S-Clarke

Hollywood FC for the first game. They'll build this up like it's some sort of Superbowl game. Wrexham will be right up for this. It's an enormous banana skin that we could easily lose fairly comfortably if our mind isn't on it. So much will change between now and then though, hard to say what team we'll put out.

Simon Rusk was actually promoted to the first team coaching setup when Juric was in charge, possibly to fill the void left by some of Martin's coaches. At a guess, he was Calderwoods replacement. So he didn't really have an U21 job to return to. I don't think he's been scapegoated, it was just a common point to part ways.

Yeah, very soon. Always very soon. The last I heard on the Toys R Us one is that the 'last plans' are being torn up as they're not viable, or something. How they've left that Toys R Us site is an embarrassment really, shows us up as a right old dump as soon as you get off the train. They've tried to polish a turd by investing into new train station frontage, but ignoring what it overlooks. (and don't forget the eyesore of the grey concrete buildings on the other side..!)

On paper they still have the players, but I think once they sort out their manager direction they'll start moving a few on. They simply have to financially. It all feels quite quiet at the moment, I'm still fully expecting ourselves to lose a really big chunk of our quality too - but we have the flexibility of being able to act in advance for a change, whereas Leicester will have to sell first.

Good mix if you look at it on paper. Lallana with high level playing experience, knows the lower leagues too. Trollope with lots of experience in the lower leagues, Championship, L1 etc. Knows his way around the EFL. Then Still with more of a continental experience background to bring to the table. If it all meshes together it could be quite fruitful, as we have a bit of everything in the setup.

The whole situation at Leicester feels a bit odd, it's like they're just frozen in time unable to do anything. They're not able to buy, they're not selling, they've got a manager who they don't want. Pre-season starts in a week or so and they're no where near. It's a weird situation. Good for us for sure.

They are very valid points, I guess Rusk took the fall as he was the 'focal point' towards the end of the season - much the same way as Juric and Russell (obviously much more reason to dump Russell). I think Carl Martin seems highly regarded, but like you say it's hard to see that translated - but how much was it allowed to be translated last year? It was a pretty toxic setup for anyone, and I'm not sure any coach in world football would have come out smelling of roses.

That early? I had it finished in September 2024 myself. We've had a year of Friendlies, we should be fighting fit!

I dunno, I think most of us have gotten the Rohl thing out of our system. We've gone with a pretty solid choice ourselves in my eyes. If we'd missed out on Rohl and appointed Rusk I'd be more inclined to agree with you, but I don't see there being much of a meltdown.

This is where I feel football has changed so much, even in the last 2-3 years. In the past you could get promoted with the core of a good side, enjoy that team in the PL and evolve with them (Brentford, Brighton, ourselves, you guys, Leeds etc). Some good players may get sold after season 1 in the prem, but you've survived at that point and can reinvest from a stronger position. These days it seems like an impossible cycle. As soon as teams get promoted, they're already struggling to keep their best players. Burnley lost some of their best players last time they came up, so did Sheffield United. Burnley will probably repeat the same feat here, and thus the inevitable will happen. It would be nice for these promoted sides to get a chance to get a foot in the league. If their best players are sold before they've even started, it's an uphill battle really.

I thought he was a dick in the way he left, I think everyone does really. But your vendetta against him feels very personal at this point. I just say - let it go, move on? It's a very, very large chip on your shoulder to be walking around with otherwise.

It's a difficult one for Rusk really, I think anyone stepping in last season was on a hiding to nothing. Their rep was always going to go through the floor on the back of it. He did get quite snipey towards the press at times, I think the pressure got to him a bit. Definitely the right time to part, not sure what he'd have added with the baggage of last year. We need as little of that around as we can get.

Only £4-5m too. Weird summer for them. Mbuemo to Man Utd still strong too. Some loose interest in Wissa from Newcastle, and Damsgaard from Bayern I read. Could be a pivotal summer for them, a real cross-roads moment and I think their manager choice has kinda dictated what direction they're off to.

That's the last remaining remnants of the Martin era are gone (Thornton and Parker).

We have to remember we're kind of reliant on Southampton City Council here as well, they're a key driver in the wider picture. This is the same Council who still haven't developed Mayflower Park, the pier, Toys 'R' Us or the Leisure World site. For those reasons alone, I wouldn't hold out much hope for anything happening this side of 2040.

One of my favourite players during this period of crapness, since he came here in 2020 he's been excellent for us. Always shows up, always present, hardly ever injured, plays anywhere you ask without moaning. The one thing that always shocked me is how we kept him in the Championship, a player of his ability sticking with us was ridiculous. He'd have had takers, no doubts, and other players would have kicked up a fuss saying they want out - but he didn't, he stuck to it and gave 110% that entire season. His last season won't be remembered by many, as it was miserable for everyone really, but I'll always appreciate his efforts in the good times as well as the bad. I hope he gets a good move and gets some further England caps to his name. He deserves everything given to him.

This is a bit of a left field one - but Danny Guthrie. We had him on loan in the 2nd half of that Play off season, he was pretty classy I thought. Lots of games in that 2nd half of the season went through him, and he actually made a decent-ish PL career for himself at Bolton and Newcastle after that year. A tidy player.

Yeah that's a good shout, he was fun. Brought some hope into a pretty poor season, although compared to our recent relegated efforts, we were world beaters in 05. That Norwich game is still one of my favs.

In terms of Dusan, there's a lot of romance in wanting that to happen - but I don't think it's worth exploring from a pure footballing point of view. We need to move on from looking to the past, and start building a new squad full of players for the future. We went all romantic by re-signing Theo and Lallana and they were just pointless wage hoggers. I'm glad we dodged the AOC move as well, another one who should be left in the past.

Euklund was a bit before my footballing memories to be honest, I feel like I missed a lot in the early 90's and prior. Never mind. In recent years though, in this order of pure impact at the time - 1 - Saganowski. Ridiculous period on loan, that 6 months got us into the playoffs. He carried us there. Shame it never happened after that. Wasn't it true that Leon Crouch actually coughed up the £750k needed to sign him permanently? 2 - Toby. Class act, elite level CB whom we could enjoy for a year. Never kicked up a fuss and was a proper good pro around the place too. Luckily we didn't feel his departure too greatly as we moved onto VVD shortly after, who was even more epic, but we still got our value out of that Toby deal. 3 - Bertrand. He was, in a lot of peoples minds, quite an underwhelming addition to replace the £35m we'd just got for Luke Shaw. But he was excellent on loan, a no brainer permanent addition and one of my favourite players of our PL era. 4 - KWP has to feature. He didn't start like a house on fire during his loan period, but once he got going he was well worth that £11m outlay. We've lost him on a free now, but we (notably during Ralph's time) extracted every ounce of ability from him. I reckon we saw his best years in the PL.

They actually built a really strong top end Championship team upon promotion to the PL. The likes of Clarke, Szmodics, Palmer, Phiologene, Johnson, Ogbene, Greaves etc are all proven top end Champ players. Even without Delap, with Szmodics, Hirst as '9's and Phiolgene, Broadhead and Clarke linking in from wide, I'd say there are stacks and stacks of goals there. Decent defence too at that level with Greaves, Wolfenden, Johnson, Davis and Dara O'Shea who are all still there. Central Midfield I'm not too sure about, as their best CM last year was Cajuste, but he returned back to his parent club. Luongo and Morsy are a couple of years older now and may not be the same.

It is a very odd move, like you say there would have been tons of higher level managers up for that job. They should have taken this as an opportunity to move forward, a bit like Brighton did when they lost Potter (they got Di Zerbi), but this seems destined to fail from the outset to me. After becoming an established PL club and pushing for European football, it feels like they've just tried to be extra clever here when they had the opportunity to sustain what they had, or even further it. They'll be relegated within the next 2 years.

Unfortunately it's not Spors handling the outgoings, Dragan confirmed that Rasmus is dealing with all outgoing transfers. So I think we can safely say on that one, that no, Rasmus doesn't know what he's doing.

Carvalho is an interesting one, he's been on our radar for a number of years. We were interested when he was at Fulham, then again after he'd gone to Liverpool. Not sure why he hasn't got into the team at Brentford, depends what their new manager feels about him I guess, these sorts of openings will prob happen later in August. It could be a loan option though, as playing first team football in the Championship is undeniably a better option than chilling on the bench for Brentford.

We did this for years with the likes of Boufal and Hoedt, not selling for cheap etc. What happened in the end? We had to give them away for freebies, or pay them off. Sometimes the club just need to accept the reality, and the reality is that £14-15m euro deal for Sulemena is as good as it's going to get.