S-Clarke

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.

As weird as that sounds, this is probably true to a point. The real quality of our players are exaggerated due to who they are training with, if we had decent attackers in the training ground then I think it would be easy for a manager to call out the crap. But 3 games of shitness should be enough to make the call now.

Southampton boss Nathan Jones: "If you’re an organised football club, you do your recruitment well, well in advance. At my previous club [Luton] we were six months in advance, always looking at windows, always looking at the next level, always looking at pushing boundaries. And here they are exactly the same."We have one of the best recruiters in the world in terms of Rasmus Ankersen and Sport Republic in how they do that. So we’ve been really regimented in what we want, we’ve been clear in what we want, what type of player, what position, everything we want."We've narrowed that down and we'll be having conversations to try and get those through the door as early as we can because there are certain things we need and we need them quickly. So they are well in advance, any well organised, well run, diligent football club would have already done that weeks and months in advance."Obviously it's been difficult for Southampton with the change in manager, only six weeks to restart, but we’ve restarted immediately."

I don't think he'd help us, much in the same way as Bednarek wouldn't help us. Similar sort of CB in that he's slow and immobile, stick him in front of our non-existent midfield and expose him and it'll be a horror show. He is a decent defender if he has protection in front of him and isn't exposed, but we don't have the environment for that. We have bigger priorities though imo.

I think that's the point - he's dumb as fuck. Makes the wrong decisions ALL the time, gets into the wrong positions ALL the time, uses his aggression wrong ALL the time and gets over excited over nonsense ALL the time. 'If' he had a brain on him he'd probably pass as a decent defender as he could use his 'aggression' in the right way, but given he has no brain cells then he's pretty pointless and shouldn't really be a footballer truth be told.

I don't think people are giving up, we all go into a game with the ill-judged hope that we win it and play well - but the reality tells us otherwise. This isn't just a bad run of form over a few months, this is years of complete and utter trash. Going by the league table of last year (of all 92 clubs) our players have certainly given up. At least we're not Crewe I guess.

I don't think it was that, there was some sort of link with his deal and our last min moves for Edozie/Larios - as Girona are part of the City Group, so I think it was a bit of a general sweetener.

Just had a look through the fixtures in terms of what we have left, we're going to need to win pretty much every one of the so called winnable ones to get close to 40 points. And so far we're not doing too well at that, as I looked at Brighton and Fulham as two of those winnable ones. There really isn't much time left and the fixtures, bar our favourable run between now and Feb, are tough.

Exactly - as Liverpool have proven, you can line up signings before the window and complete it after 1st Jan. If it's that obvious to us and the club are so switched on scouting wise, then I'd expect a few moves in the first week. If there are no moves in the first week then sadly it's the same old nonsense.

I think people just call out what they see in front of them to be honest, the players are certainly a bunch of giver-uppers so why should we do anything else. This isn't a new thing, or something that has haunted us for 6 months, it's been years of the same complete repetitiveness and it's just become incredibly soulless.

Between us and Bournemouth for 20th. We might be able to sneak 19th, but we need to buck up soon.

Aribo by the way - WTF? I thought he was supposed to be decent, good first touch, top player in the SPL etc - but he looks inept. Not sure if it's confidence/lack of playing time or he is an absolute dud.

I think the club saw AMN as an option to cover for Romeu, but I agree they judged that wrong. I don't think it's fair to say they let him go without a replacement though, they just got the wrong sort. The lack of quality up front is the major killer for us. That's why we are where we are period. Without Broja last season we'd be gone, without Ings in the seasons prior to that we'd be gone. We didn't add anything this summer and went into the season hoping that Adams and Armstrong will score the goals. I like Adams and he's a good player for a team in the PL, but he is not a consistent goal scorer in any way. The club have had 2 years to see that before their eyes. We needed to go all out and sign an attacker in the window, but we didn't. There were players out there who could have added to us. I fail to believe Gakpo was even an option, I think it was just chatter to appease the fanbase. He was always going to be too expensive. I got a lot of confused faces on a post when I made a comment at the end of the window saying that failing to sign a striker will undo all of the good work earlier on in the window. But it has, in fact it's trashed our season and immediate future.