S-Clarke

19th and 20th positions are sewn up imo.

It always seems worse in the here and now rather than the past, but that 2008/2009 season in the Championship was the worst I've ever had to endure. Portvliett, Wotte and co, a bunch of kids and Lloyd James at RB. We were regularly thrashed by the likes of Wednesday and Hull, there was no money and we were heading into L1 on -10 points. I never felt as low as I did then.

At the end of the day, they didn't replace Wilcox. They looked within and restructured rather than get a fully-fledged known DoF. His background is Performance management in Rugby Union. A proper footballing DoF is a gaping hole at our club.

Who? Mark Bitcon? That's stretching the term DoF to it's limits!

But for clubs like ourselves, we will never be able to recruit the level of player needed for this style. So what we do need is a manager that looks at the squad he has, and adapts based on what he has available, rather than one who shoehorns a specific philosophy no matter what situation just for his own ego.

I disagree, the philosophy focus we have is greatly flawed with the level of player we have. In fact, I'm bored hearing about philosophies and processes - just buy good players and play them in positions that are natural and comfortable for them. Stop getting them to do things that exposes any weakness they may have. I don't ever remember hearing anything about philosophies and processes when Koeman and Adkins were in charge. It sounds simple, but football really doesn't need to be complicated. It's when you try to get extra clever that things go horribly wrong.

This is the problem, we have owners with zero direction or idea for what they want to do. Like you say, they went full on DoF and everyone bought into that, and by January he was gone and they didn't feel it was fit to replace him. I think we've got a former rugby head of performance in the equivalent role now. SR need to figure out their plan and stick to it, they keep wobbling all over the place.

It's El-Sackio tomorrow. WHU v Wolves, loser of that is gone. So one of those two will be searching in the pool next week.

Or as Rasmus will say, if it's not broke, break it. In all seriousness one of the biggest issues at this club is recruitment, it's absolutley horrific. Why did we think BBD was the right player for us? What did they think Lesley and Cornet would offer us? You can go back further, Ross Stewart, Onuacnu, Orsic, Sulemana, ABK, AMN, Larios, Bazunu....it just goes on and on. There are some decent picks in amongst that, not many though, and when the bad outweighs the good you've got a serious problem. If you also include the managers into that, Martin/Jones as two main picks, the guys in charge of analysis and recruitment have absolutley killed us stone dead - again. The signings of THB was an obligation and was setup by Wilcox last year, Downes was a Martin pick and nothing to do with our recruitment team. They need to all go before we make any further drastic changes as I do not trust the people in those positions to make the right picks, they seem incapable of it.

I could accept some bemoaning of luck if we were on 11 points or something like that, at least in the conversation. But we've got 5 points. 1 win. and what feels like 700 defeats with plenty of goals let in for good measure. That's not about luck, it's about being fundamentally shit.

It was a shock to hear, good that he's conscious but it sounds pretty bad either way. It's not about football when stuff like this happens, it's really tragic as he's a young lad in his 30's - entire life ahead of him. Just got to hope everything works out for him.

This is a bit of the counter argument, in my eyes the root problem needs to be sorted before we change again or buy players again. The root problem is a lack of footballing knowledge in the DoF or scouting department, none of them have any idea what football is about. Sadly Martin's position is now simply untenable, so it has to happen, but I wouldn't expect a good call for the next manager with the current setup behind the scenes. So, scrap all of those, go and snap up some of the scouts Brighton let go and hire a reputable director of football. At that point we may be able to start making the right decisions, but until that happens I don't want SR spending another penny.

There is nothing to really analyse, it's just the same old. I'm just bored shitless with it all. How we are so slow with the ball, how we are technically awful in the final third, and how we continuously tie ourselves in knots at the back. It feels like we're taking a season off, as we're now just playing non-competitive friendlies up until May. Sounds fun.

However, we're enabling that by being the vehicle for building their squad.

He's a decent guy, very honourable. If you remember the Chelsea game (when we won away 1-0), he won performance of the week - but he didn't stand there and accept it, he put all of the staff at Staplewood in the camera. The issue with Ruben was that he was thrown to the lions too early in respect of a PL manager, we did get somewhat better under him than we were under Jones - but that wasn't hard and it was too far gone at that point really.

Thank you - to be honest, there isn't much to add on match comments these days as every game ends the same . One thing I will say about SR, Dragan in particular, is that he's put the money up. We all called for investment as we'd sat still for so many years under Gao. But sadly we've produced a fine example of why spending is not what it's all about. They all seem a bit ponderous though, it's not just us as the French club fans are equally as scathing of them. The only club they've had a certain level of success at is Gotzepe, but you could argue that we've enabled that by being a vehicle for their players and subsequent loans. We never got the 5 pledges from Gao, but if I'm honest I'm just at a loss with these guys and what their plan or goal is here.

Absolutley the worst thing they could do (not sack the manger, but spend,spend,spend). Dragan needs to put a lid on the spending bottle as weird as that may sound, these idiots are abusing his money. We are already gone, so there's no paying our way into anything other than serious debt as a Championship club.

ABK isn't injured, just not being picked. Bazunu will probably go out on loan in late January, prepping for him re-establishing as our Number 1 next season (the most inevitable thing ever) Bednarek, Onuachu and Ramsdale not far away. I've given up considering Stewart and Larios as Southampton players.

I think it was up to £22m. Elyounoussi was £18m. The couple of signings that turned out decent from that piss up was Stu Armstrong and Danny Ings, and I bet you they were instigated by the managers recommendations more so than Reed and co.

Passing out from the back is all well and good if you've got players in the defensive third/pivot who are good enough to carry and move quickly. The only player I see who has been good enough on the turn to move forward is Lallana, and he's an OAP. When you don't have players good enough to do said things you end up going backwards, backwards, backwards and getting in a knot. I don't know how many times we need to witness that before the club realise that we don't have the quality to play this way at this level. We'd have a much better shot if we had a much more pragmatic and sensible approach (that doesn't mean long ball). The main thing I notice with our ball retention is that we panic when we get pressed, rather than move it quickly we panic further and move it backwards, whilst the opposition use this as their alert to aggressively counter press. The centre backs play too narrow, and the full backs come inside too much - so in some occasions you have the back 4 on top of each other, the opposition pressing us and we're still trying to play it between each other in tight angles. It is just stupid. This isn't anything new either, we did exactly the same last season and it's why we gave up shit goals to Huddersfield and Plymouth to name a couple.

You could certainly make a more competitive team out of this lot, it's still bereft of real quality in certain areas, but I don't believe that we are worse than Luton were and they made a much bigger fist of it than we have.

They don't really give a shit, they know they'll get a PL gig next year and a tasty signing on bonus and loyalty fee from us, whilst we're left with the carcass of the club.

Scary. Reed and Wilson were running the show at that point. Wasn't Gao our owner at that point? I can't imagine him giving a comprehensive scouting report on Vestergaard or had even heard of him. What a mess this club has been post Koeman. We just lurch from disaster to disaster.

I think there is a part to that, he's a player who would be suited to a Dyche-Burnley style team. The way we play, which is wrong anyway, does not suite a player of his profile. It makes him look like an utter cart horse as he cannot get involved in any of those quick passing triangles, and when he tries it's embarrassing. We also never move the ball quick enough into the final third, he's not quick or mobile enough to make the space himself, so it's painful to watch. He needs to be in a team who get it forward quicker and create space for him to operate in, he cannot be relied on to create the space himself in this system. Very similar to Adam Armstrong in that sense. The completely wrong player at the completely wrong team.

I don't agree with that at all, we have spent a fortune under SR. It'll probably be around £250m come the end of January. That is enough money to have built a very competitive PL side. Bournemouth's key players are Senesi - £10m signing, Kerkez was £13m, Kluivert was under £10m, Semenyo was under £10m. You've just looked at their striker Evanlison at £40m, but that's not really half of the picture. It all boils down to using the resources you have well. We didn't. That's allowed Bournemouth to overtake us which shouldn't ever happen.