up and away

Completely agree with Mayuka and the midfield of Cork, Morgan and Davis. I would add Ramirez into that midfield to get a solid base to work from. We have to tighten up and stop every game from looking like Christmas morning. That would leave one from Ricky, Adam and JRod with Adam just getting the nod. Lallana has been getting up and down really well and with Ramirez providing the bullets feel this would be more of a threat. Have been disappointed with the pairing of JRod and Ricky, coming to the conclusion to only use JRod as the main striker. Ricky could still be the best answer for what we have available but I don't see that as a winning formulae, just the best of what's left. No issues with dropping Lallana, if Chung could provide the spark would go for it in an instant but it does not look to be there at present. If I have Ramirez providing the assists, just don't see a place for Ricky without making the side unbalanced. Yet get sufficient control and it could well be the way to go. WE have to find a solid platform from which to perform, such we can make small changes and know we are going in the correct direction. At present things are so bad it's extremely difficult to judge until we get that platform. Without doubt Mayuak and his pace just have to be included.

I just do not know. I am fairly sure that it would take another £30M to get the rest of the team sorted such we can be any where near confident of avoiding the drop. I am reasonably confident that Adkins could take us back to the premier and in the cheapest and quickest manner. It all comes down to what Cortese believes but he will have it all worked out. If we did stick with Adkins there would be no guarantees he would keep his job should he get us re-promoted, because all our problems stem from being unprepared for the Premier from a playing aspect.

Well it needs to grow at hell of a lot faster because you also have Ricky and Lallana needing that same run in the team. I am not happy that any of them is showing the sort of improvement to get us out of this mess. Only Mayuka has shown sufficient growth to be a keep and it could easily be far better in building a counter attacking side around Mayuka, dropping 2 out of 3 of Ricky Lallana and Jrod to bolster the defence and midfield. I can at least see us drawing games that way.

We will get very little from this team of mediocre players. Once you get past that point, you stand half a chance of some enjoyment of what you are watching. I don't understand why we have not seen a lot more from Mayuka, unless he falls into the crapper when the golden finger is pointed at him. If Chung could show a further improvement to the team there is a real possibility we can start competing, that would be nice. Rodriques and Lallana have shown small improvements, but nothing as yet to get us out of our troubles. We would have been far better balanced in dropping Puncheon + one other forward and playing Mayuka and a midfielder such as Cork, still needed that extra in midfield. That looked like a mentally stale Spurs side just coming off a Thursday night European game and easy pickings for the rest of this league. We had absolutely no effective go in us and have to rid ourselves of this lethargic style of play

We have seen defensive midfielders do this job many times before and looks to me as the only answer to our problems. What I assume we are talking about here is a player that covers just in front of the back four such any pressing he makes upon the forward makes the job easier for our defence. If this defensive midfielder consistently acts in a known manner it will make the defenders job far easier, remembering this still comes with a central midfield pairing just in front of the defensive midfielder. I thought Fonte did part of that job well against West Ham, being able to bring the ball out of defence and carry it forward a vital requirement. To work well it has to be pretty compact such any attacker who gets past the floating defender does not have the time and space to attack the final line as effectively. We just cannot play it as open as we did against Everton or West Ham at times, we have to deny space and keep things compact. We then have to accept we cannot provide as much of an attacking threat as we usually do, but that's better than ruining the whole objective with what is practically unachieveable.

It's not only Lallana, but this appplies to all of our forwards with the exception of Ramirez. They are just not good enough at this level and all come with some sort of baggage. It's then just a question who you think works well together and what they bring to the team. Of our forward players Ricky: The best of a bad lot so far but requires someone dragged out of place alongside him to be effective. Lack of pace rules out the counter attack option. Lallana: Has been getting up and down well but with minimal end product and devensive assists. Super goal against West Ham but how long has that been? Rodriquez: Looking better and better but less end product than Lallana. Puncheon: Puts in a half decent shift, just does not have the quality to be effective enough. Guly: Mr Marmite, gets trounced even when he comes on and does the job required from his limited ability. Mayuka: The one guy who does have pace and the possibility of changing things round for us. Have to give this lad every chance until we know for sure. Ramirez: The one really class forward player who can make a difference, just not the Messiah and can't do it on his own. Chaplow: We have about 5 versions of Chaplow, just one good enough for the Premierand not seen this season yet. Chung: Definite possibilities, but until we can get him on the pitch, academic. We have all seen that we can threaten teams with a concerted attack, it's just how it weakens us in other areas that causes all the concern with the balance of the side. We have to decide when we put a team out what formation and tactics best accentuate our positives and cover our negatives. Because of our abysmal defence we have to build this team from the back to stand any chance. Then when you have selected your defence and half your midfield you have to look at what sort of attack we can bring in alongside of this to be effective. This is a major issue along with not getting the defence entirely correct. We need to be playing 451 when defending with a pacey outlet spear heading the attack. We nearly got things right against West Ham but we just got that little bit ahead of ourselves. If the midfield had closed the gap to the defence and defended slightly deeper it possible we could have drawn West Ham onto us that little bit more and posed them more of a challenge. In effect we can have some reasonable attack if we unbalance the side and expose the defence, equally we can solve part of the defensive issue at the cost of weakening the attack. with the midfield working their ****** off just treading water. IMHO it's going to be best to get the defence sorted to an acceptable working unit and try to do the maximum in attack with what's left over. That does not mean we can continually charge up and down in support of attack / defence because we already know how open we make the game and without the ability to keep the stamina up. You just have to leave the lone forward to chase 1/2 chances and work the cghannels, hoing the opposition overcommit on the attack to allow us a decent counter attack position or some form of dead ball to provide the threat. We were not that bad against West Ham apart from the basic slip ups of remembering our first priority is to defend and to be a little more ingenious in letting the opposition open themselves up for us.

I felt sorry for Adkins yesterday and his honest, forlorn responses to the questions. He got a lot of little things right but nothing to obscure our defence starting in a coma in the second half and that was his day done. When ever i look at Saints midfield and look at what it's necessary to supply, it always comes down to supplementing the attack and bolstering the defence. There's no doubt we can afford to let that defence flounder unaided so I would put that down as a priority and make the best of what's left for supporting the attack. I would start with a back four of Stephens Hooiveld Yoshida Clyne The reason I picked Stephens because we cannot accept Fox giving possession back to the opposition by that simple chip up the line, irrespective of who is there. A midfield of Guly Davis Morgan Lallana Fonte and Fonte wedged between the defence and midfield. Fonte showed he could do this midfield job against West Ham when he brought the ball out on several occasions. I know he's his own worst enemy when he's put under pressure but hoping the extra layer will give him time and space to collect himself because that back four will not hole it's own without help. Guly finds himself getting picked again because he is there to look after Stephens. That leaves Mayuka as the lone centre forward and if that does not work it all falls flat on its face. When West Ham had a little push at us in the second half we were found wanting. We needed our midfield that little bit closer to the defence and further back to clear up the spaces. We then must have pace up front to keep their defenders honest and outlets in Lallana and Guly that can retain the ball. If Chung is available that may be a further option but you can't fit everyone in. I am hoping Stephens can compliment Clynes attacking threat but their first job is to defend, we can't afford to give away that space as we did against West Ham. If we don't find a way of closing up that defence it's all over for us, that we are sure of now. I'm not going to be dumb enough to say this will work but we have to find a way of addressing our weaknesses.

Very true. It's the 451 part when defending that is giving us all the problems with these formations, specifically who plays the lone striker. From a counter attacking point, Ricky has never been ideal and JRod insufficient threat. I would personally like to see Mayuka given a run in that position.

Bit of a delayed reaction but it's finally dawned upon the masses that we have a lot of mediocre players and look destined for relegation. Previous games put a gloss on this but it was all there to see, even when we were winning. We made a big error in not understanding exactly what is required from a team going into the Premier and that extends across the board. We have an open, fluid style of play with players coached in that manner and of insufficient quality to be able to change or raise their game sufficiently. Forget about the arguments on tactics or JRod versus Lambert, we just are not good enough at the present. Adkins tactics worked well for 45 minutes but we needed to change. West Ham just sat back at home and took the first half boo''s, bringing us on to them and stretching us to an extent to open us up. If we had sat back a bit more and drew them out, our defence would have been more compact and our attack would have had a bit more space. JRod or Ricky, what really was the difference? Over the last 2 games it has been noticeable that Ricky has not been jumping for the ball as he did at the start of the season. This should come as no shock to anyone who has witnessed this since League 1, you just don't need to be roger blind to notice it. JRod has had enough chances and it has to be Ricky as first choice because of his goals, but only as a sub if he is not going to put in a full shift. The small glimmer of hope is that Mayuka can do the business, not totally impossible but we need to find out as soon as possible, along with Chung. Ramirez will make a big difference when he comes back but not enough to walk us out of relegation alone. Really good quick feet by Lallana for his goal giving the goalie little time to figure out what was going on. That could be our goal of the season. Nothing much to say about the defence as we have all seen it a few times before. The selection of Boruc made sense especially when you saw him alongside of Carrol, no way was he getting bullied but Gazza was unlucky there. The only thing we can do short term is to bolster the coaching staff with someone who can get better from our defence. It could be wise to get a new manager in the future but is it going to be of value given the quality we have and the performances they have put in? I doubt little can be done until we can change out players in the window but by that time spending good money on a very bad position may look foolish. We have to accept the practicalities of the mess we are now in and plan accordingly. I have no issue with keeping Adkins even if we were relegated because of the mammoth job he did in getting us promotion. Remember it was this same style of play / players that got us promoted along with some journeyman now gone. The problem is our standards need to be so much higher to carry this off in the Premier.

Let's assume he's your best player who is going to get pulled off after 60 minutes? When do you think the best time would be to have him on the pitch? And in case you donkeys have not noticed, Ricky cannot jump any more. Started the season with some great leaps but struggled to get off the ground in the last couple of games. We've all see this before over the last 3 seasons but it all gets merged into that blind spot.

I doubt it. The ability to decipher the starting line up from the colour of the bibs used in final practice is one thing, trying to extend that is another. No doubt has a good source we already now about, but nothing further than that. I don't understand what all the problems are about as Ricky will be on the field at some point. Do you want him going up against fresh players from the beginning or would you rather have him against tired players? We cannot make this work with providing everything Ricky needs to thrive and half a defence with Ricky starting, simple as that. We really have not got the players full stop at the present and this looks like a hiding either way. But what Adkins is trying to do makes sense, even if we can't follow it through.

Cortese explains this in one of his early South today interviews. Cortese told Matty he was a thwat for fronting the Pinnacle bid. Matty does not believe he is a thwat and what he did was right. That is it, no more light to be shed, total illumination! We won't get anything like or as simple as this and it will come down to some incident in a lift with Cortese letting one fly while staring Anne McMenemy in the eye.

This is the issue between MLT and Cortese. Cortese said MLT was wrong to keep fronting the bid. MLT still believes what he did was correct (at the book signing a few years back anyway). I just can't see the credibility in any of this after Micky Falka emerged from the back of the sofa with a 5p coin. It would be interesting to ask Matt if he still believes what he did was right but I doubt I will ask that question again.

All clubs do this, it's the only way of getting the right blend across the board. The majority of these players will be where all the Academy spending goes. As long as you can say they were educated according to our standards, I cannot see any issue as them not being products of our Academy, even if having attended a previous Academy. Steve Wigley bought Kenwynne Jones for the development squad, not sure how that one pans out!

If we all keep going the way we are, it's going to be anyones guess who is going down. One of these teams is going to individually or collectively do that something a bit special that drags themselves away from the trap door and that will be it. In Ramirez we have exactly the type of player that may be able to achieve that, but being out for 6 weeks is going to severely hamper that prospect. We seem to be having our fair share of bad luck combined with our self inflicted, not a recipe for success.

IMO Ramirez adds such to our defensive abilities it allows more of an attacking threat. The problem lies in that Lallana, Rodriques, Puncheon and Ricky are not offering sufficient an attacking threat on their own. I was hoping that Mayuka would provide that extra threat, though I expect he would have been used by now if there was the slightest evidence from training. If we don't manage to coax a far more meaningful threat from them all our chances this season are slim. We just have to keep going and hopefully one of them will start doing the business, it's all we have.

6 weeks is enough to put the frighteners on me. Just hoping that things turn around a lot quicker with all the facilities we have. We paid a lot of money for Ramirez but it was required without a doubt. The trouble is we needed an equal amount on the defence, not find our main hope is going to be unavailable.

He explains his reasons pretty well, “We started well in the first half and pressed the ball very well which has led to a good goal from Jose Fonte. We knew Fulham want to play out from the back and we have managed to get on the front foot and present ourselves with some opportunities, we just weren’t able to sustain that in the second half." “The game became far too open for us and we couldn’t get a grip of the football, started to defend far too deep and allowed them to pass the ball around.” Apart from Villa, this happened in the other games. Fulham came out in the second half and started pushing us back creating too much space. Against Villa we had the attacking threat of Ramirez to counter that and press them back by our attacking threat. Today we never had that option and were just going the same way as we did against Wigan. Adkins has decided that to protect our shape and balance we defend from the front to make things difficult for the opposition. Alternatively we could defend deep and park the bus but that gives little attacking threat at home. Now I could clearly see in the second half that Fulham were starting to push us back and opening up the play, with Ricky getting isolated and less effective. In making the substitutions we at least gave ourselves a chance of redressing the balance, the damage was already done. The trouble was we never had any forward causing them a great deal of problems but at least Lallana and Rodriques were showing effective movement. Today our whole forward line was not good enough and were not doing enough in the second half defensively to protect what we had. Hard decisions had to be and were made. Just add Ramirez into that equation such we get totally on top and it's a completely different story as we saw against Villa. The problem was it was starting to get like a replay of Wigan rather than Villa.

That's about it for me as well, although Chaplow could be a really good sub if he gets his form back. Gaston and Clyne are our best attacking threats and we need either Rodriques or Mayuka to be the type of player we all dreamt them to be. Puncheon is just mediocre and shows why he has never had an extended run previously in the Premier. I still enjoyed the game and thought we did well with what we had on the pitch, but that does not blunt the reality.

The substitutions were not that bad, both Ricky and Puncheon had run out of ideas by the time they got taken off. You were very limited as to who you could substitute with only Lallana and Rodriques the alternatives as any of the others would have destroyed the shape of the team. If I had to pick two players for substitution it would have been Lambert and Puncheon, both running out of ideas and fitness. I was more surprised that Fulham did not have a go at us and took all three points. Can't complain at that result with what we put out on the pitch.

I have no problems with fans delving into these matters to their hearts content, being equally interested. But I am certainly not going to fool myself that knowing these details will have any effect, You can analyse in detail every event that happens at the club and you may still not know the full consequences or more importantly, the slightest chance of doing anything about it. If you want an indicator as to how the future is to pan out, just look at the past actions of Cortese and everything he is trying to build. To get taken over as a league 1 club and have money pumped into the infrastructure to make you amongst the best in the world, let alone the two promotions.We won the lottery when Liebherr bought us and if we find ourselves back in our original position there is still little down side.

So to get this straight, your not happy yet not a nut job or worried at all? But do reserve the right to question what ever they do? The problem is that what ever they do, you have no influence over. We can just look at past history, see what has actually been done and judge accordingly. Even when we fully knew that Crouch was slamming us into future administration by increasing the wage bill, it was ok because he was not a banker but a fan. Then you can write off £30+M in loan notes and still be viewed as untrustworthy.

OK, let me lay it down for you. My source is Turkish. His source is the Echo. I cut and pasted the item from the Echo into here. I had a little joke with you. I put the LOL on the end to show I did this for fun. In my own professional opinion I'm guessing it is related to a thing called 'Future Proofing' which means that, as an extreme example, putting on an Asbestos roof back in the 80's when you know that Asbestos is going to be banned in the near future. So a change in spec means a redesign. They may even be looking at making it a Passivhaus, which is a type of construction that doesn't need heating or lighting because it's design incorporates a lot of insulated materials and strategically placed windows and skylights. Hope this helps. Really poor, dude. If you can't envisage the carnage these reports will create, you really need to think again. Work has stopped and the possibility exists it will never start again. Or if it does start it's going to cost us millions and put the whole financial structure of the company in jeopardy. Anyone would think you liked Coretese and the accident of our current resurgence is somehow related to him? Let's get you back on track with a subtle Napoleon complex fronted by Berlusconi type bunga, bunga parties masquerading as fans dinners.

If you factor into that scenario with us still getting finance from what Markus has set up for us, you then get the whole picture. Most likely any form of trust money due to us would have safeguards against taking loans against. That would still allow you to borrow against future revenues with the capability of those trust funds filling that hole and more. We can't expect the remaining Liebherrs to bail us out. They have a great deal of love for Markus but not necessarily football. It was Cortese and Markus who had the passion for Saints, with Markus exceptional benevolence extending after his death. If Cortese wanted to finance extra seats at St Mary's I doubt Katrina would be putting money into it or sufficient from what Markus has left us. We would then have to go to another source of finance to get that job done.

We have little idea about the exact value of the loan, the length of the loan or what it is secured against. What we can reasonably speculate is that it will be probably be £2M+, maybe as little as a couple of months in time and against what security? The answer to these questions can leave you extremely worried to what is all the fuss about, depending upon the actual figures. One thing this does clearly show is we don't have carte blanche over any monies from the Liebherr family or bequeathed by Markus via a trust. Either way I would expect that Cortese could not act alone on this loan and would have had agreement from the Liebherrs.