S-Clarke

Agreed, they need to accept the reality and start planning for next year, we are done. Like you say it's all mathematically possible, but there's more to football than maths. I think after our defeat to Arsenal we can only hit a maximum of 41 points, we pretty much have no margin for error at that point.

The club has sadly lost it's way, mainly born out of believing it's own hype. We didn't reinvent football, we didn't reinvent scouting, we didn't reinvent tactics - we just got lucky and things fell into place for a few years. Exactly the same is happening to Brighton and Brentford now, they haven't reinvented anything, they've just hit a lucky formula which won't last forever. Clubs like us will always have periods where things work out, we had it under Poch and Koeman in the PL. Bolton had it with Big Sam, Brighton with Potter/De Zebri, Stoke with Pulis, Swansea with Monk/Laudrup and even Sunderland with Bruce. Without mega, mega, mega investment behind you the inevitable will always happen - the big players will get sold and things start dipping. Obviously you can reduce the dip if your scouting is up to standard and you reinvest well, but the moment clubs like us take their eye off the scouting and start recruiting duds then you're screwed. You end up with loads of expensive mistakes you can't shift which in turn stops you from investing in better. We managed to do that for 3/4 years in a row and I'd say that's why we are where we are today. The decision making in the last 12/18 months has been shocking, but the decisions being made are happening because of the crap that went on before - change needed to happen, we'd had a serious lack of investment for years and a squad full of rubbish, so I don't hold it against SR for looking at it and accepting we need change....the problem is that they've gone about it wrong and in my opinion over estimated the quality of the experience we had (Ely, Moussa, Bednarek, McCarthy, JWP, Adams, Armstrong etc etc). The upcoming summer will enable us a chance to further reset, but rather than a half reset we need to go the full hog. We can't carry the likes of Theo, Ely, Moussa, Armstrong and those sorts anymore - we have to be ruthless and let the contracts expire which can expire, then reinvest in the right sort of players who can make an impact. Not kids, but proven players down the spine of the team. Stick this current lot in the Championship as it is today and we'd be eaten alive most weeks, we need some steel in this side like we had when we were last in the Champ, otherwise we are in for a very rude awakening.

I think Leicester are gone, I didn't expect it as I thought they'd have more than enough, but it just seems a really dysfunctional group. They've got 25 points, so they need one hell of a turn around to survive from here. Similar to us in that sense, they've just got too much to do and not enough time to do it. In my eyes there is one place left and that is a toss up between Leeds, Forest and Everton. Hard to really call that final spot at the moment.

Could we then take a 3-0 defeat if it's cancelled? Maybe they can do that on the final day, rather than than Liverpool tearing us for 6 or 7.

It's quite an incredible situation really, we've gone from shifting on Redmond, Long etc in the vision of upgrading the squad, yet in April we are starting with Theo Walcott as a striker. Failures all round.

And to finish on less than 30 points! Honestly, terrible. The worst PL team in our history, these players have got a cracking accolade to take with them for the rest of their careers. 2005 was bad, but this lot are 10x worse. That's why I'd be happy to see the back of every single one of them, they're all damaged goods now.

Do you mean Callum Davidson? He was the former PNE defender who rocked up as manager in the SPL. Never played for us unless my memory is failing!

I prefer Jermaine Wright to either of them.

We had that little spell last season when we beat Everton 2-0, Norwich 2-0, Brentford 4-1 etc. But since then the only game we've had a 2 goal advantage in was against Cambridge. I wouldn't even class that as an advantage though, as we'd probably piss our pants and still lose 2-3.

1 - This is a hard one as there are so many you could pick. Diallo and Ely are up there, but Aribo pips it for me. I had relatively decent hopes for him in the summer but the guy doesn't look capable of impacting games at a decent level, and is lazy as hell. 2 - Jones - can't be anyone else can it? The guy talked himself out of the job before he'd taken his first game. 3 - Grimsby for me. Same old bollocks, sideways, crabby non-penatrive football - against Grimsby FFS. This is Grimsby who often have teams putting goals past them in L2, but we still struggled to create. Fundamental problems in this team. 4 - The Che one against Wolves, no contest for me. I have no idea what he was doing. Pretty much sums up our attackers who are all thick as shit. 5 - DCC. I thought he'd add the experience we needed and was a solid replacement for Bednarek. But the fact we recalled Bednarek to take this guys place says a lot. Of the times he has played he has defended abysmally as well - the goal against WHU being a case in point. Expected so much more, but he's just like the rest - brain dead rubbish. 6 - I don't think you can pin it on anyone particularly, it's a culmination of lots of things over many years, we've just accelerated it this year through a series of shocking decisions. The main issue I have with this club is how they see one success as being proof that they've cracked football. i.e. our summer when Koeman came in, thought we'd cracked recruitment (we didn't, we just got lucky). Last summer we thought we'd cracked youth recruitment with Tino, so we decided this year to attempt to fill the spine with Tino's and it's failed as expected.

I think you only have to look at Villa today to realise that Gerrard is a failed manager, he'll never make it on his own. This is the same crop of Villa players and they're pushing into 50 points after he was risking to relegate them in November, quite an incredible change and it doesn't really show Gerrard in a positive light what so ever. He had his chance and he blew it, might get some ambitious L2 club giving him a gig, but he needs to re-build his rep if he wants to be a manager.

We seem allergic to signing anyone over the age of 30, and when we do we refuse to play them (Orsic). Absolutley need to make some 30 somethings our first signings in the summer, not necessarily world beaters but players who have some brains to them.

I wasn't referring to individuals specifically, more so the approach and the 'southampton way' we try to sell. That's a busted flush, nothing to work with. Need to re-design our approach from the ground up. There may be some players here who grow into a new approach/philosophy, but quite a few will need to be shifted on.

I think our priority has to be experience, we can add talented kids after that.

Absolutley all players make mistakes, and keepers are prone to be shown up more...but this guy drops one in the net every week, he doesn't seem to make saves. Anything on target equals a goal, which isn't a good habit for a GK to get into.

I'm convinced the sale of Romeu was linked in with the purchases of Edozie/Larios in some weird way, i.e it enabled us to get them cheaper or something like that. (Girona are part of the City Football Group).

Alcaraz, Sulemana, Tino - of the current crop I think they will be good for us in the right environment, potential to be standout players next year. If we add Tella and Smallbone to the mix, who have been standout at that level this year, then there is potential. One major issue is still present though - no striker. We'll have the same problems if we go into the champ without a striker. Get rid of the 'strikers' we have and actually buy some proper ones. Might be out of our range now, but Gyokeres, Akpom etc would be the sort of level I'd be looking at for next year.

Got about as much interest in this as I have watching paint dry. In fact I do have some walls to paint.

To be fair we had 5 years of breaking all the good records, wins, PL finishes, higher finish every year for 5 years etc - clubs like us cannot sustain that, so we were always going to dip. I just didn't think we'd dip this badly, but for clubs like us it's just part of the nature. We'll have good spells, then we'll have years in the wilderness, have another good spell etc. This current spell has been especially demoralising though, mainly because it's been dragged out for years like a painful death.

Johnstone made a good save as well. I'll be honest I wasn't totally sold on Johnstone at the point last year, I wanted us to aim a little higher. But jeez I didn't envisage us getting it this wrong.

Not sure if you noticed (I could only see via TV tbf), but we spent a good % of that game firing long balls to Aribo and Theo to try and get them down the channels - yet they never came off. We then put on a 6 ft 7 inch striker and reverted to tippy tappy crab football between the back 4, and didn't really put it 'in the mixer'. I'm just confused. Are these players genuinely that dim?

It goes further back than that, I can trace these wimpy fundamentals back to the end of the Claude Puel era. Risk averse, scared football. JWP has been a core component during all of those years as well. We had a little spell under Ralph when we went for it, but in the main since 2017 it's been like this. Too scared to make a mistake, not confident enough to take a gamble. The life was sucked out of the guys we had, and we made sure the new ones we recruited didn't have any life to start with. We can't start next season thinking we are on the right sort of path, we're not. This path needs to be ripped up, shredded, thrown away, whatever - and we need to start from scratch with every foundation. There is nothing to work with here and if the club believe there is, then we're onto a very nasty slope.

I still think it's too early to judge him too harshly, he has come into the most dysfunctional group of losers the PL has ever seen. Hard for anyone to make a huge impact, especially when they're young. I imagine he'll be with us next year and with some confidence I reckon he'll be a threat. Too early to give up on him, ditto Ounachu - although he is starting to have Carillo vibes about him.

We do need to get everything sorted early doors, in a weird way it's kind of fortunate we're relegated early as the club should now start putting the wheels in the motion for the sales we need to make, and the new players we will recruit for the Champ - and the manager options. In that sense we have a bit of an advantage over the clubs still unsure of their fate, we should be clear on ours. But sadly I imagine the club will still believe there is a chance we'll stay up after the Liverpool game as they're so dim.

This is the thing for me, the endless wimpy crab football and keeping the ball at the back is the definition of a lack of fight. No penetration, no intent, no fire. They're just going through the motions, it's so obvious. As we've been in the PL for a while we pay more than the likes of Brentford, Brighton, Bournemouth etc - yet their players give twice the effort, even 3 times the effort. This is why I've really taken the ''we need the fans to support us' shit personally. It feels like the club have stamped on my head with that comment after they've been punching me in the gut for 5 years. Everything about this club is dislikeable. Everything.