S-Clarke

It's what I was told by someone at SMS who I don't believe would make it up, so just putting it out there.

Remember when there was chat a while back, when they were talking about Ralph being consulted about who should 'replace him', and Martin came out and said one of the people on 'our list' has actually turned up at another job this week? That was Marsch. It is almost certainly a long-standing interest, most likely because of the links with the RB Model.

I think we've already gone beyond the point of 'shit' !

JWP needs to answer a lot of questions IMO. He is one of the only consistent faces in the group which has lost two games 9-0, collapsed in many other games and has captained the team to have the worst season in our history. I'm not discounting his ability, as his free kicks and technical ability on the ball is top draw - but as an on field leader I think he's been a disgrace, he's led us through a period where we simply have no backbone. I can't imagine captains of the past letting the situation get like this (Fonte/Hammond/VVD etc). He is out of his depth as a captain of this group in my opinion.

I don't see how. We've just had our best run of the season (in terms of attainable fixtures). That's in the bin now, lost 90% of them. We have to play Arsenal, Man Utd, Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs, Newcastle and we need to be winning a couple of those games and every other home game to stand any chance. We are rooted to the bottom of the league and require 2 wins to even lift ourselves off of the bottom. It's not salvageable, even for the most optimistic coach. Happy to say when people are being daft about relegation (i.e. when we have 26 points at this stage), but we need to look at this situation now with a sense of realism. There should be no expectation for any new manager to keep us up, if they do it's a huge unexpected bonus.

Or Brentford, or Wolves, or Villa or Brighton. Never mind. So many 'winnable' games (in fact most) thrown in the bin.

That puts you at the top of the list for any potential new addition to the backroom staff Derry. Give Rasmus a call, given he appointed the previous coaches without badges then you should be a shoe in!

He was actually pretty much at the top of the odds list as soon as we got rid of Ralph, so there was some knowledge in our plan with him. We appointed him 24 hrs after sacking Ralph so it was obviously well advanced.

The wolves changes happened at HT, which is where the game was won. They reorganised the side and kept their width, even with 10 men. Their manager made a bold change tactically which enabled them to control the midfield and still provide a threat through Traore. We did what we usually do - go out in the second half and do more of the same, ignorant to the fact that the opposing manager has changed it so we won't be able to do the same. Then when we did make changes, it became an utter rabble of disorganised chaos. I had no idea what we were playing at the end, I doubt the players did either.

If Poch hadn't managed us, suggesting him is the equivalent of suggesting Zinedine Zidane or Thomas Tuchel - total non-starters. We rightly laugh at Everton fans for their summer ambitions for signing Mydrik and Isak - this is the equivalent.

They showed the second half stats on MOTD last night, with 10 men Wolves had more touches in our box, more possession and more forward passes. They outnumbered us on several attacking moves, and for a team with one less outfield player, that is shambolic of the highest order.

Some additional names on the betfair odds, although I'm not sure how out of date they are given that Dominico has just become Belgium manager. Marcelo Bielsa 7/2 Ralph Hasenhuttl 6/1 Nuno Espirito Santo 10/1 Rafael Benitez 10/1 Domenico Tedesco 10/1 Steven Gerrard 12/1 Frank Lampard 12/1

I'd suggest it would have been negligent to not have included a clause, given the position we were in when they signed. But given we had a track record of negligent decisions then who knows.

Exactly the sort of player I've wanted us to sign for years, very Allan Saint-Maximin-esque.

He said that, but seriously who is going to reject the chance to manage in the PL when you're currently manager of Luton? No one. Big pay rise, big contract. I doubt there was much convincing that needed to happen, no matter what bluff he came out with.

I don't think we look at coaching badges as a criteria anymore, just ask Alan Sheahan and Chris Cohen.

Chelsea's attack is electric, so I don't see a scenario where they don't score against our lot. I think we could worry them in defence though, stick Sulemana on Cucarella's side - he's had the worst start to Chelsea than you can imagine. Ounachu will need to be a lot cleverer though up against Thiago Silva, he's going to need a lot more to his game against experienced CB's like him. I'm not expecting anything, so anything we do get will be an extra bonus. It does feel like we're going into this game with a bit of fresh air though.

I'm slightly confused by Selles if I'm honest, by all accounts he was incredibly sought after when we brought him in. He did great things at FC Kobenhaven and is spoken about highly over there. But you can't hide away from the fact that he has been a core coaching component of our worst ever PL season, so I'm pretty torn. Selles was a club appointment (probably Rasmus again) rather than Ralph/Jones, so it makes sense he stays on as an interim. It's also hard to judge the impact a 'coach' has, on both positive and negative angles. They will have to follow the orders of the 'manager', so they wouldn't be able to do things on their own autonomy even if they wanted to. Future wise though I don't know - I think we need to give a new manager the remit to mould his own staff, if he wants to get rid of any of the existing (Sparkes/Selles/Martin) then let them do that. I don't think we have the evidence to make him a 'must have' for any new manager, should they want to change it.

Great news to wake up to. I'm usually very supportive and I don't like to knee-jerk, but it was fairly obvious early on that we'd appointed a fake manager with no idea. I'm too young for Branfoot, so for me this is now my Branfoot period. I read a lot about the dislike for that manager and I did hope I'd never get to experience similar, but sadly Jones was that. He never acted, looked or spoke like a top flight manager. He came into Southampton with his lower league principles and tried to implement them all over the squad, it wasn't going to work. This is a guy who had no experience of playing in a top level, let alone managing anyone other than random journeyman lower league players. The decision to appoint him will go down as the worst decision in our recent history. To this day I still fail to see the sense in it and from day 1 it was inventible this day would happen. Not getting the results is bad enough, but the way he has conducted himself in interviews is a sackable offence in it's self. He has a heightened opinion of himself where any criticism is swiped away by snappy snipes back, whether that be at players, supporters, the media or the club. He was a horrible little man who managed to unite everyone for the wrong reasons. I fail to believe that he had any respect from the playing squad. If he has managed to become this disliked by an entire City then I can't imagine he is universally liked on the training pitch - this feels like a dark cloud has been lifted and hopefully, 'god willing', we have now hit the bottom of our latest decline and can start to look forward again with some hope. Fans need hope, even if you're 20 points adrift, but Jones gave us no hope.

Oh yeah I agree, I don't think it's beyond the realms to expect us to get a couple of wins and maybe finish mid-high 20's, but that's probably as good as it'll get. But even that will be tons better than what we've had to put up with in recent months.

I don't think it's worth the emotional rollercoaster to be honest. The run we've just had (Fixture wise) was our best run of 'winnable' games, and we lost almost 100% of them. I don't see how this team turns around 23 defeats out of 34 games and becomes a team that wins around half of it's remaining games, which include Chelsea, Spurs, Newcastle, Tottenham, Arsenal, Man Utd, Liverpool etc. This team has shown it isn't capable of performing when the going gets tough in-game, they are absolutely drowning when the going has got tough in-season. For us to survive we would need to be better than Bournemouth, West Ham, Everton, Leicester, Leeds, Forest. I just don't see any possibility of that being a thing, I'm resigned to it. I just hope we don't finish 20th, I just see us battling with Bournemouth for that bottom spot. No more than that.

That was a proper PR exercise, he was signed in the build up to the first ever U21 International at St Mary's - England v ROI.

I don't think you appoint anyone with the hope of keeping us up, we're done - no point in prolonging that hope. It needs to be a long-term appointment, or we wait until the summer if that's the best time to make the call. (but still, Jones gone and anyone else in charge for the remainder)

Apart from that, he's Europe's best CB. Quite lucky he's being managed by Europe's best manager. They go hand in hand.