this charlatan owner. If you intend to sign no-one and make do, say so. Don't peddle out the manager and staff to pretend to do otherwise while they do your dirty work and the press team leak fan pacifying news articles of utter cr*p to your favoured broadsheet, simply to play games with the fans and engineer fan expectations, you disingenuous, manipulative cowards.

Why do you understand why we are sticking with Valery? Not many in the stands do. He can't defend, track, mark or tackle.

Well said and a sentiment shared. I just get particularly 'tested' by b*llsh*tters and game playing spin and our club are the epitome of that and so clearly taking the pee with this prevaricating, carrot dangling yet people continue to make excuses for them which is way more than the owners deserve. They have bought a football club, been largely mute or indirectly lied from the outset and haven't invested a penny...other than in marketing and PR. Making do and the absolutely bare minimum will lead us to relegation and no full backs and defensive back up could easily facilitate relegation

I think you're giving them too much credit. They start every window with one press impetus, then totally change and lower it stage by stage. I don't think it's connected to the complexity and obvious variables involved with the actual transfers themselves. We managed fairly well under our last ownership where Markus and Cortese just identified their target, no media games, then acquired who they needed. Can you remember back a few years? It was never the charade it is now and nothing like this. Are you saying you believe the massive change in tact (from signing "high energy defenders, full backs and a CB, DOF, Player Trading Expert...." to "funds are available" to "possibly may sign A player" is due to the club finding it hard to land their targets? Perhaps it is but if they offered up the money, I doubt they'd struggle. If money is available and Ralph desperately wants full backs, we would have some by now. Gao has likely not signed off anything (has he ever?!) and Ralph has had to save face and choose a different excuse so as not to look like a nugget. It's less than convincing than a 20 year old car salesman.

Aside from CBs, it is not a bloated squad. We are thin in depth and quality. Unless they have promoted up more of the youth.

This YouTube link of Adam Curtis explains how modern media works and is very much similar to much of the misleading and dishonest dialogue we now suffer in matters relating to Southampton FC It’s strange this style of consistently inaccurate reporting didn’t really happen to this scale three years ago so it’s definitely a recent thing. Draw your own conclusions from that. This Adam Curtis link may not be football related but it should make sense to the more pensive board members. Any familiarity in this clip (the Vladislav Surkov ref) to the club’s current media campaign and similar patterns of misinformation, prevaricating and lying as witnessed in recent political events like brexit and the referendum along with every Saints transfer window under Gao? They never, never learn. Even before Gao’s unwelcome arrival, the board pushed their luck with two successive transfer windows of selling all the top talent which was pretty disgraceful and unprecedented in quantity and fees for the PL. That was the beginning of our demise (post Markus and Cortese). It was a sad time for the Liebherr family and also for the club. When Markus died, I had no idea what was in store for us. As big a fall from grace you can get in the PL (aside from winning the league & immediately being relegated the next season). That was also the time when competency, ambition, honesty and integrity in our club died. We never heed warnings. We never seem to learn (we make do, often by the skin of our teeth) and the common denominator is, Kat Liebherr, whom was here and at times in control throughout this significant demise. I think much of my previous criticism of the board is proving to be fair & tangible. This new board seem to set the expectations high and bring them down, stage by stage, until we are now talking about not even signing anyone (yet again), contrary to what Ralph said prior to and during this window, even a few days previously. How much do they think the fans will take? I’m sure they know and they are closely monitoring this along with the Daily Echo. Glazing over everything else and forgetting every criticism I mentioned, does anyone not feel concerned that not getting to the end of the season and surviving is the issue? Not signing anyone in key positions is the issue? (a massively stupid risk if one key injury at CF, RB, LB occurs. It could totally uproot our short-term recovery). Constantly letting the fans down is an issue BUT bigger still is the consistent letting down of our manager (some may argue the point but I think it’s clear he’s had certain promises made hence why he made comments to the press and back tracked & this is yet another of those many moments). Even the most patient of people, Ralph Hasenhütl, has limits and the poor guy is under the immense pressure of the PL. Well, patience isn’t finite. Any other club must be surely easier than this poisoned chalice. Ralph has his hands tied behind his back, half of his squad have been sold or loaned out and I believe he was brought to the club under a false pretence. Rohl got our while he could. If I were Ralph, I would take the first semi decent offer elsewhere before a key injury or 2 sends us crashing back down into the relegation zone and he loses face as a result of a seemingly incompetent and disingenuous board full of lying & manipulative t*ssers who seemingly do not back their manager. Any PL or upper tier championship club coming forward with a small transfer budget and the promise of backing is surely better than this charade? A faceless and disinterested, prevaricating ex copper who sold his business partner out to be executed to save his own skin. An asset stripping owner who has not invested a penny in the club and, coincidentally of course, the media seem to now run a series of broken promises or false platitudes, possibly emanating from the clouds above Hangzhou, while staff mumble an incomprehensible script of conflicting & contradictory assurances that never come to fruition. We may as well be run by Lou Pearlman. If they’re not careful, Ralph will walk and then will be in a whole world of sh*t. Southampton FC must surely be the most negligent and complacent board in the Premier League? They never learn by their mistakes (as a third relegation battle suggests) and they push their luck to the absolute limit. If it wasn’t for being injury free and VAR, I dread to think. We shouldn’t accept this deceit and we shouldn’t allow our standards to slip this low. A good run of results over Christmas has come to bite us on the arse in this transfer window. I knew this would happen once we started winning but I had hoped, to buck the trend, our owners and board would not be such utter ****s this time. My optimism was seemingly misplaced. #GaoOut

It’s as if though Gao’s dynasty make outlandish claims to appease the fans and then decrease the pledge in each article, bringing any assurance of squad strengthening (or backroom staff) down and down until it reaches zero. Then they think we should be cool with their transparent shape shifting media games and misinformation. I can’t abide liars. Especially wealthy ones deceiving honest, hard-working people. We have enough of that on our political landscape, I don’t expect nor want that in our sporting arenas as well.

What a surprise. Lower, lower, lower... Where is Matt Crocker? Are they all waiting for the transfer window to finish? I suspect so. This club is an absolute joke. A farce under this joke, disingenuous chairman and joke ownership. Call it an overreaction (as the window is not yet over) but, on recent history, consider how many times the club use this pretext and insidious reporting tactic strategically and get away with it? Every transfer window it seems. Nothing makes any coherent sense from this club and the shape shifting, prevaricating, pathetic PR has misled us through every single transfer window under Gao. I accept there are sensitive matters that you have to keep private and not give away to competitors but there is a difference between doing that and taking the absolute p*ss out of the fans and manager. This ‘regime’ bombard us with contradicting stories and constantly lower expectations at every stage like some lying, intelligence insulting, low-budget social engineering experiment and what upsets me most is, some of you accept that as okay. Never has an ownership of Southampton seemingly (or allegedly) lied as much as the xxclub seem to right now and, worst of all, not invested a single fookin’ penny. Get this clown out of our club, now. Gao makes Lowe or Askham look like Montgomery Brewster. Valery and a virus is insulting to our intelligence. He was an absolute crock of sh*t & dropped. Now he is suddenly good enough again. If that is our standards & level we deem acceptable, we deserve to be in the championship or League 1. He was dropped because he was awful against Leicester and couldn’t mark a chalkboard. Then, may have got ill but who hasn’t this winter? Now the club appear to be bare faced lying, purporting Valery has been ill for two months. I don’t think so. Utter p* ss take. Take that reaction as strangely mad.

Good if a proper full back comes in and blocks their development. They are both cr*p and miles from PL level. Certainly for Valery anyway. He was dropped. Simple as that. He may have coincidentally been ill but he was dropped because of his array of p*ss poor performances, giving the ball away, never tracking his man and never being able to mark a single person without gifting them a goal or 2. Besides, these comments totally contradict what Ralph has said previously. Ralph may have seemed sincere but have you ever heard of media training and putting on a facade and a false front in front of a crowd?!

I bloody hope he didn't. If so, that's changed a lot from definitely signing full backs (CB was included before) to "possibly". We really do lower and changed expectations if this change in tact is to believed. Maybe response to getting no targets signed off by the prevaricating Chair. Let's hope this is just a poor choice of words before I start ranting. Patience Mockles!! I agree and against City, in position, he played well. I can't comment *shock* without knowing the contractual obligations but I think he has something in the correct CB position but only the coaches and Ralph can decide accurately. I trust them after the work done since Dec but would like to see a leading, better quality CB instilled, even a Captain figure, for next season. Stephens has improved a lot and would make sense to be focused on for the future with Bednarek the ideal back up, blocker. Stephens assists, goals and distribution has been a valuable contribution to our campaign and I hope noticed since his mistakes draw so much focus. Poor choice of phrase. I mean, in his twilight years. He never had pace but his legs have slowed a LOT. Could be why he fell out of favour. I would imagine we wouldn't renew his contract from a Saints perspective. No idea when it expires but he's been a great servant to us. UTS. Nice to look forward to Wolves and feel excitement, rather than dread. We have Mourinho and Nuno making psychological comments to inspire their teams which illustrates some trepidation in my eyes. They're scared of our front line and so they should be. What a nice change.

Sounds reasonable but our tentative inquiry was probably just to ask how you spelt his name for Lander PR - Southern Jackanory Division, Britannia Road, Southampton. Sounds a firm tackler. “Last season he was booked 15 times and shown three red cards”. I suppose with Romeu retiring soon, we need someone else to pick up where he left out. No nonsense. I’ll miss Romeu. Fulham’s Bryan - no way. He is absolutely useless and responsible for one of the greatest tallies of goals conceded in the Premier League. He would fit right in a few months back. Fortunately, we already have two full backs who can bomb forward, lose the ball, lose their marker and not tackle or track back in Valery & Soares. So, we don’t need a third on the opposing flank. Unless the goal is to get relegated. KWP - I think he is a good prospect and Pochettino did like him. Spurs are an impatient club with an inflated sense of grandeur. He’s got a good passing range and a great cross. He has made some great assists and passes. All he needs is to have a decent run in a team and some good coaching and confidence instilled in him which Ralph would surely do. Very much like Adams, who could be a very good player and just needs the right support and patience. I see Pongracic is now at Wolfsburg and it seems Maehle has been forgotten so I’m concerned if we have any money available at all. At the start of the window, the rumours appear big and halfway through, they are getting smaller by the day. Thank God they are only rumours. I’m hoping it’s not a money thing as the figure for Bryan is laughable. Considering English players are normally double the cost of European players, 5 million is paltry & less than pocket change in the Premier League so I don’t believe even Gao will be this tightfisted and stupid. That really would be getting what you pay for which will be an absolute turd...sprayed gold (or red & white). I think it’s probably a disgruntled PR bod or ex member of SFC staff winding up the fans...or an agent. This would be the modern day equivalent of Chris Makim but without the....(comment withheld for fear of libel) I hope there is a really good quality utility full back as that would be ideal. Primarily a RB who can also cover left if Bertrand got injured. That would be cost-effective for even the most skinflint owner. At the end of this window, we will probably end up being linked to players from the Sunday, pub league.

That’s a sensible and well reasoned post. Sometimes I wear my heart on my sleeve and fire off without stopping to consider fully. I think in this case I standby what I say and I do think we have done well to balance the books and make a profit but unfortunately making a profit in this league isn’t always beneficial for league success and it’s a very difficult thing to do. We have done some very good transfer business which has been praised in the papers but unfortunately a new owner has come in and asset stripped and sold everything and put absolutely nothing in under false pretences so I am now his biggest critic of Gao until he does otherwise.I think most clubs in the league would go absolutely mental if they were in a similar situation. Our fans are very patient and often very very low in ambition or have a standard that is much lower than mine. That’s fine, we are all different but we all share a love for the club but I don’t like deceit and misleading people hence why I absolutely detested Lowe but he was another level with his arrogance and destructive path. When he came back and put us nto administration, It felt like he was coming back to spite the fans but let’s not talk about that or the sell on clause he wrote off. I remember him talking to Gareth Bale just before he was sold and Gareth’s dad told us of the deal Lowe offered which was laughable. Not even financial figures just the norm on the shoulder and saying “we will really look after you”. Then they can say they wouldn’t sign the contract so we had to sell them. The Askham school of transfer behaviour I really miss Markus and Cortese (not his personality) and how they ran our club. We would just identify the top target and pretty much always land them. No silly rumours, no social engineering. We would go out, make an offer, adjust terms if needed but not get played and quite often get them with no messing around. Cortese was a hard man but a brilliant negotiator. He kept everything in check. Money talks. Many people don’t realise this but you get what you pay for and throwing money at a problem can often be a good tactic, if you have it. I appreciate the large figures of money and it is not my money so I can never truly talk laterally. But this is my club and I’m a Saints fan so I’m going to be fickle and talk cr*p!!

Setting up 3 assists in a match isn't bad and I'd rather trust Poch. Not so with Mourinho. He cast off Salah, Lukakku, Robben, Mata and De Bruyne to name a few. The fact he doesn't want KWP can almost be seen as a blessing considering his track record!! LOL

This was another point I was discussing tonight but I totally overlooked the fact that transfer fees are vastly over inflated to soften the blow with the fans. It’s interesting to look on the transfer market and go back 10 years and we pretty much always make a profit on selling players over buying players. Not every season but when we don’t it’s a very small margin. I guess that’s how we have the reputation of being a selling club. Some would say it’s good business which, in effect, it is to good to balance the books but it’s not always that black and white in football. It isn’t good to continually sell off all your best talent But that’s an old, over referenced and boring story. The best way of looking at it I suppose is considering all the players we sold to Liverpool and look where they are now. Then look at our past 3 seasons since that mass exodus and look where we ended up after constantly cost-cutting and diluting looting down the quality. For a club that is often appears complacent and never seems to learn and often pushes our luck, I sincerely hope we have learnt from this and I hope a sense of optimism is not misplaced in hoping that we can turn the corner and galvanise our squad between now and the subsequent season. We definitely have potential and finally have a good attacking throng but unfortunately we seem to have neglected the rest of the squad. Let’s hope next season we address the glaringly obvious defence and midfield and we can start a new campaign with a fresh and revitalised squad whom are much better equipped to take the match to the opposition and, in turn, entertain the fans. I bloody love football when you take away all the bullsh*t money side of things.

I originally thought Bielsa gave particular interest in having Adams at Leeds but after a bit of chatting and lunchtime surfing, I can clearly see Leeds are panicking. They tried to sign Billy Sharp FFS. We had the sense to get rid of him at this level. Nice chap that he is. Rhian Brewster from Liverpool inquiry before they looked at Adams. According to a friend they are also looking at McGoaldrought if Adams doesn’t come off. Laughable

Leeds don’t want him or Arsenal recalled him? For the record.

To be fair, what I wrote there was a load of old sh*t. Too much football pondering and a long day at work. I’d rather Adam stayed and played and I really do think he’s turned a corner and we will see a much better second half of the season from him. I think Ralph has been a little inconsistent in how he manages the players because he favours someone and then suddenly drops them in the cold. A bit of consistency rather than one extreme to the other may help. Cutting Ralph some slack, he’s still relatively new to this country and league and he wasn’t well equipped for the season plus he is still learning, like many others.

Tommy Forecast. Pekhart. Lowe turned them from youth rejects with no discernible talent into worldbeaters. At least we didn’t waste anything like football’s world record transfer fee sell on clause for them. Oh, wait..... I can’t say why, just instinct, but I really like the sound of Maehle. Having said that, I was really keen on & a big advocate for Clasie and I was supremely chuffed for the ambition our old board showed in signing Gaston Ramirez but that didn’t work well did it?! I don’t know why but I wasn’t keen on the PSG guy recently touted. I’ve now completely forgot but who was the guy that was offered to clubs? I would be immediately suspicious when any club offer out a player to other clubs.

I don’t think bringing in the new right back will make any difference, it will improve the squad to have a ball winning RB no doubt. Very good point about having more faith in Poch that Moany-yo-yo. If Jose doesn’t want KWP, there’s a good chance that he’s a bloody good player and, as you say, i’d much rather trust the judgement of Mauricio Pochettino rather than José Mourinho. Look at Jose’s record: Mo Salah, Mata, Robben, Lukaku, Kevin De Bruyne... :lol: :lol: