S-Clarke

Welcome home Shane Long.

I'm a Saints fan, I never get my hopes up

The prob is that our big buys have been largely shit, and that has had a knock on effect in future windows as we had no pot to piss in. We then decided to get clever, thought we'd cracked it and went all 'we can build a team of Tino's', and are now having to repair that. The players we signed in the summer aren't bad players in isolation, not at all, but the balance of the approach was all wrong.

Interestingly, Celtic have signed a new Asian striker this morning.

I'll be honest, I'm surprised at the views on Diallo. Whilst he broke up play and did read the game well on occasion, his distribution of the ball in key situations was simply atrocious. We need a hell of a lot better than him in there if we want to do anything of note at any level. I see some people claiming he was MOTM, shows how far our standards have dropped imo. He's really not good enough.

It frustrates me that our scouts haven't managed to pick up a player like that. Newcastle got him for £15m a few years ago (when they were circling the drain themselves), yet we spunked £15m on an horrendous Moussa. Our scouting over the last 5-6 years has been nothing short of a disgrace.

There is no rule advantaging the bigger clubs, don't be so silly. It was a clear disallowed goal for me, hit his hand because he was inept enough to cockup the shot in the first place. Re-watch it, it's obvious and VAR was never going to let that stand. Don't understand the interest of winning a competition? ''Focus on staying in the league'' - sod that, we're down anyway - let's try and win something for a change and have something to cheer, as supporting this club over the last 6 years has been truly soul destroying in the main

That one was criminal. It's a shame he's been hung out to dry like this, as he's put in a good shift for us in some good periods, but we've created an environment where he is literally being made the fool guy and becoming a bit of a comedy character and I don't think that's fair. Well done scouts.

Nice little trademark swing and miss panic clearance though.

Yeah, he's got quality. He kind of stood out alongside Diallo and even JWP in the sense of his agility on the ball and how keen he was to move it quickly, and able to move it quickly. He wasn't ''amazing'', but he was tidy and easily one of our better quality players. Doesn't say much for the rest of the squad mind.

At this stage I'd try and tempt Lambert out of retirement, he can even enjoy his takeaways at HT.

See, I don't understand this. We are as far away from a fantastic team as you can get, dogshit is closest. Having Lavia and Tino back makes zero difference to the lack of ability we have in the final third. We are rooted to the bottom of the league, lost pretty much every game we played last year and have started this year in the same vein. We are one of the worst teams in the entire country.

I thought we were very lucky it was only 0-1, Newcastle had at least 2 additional clear cut chances whilst we only had one. We had a period in the second half where we got on the ball and started moving it a bit, but that was pretty much it. The rest of the game was almost exclusively controlled by Newcastle and played at the pace they wanted it played at, we couldn’t get on the ball as they didn’t allow us the time on it. Orsic looked like a rabbit in headlights out there, not entirely sure why he was so bad. It was like playing with 10 men. Salisu had almost zero defensive cover for the entirety of the time he was on the pitch. Diallo read the game well and broke it up, but his passing and distribution is simply not good enough for any level of football and that’s why he can’t be starting for us. An accident waiting to happen. The defenders were both a bit calamitous tonight, DCC was poor on the goal – got too tight to a player who is 110% faster than him, and it was obvious what Isak was going to do. Braindead. The sending off was a case of taking one for the team, but he really didn’t have a good game. Lyanco just plays on the edge all the time, there’s nothing composed about his game. He creates chaos when he plays at CB and it panics everyone else. Decent shouts for Alcaraz who I thought was very smart for at least 60mins, playing deeper than I’d play him though – but he has a good touch, good agility, moves the ball quickly. The ball through to Adams was delightful. Equally KWP had a decent second half, Salisu had a good game at LB, Armstrong made an impact when he came on. Mara held the ball up well and brought others into play, but never looked like scoring himself. It's plainly obvious that we just don’t have enough quality in the final third of the team to really trouble anyone, it’s painful watching Adams miss almost identical chances every week. When we do somehow create an opportunity you know Adams will miss it, it even looked like he believed he'd miss that. The faith we show in him as a ‘number 9’ is entirely misguided and is used to cover up a shocking lack of scouting ability to find someone better over a period of 18 months. if we don't get a free kick on the edge of the box for JWP to score then we are pretty much nailed on to lose the game as we have no other threat. At least it’s only 0-1, the only positive I can take overall.

For some reason it's been leaked to Sky Sports news and they've put it up as a breaking news thing.

So now we don't even get to see the talented young guys play! If I'm honest, he's a little bit daft. He should have a chat to Dibling. He'd get game time next year with us in a lower league, make a name for himself and then potentially earn him and us a fair wedge. He'll now go to City or Chelsea and be awaiting his first team debut at 22 after pissing away most of his career in development squads.

Nothing makes any sense does it! The statements that come out are at odds with what is actually happening in front of us.

But if anything this just increases the likelihood of us continuing with 5 at the back. We will have 5 'international' CB's on the books, which is way too many if we were doing 4 at the back.

Not focusing on the media rumours too much, as otherwise it will drive you round the bend and send you on a rollercoaster of emotions. But the reality as we are here today is that we still have no striker, Elyounoussi and Armstrong are still starting in our 11 and there is a week left to the window, given that we knew we needed a striker on August 31st that's pretty shocking to be honest. We moved quickly to bring in Orsic and Alverez (but then don't play them) but the position we needed to move quicker on was a striker, as we're pissing away our winnable fixtures with the same glaring deficiency's in our side. What has made me really nervous this week are the noises 'starting' to come out from the club (Jones) suggesting that we already have two good 9's in Adams and Mara, kind of setting us up to going into the rest of the season with them. That really can't be an option, as if it is we've given up and I think most fans will at that stage.

And don't forget he downed tools and refused to play for us, as he was focused on the WC Qualifier for Poland. Don't want him anywhere near us, nor should anyone at the club. But we're a bit bat-crazy at the moment so I fully expect it to happen and it'll be wrapped up as an addition making us stronger. Only we can bring back our old unwanted shit under the guise of it making us stronger.

Yeah, it's a bit of a cluster fuck to put it lightly. I appreciate that strikers are the hardest slots to fill, but we've had half a year to source and scope out a striker to fill the void that has been obvious and a necessity since July (probably even before that once we knew Broja wasn't staying). It's bonkers that we're still in the rumour zone with nothing concrete, and even more frustrating there are now talks coming out about how the club trust Adams and Mara! Massive alarm bells for me.

There were plenty out there in the summer. Pope was 9-10m, Perin as you suggested, Leno was £6m. Even Neto at Bournemouth. We simply weren't looking in that market though, so didn't even consider any of those.

We can bang on about the technicalities and formations until the cows come home, but at the end of the day everything will be dictated by having someone to put the ball in the net and having a keeper to keep it out of the net. Football is simple really. We have neither of those key components, so 5, 4, 3 or 2 at the back isn't going to make a blind bit of difference whilst we continue with the same deficiencies. Jones, much in the same way as Ralph, is not able to make any of our forwards premier league goal scorers and he needs help from the club in financing one who is. As has been obvious since we sold Ings, 2 years ago now.

Yeah and that's exactly right, but I think most peoples argument is that if the club cannot find better strikers than Adams, Armstrong and an inexperienced Mara then the scouting setup needs dismantling overnight.

That's how I read it too, it was including the appointments of Boss and Wilcox.

I'd say that quote is more than likely put out there to 'reduce fan expectations' and set the possibility of us going into the 2nd half of the season with Che and Mara.