doddisalegend

We are playing Bombay?

Solent 1 minute in "Bournemouth should be one up"....going to be a long arsed match...

Solent doing a pick your best combined 11 Bournemouth saints team. Willow goes with nine Bournemouth players...probably not far off.

There is certainly a disconnect between the fans and players now that wasn't there a few years back . Of course it helped we where doing well on the pitch but you got the feeling the likes of Lambert, Hammond, Barnard, Guly and so on actually felt privileged/enjoyed playing for saints , we had a manager who seemed to love the club and there seemed to be a connection between the fans and players probably also fostered by having a settled team that evolved rather than being dismantled and re-built. The current lot play and act like they couldn't care less.

Do you know how many lads in the academy system actually go on to be pro footballers its a miniscule number not just at saints but football in general the stats are something like 1% of boys who enter academies at 9 years old go on to have a career in football. So expecting saints to be churning out bucket loads of PL standard players is pretty unrealistic because it doesn't happen anywhere.

Pretty impressive work by his agent considering in four seasons at Man U he managed 10 less league appearances (so far) than he did in two seasons for us (I realise he had the nasty leg break) so to score another five year bump contract on the back of that is pretty good.

According to my phone news feed Luke Shaw gets a new five year deal with man U ...quite surprised if I'm honest as he never seems to have really got going there.

I had completely missed the fact Villa have a new owner. Tony Xia turned out to be a bit of a disaster didn't he?

Because they are lots of bigger, better clubs out there and a "very high calibre manager" would rather go to. In the same way we can't attract the highest calibre of players.

But what about all the good stuff the club does to make your "Match Day Experience" so fun like....lightshows, flamethrowers, loud music, half time relays, a brass band, family days and a new grill bar with 20 quid burgers. Surely with all this entertainment the football is irrelevant second.....seems to be the view of the club these days.

Surely we can use a legal loop hole like those players in Portugal did claiming a breach of contract. Our lot signed contracts claiming they where footballers....

the club are ****ing kidding right? "Our sole aim is to continue to understand the views and expectations of our supporters and identify which potential changes to the St Mary’s experience they would most value and enjoy." how about ...Oh ...I don't know.... winning some ****ing homes games...that would be a start....

Like our current bunch of players have the guts, fitness or ability to play high press. They used to get upset when Puel wouldn't tell them if they where in the matchday squad at least a week in advance. Double fitness training sessions would reduce them to tears and mass social media strops.

Is that Glen Murray in the first photo? Now there's a question Glen Murray or Gabbi which would you rather have?

Where as you just make excuses for the players. Three different managers in three seasons. Lots of players still making the same ****ty mistakes over and over again.

It has the main thing for me is that we haven't really recruited like for like. Not in terms of quality because the chances of say replacing VVD with someone just as good is nigh on impossible. In terms of position, character and playing style though we just haven't. Three seasons after Pelle left we still don't have a big CF. Three seasons after Mane left we still don't have a powerful player with pace in attack. Two seasons after Fonte left we still don't have an experienced leader at the back. It seems like it would be simpler to identify a player that leaves and what the bring to the squad and replace them with a similar type of player to give continuity. The last few years we really haven't done that at all.

News of the take over started to surface towards the end of Koeman's last season. At that point Kat has decided to get her money back and pretty much loses all interest ( before that she was still loaning the club money pushing on Staplewood and general appearing like she gave a crap . The club then goes into a holding pattern while they wait for the take over to get sorted. It seems like the order of the day was to just keep things tick over until the new guy took over. In hindsight you sense Koeman could see what was coming and jumped ship before the **** hit the fan. The biggest thing is once the new owner took over you'd reasonable expect a fresh injection of enthusiasm and Leadership a new plan if action of where he wanted his new club to go. Instead we got nothing and the club now just seems to be in some sort of limbo with no purpose or direction.

There isn't a nutshell though there is a multitude of reasons why we are poor changing just one of them won't make a difference on its own. Just taking the "we should spend more money" example we would all have happily taken Burnley's form and league position last season and they have spent **** all in PL terms, Leicester hadn't spent much when the won the league. On the other hand Everton and West Ham have thrown loads of money at their teams and have **** all to show for it. As a club we seem to have no identity, plan or direction any more until that is sorted out throwing loads of money at probably wouldn't help.

I know at least two local Chelsea fans where in the home end yesterday as well. I wouldn't be surprised if there where quite a few more.

So that's three ST holders on this thread that weren't actually there but counted in the official counts so 27,074 then....

Any Plan and leadership has to come from the top down until we start getting some from the owner we aren't going anywhere. Our downfall was the takeover as soon as Kat found a buyer the club went into limbo while the takeover was sorted. When the takeover finally happened (how long did it take 12 months?) you might reasonably expect the new guy to come in and at least have a plan or vision for pushing us forward instead we just continued with the inertia of the take over period.

Well me and the nipper weren't there as it clashed with his football match and I decided watching him would be more fun than watching us get rimmed by Chelsea ...having said that as ST holders we would have been counted as there even though we weren't I believe.

More mystifying is how some of our older signings are still getting picked despite failing week after week.

Guess the Man Utd players are making sure the "special one" gets the sack I expect they will perk right up as soon as his gone just like Chelsea did.

listened to the Bournemouth game on Solent 4-0 is an excellent result having said that Watford had to play two thirds of the game with ten men and Bournemouth got the rub of the green on the reffing front. What Bournemouth did do well though was counter attack at pace something saints haven't done well since Koeman.