S-Clarke

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.

Well if the Brighton game had a whiff of Relegation about it, this had a full blown stench of it. Didn't play badly, missed the usual chances, gave away a sloppy goal in the 89th min to lose the game at a team we need to be competing with. It's 2005 all over again. I don't like being defeatist as I try to be positive, but this is the first time in a long time that I struggle to see a way out for us. I can't even see a glimmer. I see the same issues every week, Adams hitting the keeper with a shot, players lacking leadership to see a game out, the same weird squad selections because the team is so unbalanced and the same brain-dumb decisions by the players in our team. We might have some talented individuals, but christ they are thick as all fuck. We need to go into the January window and spend money on some Uni graduates or something, just get some common sense into the group as they are just dumb.

LB has been a vit of a scouting disaster really, we have never replaced Targett let alone Bertrand and have seemingly filled up left back with loads of young kids not ready to play, and then Perraud - and when he's injured we have little else other than to go square pegs.

There is more to it than that IMO, something has gone on since 2021. He'll be out of here in the summer I think, cut price back to Celtic or something.

I reckon AMN, with Sailsu at LB - maybe.

He's got a good attitude about him and I like his commitment, but technically he is atrocious and hampers our attack so much.

KWP - ABK - Lyanco - Salisu - AMN JWP Ely Aribo Edozie Adams

They didn't.

Probably too early to assume it's the formation as set out on the BBC website etc. Could easily have Salisu playing LB in a back 4, with AMN in CM. And then Moi, Edozie and Aribo supporting Adams. Granted, it's still utterly horrific, but I don't think he'd be as daft to go with JWP as our only CM.

It's a strange one, they've moaned for years about Gold/Sullivan not investing and Moyes has had to go and pickup cheap options like Soucek, Dawson, Bowen and Coufal which worked brilliantly. Now they've got some more backing and they've thrown upwards of £100m on a leading striker and a Brazilian international CM it's all gone tits up. Paquetta looks totally unsuited to the PL the more I watch him, looks like it's all a bit too fast for him. Adding Scammaca has upset Bowen and has removed the influence he was having. I think there is an element that some managers are better working with scraps and exceeding expectations, Moyes seems to be like that. He did it at Everton for years, turned around WHU by doing similar, but now they're spending some money he's a bit lost on how to evolve things. Weirdly Moyes would probably have worked quite well here.

My point was from the summer just gone, I saw an uptick in scouting compared to the days of Perraud/Armstrong/Lyanco etc. I like Lavia, he's going to be a star, ditto ABK - those are the levels of potential we need to be adding, as there will be profit down the line. Edozie has something about him as well and I think we'll make a profit on him in years to come. (It's a shame it has to be referenced like that, but this is how we run - ditto Brighton) The Moussa contract will always baffle me though, we have a knack of doing some good stuff and then totally undoing it with a bizarre call like Moussa and not signing a ST.

All well and good for those views on Brighton, but as we know with that approach they are always potentially 1 or 2 poor windows away from crap - if they believe their own hype. ''Oh we can replace Cacedo with a cheap option, who will develop'' etc. For clubs like Brighton and ourselves scouting like this is the holly grail, when it works it sets you up for a few years as we saw. If you then cash in on that success, as we did, but fail to adequately re-invest then the cycle will stop dead and your team will just erode because you don't have any money. It's great when it works well, but I don't think it's realistic to think it can always work out - there is an element of luck to it (and good scouting is the key to it all, which we have struggled with for a few years) I personally think our scouting from the summer went up a notch, the problem has been the hangers on from previous windows who continue to erode the overall quality of the squad.

Almost as baffling as the decision to give Theo a 2 year contract. There have been some decent decisions made at points in recent years, but those two trump all of those. Incredibly negligent for a club who pride themselves on 'never wanting to be held ransom' and 'never paying above their means'. Failed.