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and that Villa have a long held interest in buying Middlesborough's star player, Hayden Hackney...

Southampton have enjoyed an impressive improvement since Eckert, a 33-year-old former Germany men’s analyst, took charge last November. They are unbeaten in their last 19 Championship games and beat Arsenal to reach the FA Cup semi-finals. Were any misconduct charges upheld against the club it would arguably become impossible for any of their recent results to be regarded as fair. This last line is absolutely hilarious. Impossible for any of their recent results to be regarded as fair as an intern may or may not have been in a bush before a single match?! You think about all the tapping up, financial bribes etc and someone is suggesting this is absolutely hilarious.

It seems like a very silly thing to do if true and not really sure we'd need to do anything like this as it's not like we're particularly fearing their incredible form or genius tactics. Now it's not the first team analyst but a junior intern... who obviously we're entrusting our promotion with! I'm guessing Tonda is just a front and the real brains behind the operation is this random kid who may or may not have been filming something zoomed in on a mobile phone (surely great quality for analysis). Next tactic will probably be to say something like how we didn't let Alfie Jones recover properly when he was in our youth team and that's why he's now out injured for them and that will be the only reason we could beat them. Or how we should've made Matt Targett spend more time in school so he could string two sentences together... 🤣

Didn't Senegal only walk off the pitch because of how corrupt the whole tournament was to try and get Morocco to win it? In the final (and through other rounds) the Morocco subs were constantly pushing the Senegal keeper, taking his towel and water bottle etc. Then a really dodgy disallowed goal for Senegal and a really soft penalty to try to get Morocco to win. I think most neutrals would've loved Senegal to win. I know the rules are there for forfeiting the game, but it should've been enforced at the time, not months later. This whole thing just makes African football seem like a joke, after so many years of them building their reputation.

Noticed that Bazunu got injured after his first game for Stoke and hasnt been seen since!

There does seem to be a bit of a reluctance to play players who aren't in the squad or who are low on confidence in the under 21s. None of Quarshie, Romeu or Robinson were in the squad last night, so (bearing fitness) could be getting practice with the u21s, and as others have said, could Archer have a few games in the u21 and we put Oyekunle on the bench?

Literally the only benefit we've ever seen, but I guess one hit in 10 swings is probably better than none! 🤣 He's a decent player and great option around the squad. Love the energy and tenacious play!

Be interesting to see how Ronnie Edwards plays tonight. Looks like he's played 3 games at right back and the last match at centre back for them. I thought he was pretty poor each time he played for us this season, but previously looked quite promising.

We have a wealth of strong central midfield options, but I'd be tempted to go with Jander and Charles as the two who have a bit of experience and a lot of promise to improve further. I think Downes will move on ASAP (and looks increasingly like a red card waiting to happen) and whilst Bragg is promising, not sure how good he's going to be yet, but has looked promising to date. It's interesting as ask 10 different fans and you'll probably get 4 different pairs.

I thought I read he had done fairly well in Belgium but had a couple of injuries. He's been good since back in the fold, but that isn't particularly a surprise based on his ability - the surprise was more him being completely frozen out previously. A bit like Fellows his finishing has never been his strong point, but sure he'll chip in some goals and assists over the next month or two.

Unless Larin proves his fitness, builds on his initial promise and we sign him permanently.

Do you know this, or just hoping? He's definitely one of our best players so fingers crossed.

Didnt the manager allude to there being something going on behind the scenes with Archer (whether that was a failed move or something else)? Seems strange that both Downs now Archer have seemingly lost a lot of ability / have a crisis in confidence when proving they were decent players in the past

How many fouls for Okoli today?! It was quite funny that he "saved the day" according to the commentator when Quashie headed off the line...!

Looks like he's made well over 400 pro appearances, mostly league one and league two, but has played 36 times in the Championship - last with Wigan in 2022/23 where he played 17 matches - guessing he was second choice. I'm sure if we had to sign another keeper, we could've got someone slightly better on the free market, but guessing we're just praying Peretz doesn't injured. Shame we couldn't tempt Stuart Taylor out of retirement.