S-Clarke

Can you introduce me to your Spurs fan friends whilst you're at it?

That's a shock, didn't think I'd seen or heard from him recently. RIP

It's so exhausting following any transfer on twitter, 99% of it is nonsense. It's on, it's off, it's on, it's off, they want £2m more, no £1m more. No one will have that level of detail into any deal, it may still happen but watching these things unfold on twitter will send you crazy and fill your mind with lots and lots of inaccurate rubbish.

I don't believe it was SR with the 'grateful to be alive' narrative, that came from Semmens and that was before SR came in. The Gozepe quotes were lost in translation I think, I wouldn't put that on them. Poor transfers is a bit harsh - I think the players they added are, on paper, clever and good signings with re-sale value. The problem we are in was due to them being a little too accepting of the experienced crop we have (Ely, Moussa, Diallo, Perraud, Adams, Armstrong etc). None of those are particularly good enough in the way we are trying to play, which is somewhat frustrating to see because the signings of Lavia, Edozie, ABK etc are positives but they're just surrounded by shit. What has worried me most about SR is the crazy turnovers we have seen in staff. New Recruitment guy, then he left weeks later, our current DoF heading off at the end of the year mid-contract. A couple of new coaches in the summer brought in, but have since left. Those kind of things ring a few alarm bells, not sure what is going on to create that sort of turnover - poor planning on the part of us getting in the wrong people? It'll be interesting to see where we are this time next year - that'll be a decent milestone to fully judge them.

Maybe Sidney will introduce you to his Luton friend so you can debate the views. Although as we all suspect that Luton friend is a figment of his own imagination so you'll never meet him.

We were on a bit of a slump then as well, we'd gone into that game after losing to Norwich or Burnley? (maybe both) and were falling down the table, there were people starting to call for Koeman to go. I remember Fonte doing a rallying call, and there was talk of some of the senior players meeting to pull heads together in advance of that game. And the rest was history. That's what happens when you have leaders throughout a club.

For everyone's sanity it's probably a good idea to stick DT on ignore for the next 4 weeks.

Let's not follow every single random tweet and take it as gospel, that's just the route to insanity. When they're signed, they're signed. The nonsense played out on twitter before that is irrelevant to me.

Don't see how Lampard keeps his job after this. Who next for any new manager to face? Oh yeah.

It's refreshing to see us looking at 'older' players though, which seems a weird thing to say. This guy has pedigree no doubts, I remember Burnley fans getting very excited about signing him last January. Has Tadic vibes about him, provides a good goal threat from wide areas. Intelligence is what we're crying out for more than blistering pace and skill in these areas, this guy looks like he fits that somewhat.

He's 30 years old, think about the lack of sell-on potential!!! surely that is a showstopper.

Since when is he 34? He's only 30.

The standard story being followed here by the sounds of it. Link us with an exciting sought after talent early on in the window, try over the coming weeks to sign them, fail, get to the final 2 days and proclaim how hard January is and then sign Akpom as the headline signing at the 11th hour. Trying not to be cynical, but I've heard this story so many times.

And this is the mentality from the club which brings regression, not immediately, but overtime. The entire narrative over the last 18 month has contained some great snippets such as: - We're so lucky to be in the PL - We should be thankful we've been in this league for 10 years, we can't compete with anyone - Any win we get at this level should be cherished - We can't compete with Leeds/Villa etc etc etc Eventually the teams that were once below us (Leeds, Villa) get the momentum to go above us because we've accepted that, rather than trying to push the boundaries and gamble. I just hope this transfer window doesn't rival our worst ever - 2017/18. We sold VVD for a record fee late December, the rest of the month was spent with the leaking of our interest in everyone (Shaw, Promes, Sesseengon, Theo) whilst simultaneously patting themselves on the back for 4 weeks because we got a record fee for VVD, which they believed somehow validated our approach. That approach is null and void if you don't 'go again', and we didn't 'go again' as we just spent that money on Guido Carillo at the 11th Hour. Clubs have bad windows, but that was just horrific.

''Read the room'' springs to mind reading that.

I think that's exactly it, if you went back to 2016 I bet you can find clubs saying exactly the same about us. Without substational backing it's unsustainable, you just need to make the most of the periods you 'strike gold'. I will always have frustration that we didn't win anything during our period, we had everything in place to. We'll come again, just in the same way fans of Brighton and Brentford will be clamouring about how badly their club is run in a few years time. It's the way of the world for small-fry clubs like ourselves, you just have to enjoy the moments when they come as they will always be few and far between. Saying that though I don't think it's fair to accept just how shit we've been in the last 2 years, not even a tiny bit shit, country-leading record breaking dog shit.

I'd like to introduce you to DT. He hyperventilates around 1000 times during a transfer window about players we're going to sell, even though we don't end up selling them.

To be honest it's been obvious we needed a striker since July, if we haven't got a few irons in the fire already and opportunities progressed near to competition then I really have lost faith.

But we are Southampton, we won't be held to ransom and we will do deals 'on our terms'. And we know how that ends up.

What concerns me slightly are the CB noises, it genuinely seems like the club see this as some sort of priority position to strengthen. That means they're not looking at the underlying issues. The signing we should have in the first week is a ST, but it sounds like we're going to get the fan-fare out to announce the return of our deadwood.

It's a weird re-tweet from Simon Peach doing the rounds, it's his tweet from 2012.

Maybe we can sign him back in time for a re-run of 'That Villa game''.

I doubt you'll get a response, given that he doesn't really have a friend who is a Luton supporter. In the same way he doesn't have friends who are Spurs supporters when he trots that one out. Some people are very weird.

What with them kicking their own fans out of their season ticket seats, to losing every game we play, and then throwing in a yanky light show. It's like they're trolling us.

This is the ultimate test for SR now - they need to get something right, there have been too many weird calls over the last 12 months. You can't deny they're trying things, but we need to see some results now or their investment is dead.