doddisalegend

So no actual bid then...

This.

When was that?

I won't miss selling players to Liverpool every season HTBH

In light of current predicament this thread seems appropriate to resurrect... pretty close Turks apart from the bit in bold turns out we will pay a bit more, they will take us to a new level but mostly they will just be ****s

Hopefully that's experienced late 20s not over the hill mid 30s experience..

I have two anecdotes on that score from the last couple of years. One was a sales rep at work who told me he had purchased a membership for saints but admitted to me he wasn't a saints fan he just liked to watch live PL football and see a few goals didn't matter which team scored them. The other was a couple of blokes with their kids on the train coming back from a game during the Puel season. One was telling his mate how he liked to take his boys to see saints play as it was the local PL team but he was Leeds utd fan. He then went on to tell his mate the best game he had seen that season was Man City at SMS and,went on to wax lyrical about how great Man City where. So yes I do believe there is a portion of the SMS crowd that come just to watch live PL football and dont really care who's playing. How big the percentage is I couldn't say but they are there.

Ahh good days both my kids where under 11 back then so with a ticket in the family area (most of the chapel at the time) I got both the kids season tickets for free and got 3 STs for £380 not bad for one of the most enjoyable seasons of football I've ever had (Reading at Home aside)

We'll judging from our current lot the ability to point at someone else and blame them is a useful trait for a CB...

Says a lot about our other attackers that despite that he looks likely to be our be our top scorer again this season. Two and half injury ravaged seasons and still ends up with the club golden boot two seasons in a row..

I think that's the problem with all our current CBs. All of them might do a job with and experienced, beast of a CB playing alongside them but play any of the current lot together and it doesn't work. Our current CBs all seem quite good at bring the ball out from the back and comfortable with the ball at their feet but awful and picking up runs, heading the ball and leadership and organizing.

Martina's price tag was worth it for the Arsenal goal alone..

Doesn't really help us though does it? It does seem a bit if a cliche but some players do seem to be better suited to certain leagues. Maybe Boufal will rip up the Spanish league but he clearly struggles with the PL which then again puts our recruitment policy in a very poor light

pretty much this.

What about Paul Cook? Always sounded like a complete tosser on Solent when he was pompey manager but he has managed three promotions and two league titles and has had Wigan playing some nice stuff this season. Championship might be a step to far but the guy does seem like a winner.

Its all to easy to keeping blaming the manager rather than the players three different managers in 18 months no improvement from the players. It's about time people stopped making excuses for the players and started excepting we have a very average team.

I don't know I quite like the idea of seeing what Sims, McQueen and Gallagher could do with regular game time in our squad.

How much lower quality of football can it be than the ****e served up this season?

So can we take it Hughes won't be hanging around after the end of the season then?

Did he elaborate? Normally when managers are unhappy it's because if a lack of backing with transfers but that's not an issue for Hughes.

We don't need imagination I'm pretty feed up with the club trying to be all left field and clever to try and pump up the brand. I want a manager who knows the championship and what it takes to get out of. I'm not saying that is necessarily Hughes just I don't think we should be gambling on another manager new to English football.

We haven't had a really solid defence since Koeman left. Starting with Puel after the VVD injury and the Fonte debacle more and more the managers have tried to play in ways that protect a dodgy back four and keeper because anytime we attack teams we concede.

Don't remember there being much problem gelling in 2014-2015 season or 2015-2016 season either. I still maintain we could have coped with players sales if you get the recruitment of the replacements right. That's not to say there isn't risk in such a policy clearly there is. The issue for me is that the money made from the player sales wasn't utilised properly and that we didn't always replace like for like (as in position and type of player) when players left. Having said that anyone thinks we could have happily bumbled along telling every player who wanted to leave "no" until their contract run down to nothing is living in cloud cuckoo land...

Nope. Our big sell off the first time actually saw us progress becuase the replacements were good enough or better than the one's that left is was the summer Koeman left where it went all Pete Tong when the recruitment of new replacements wasn't up to scratch. Selling so many players wasn't the issue replacing them properly was. Had we spent the money we got from those sales more wisely when Koeman left we could have moved the team forward again just like we did after Poch left.

It wasn't selling that was the problem but replacing the ones that left. We got big money for a few of those that left and then fritted the money away on sub standard signings and wage hikes for the average players left behind. Several times we didn't even replace the player the left with a proper replacement especially at CB and in attack.