S-Clarke

He did better than I thought he was going to do, and he looked better at times than he's ever looked for us before....but that's not saying much, as he was inept before and now in some games he's moved to around average. Bottom line is we need better than Elyounoussi, another average as hell player with no outstanding attributes. I wouldn't give him a new contract, but I'd wouldn't say it's a problem keeping him around as a squad player and letting him go on a free next year.

Bednarek is pretty much as average as you get, he was 23/24 when Ralph came in and he probably saw potential but sadly he just hasn't progressed at all. The way we play does leave the back 4 quite exposed, certainly when the press gets played through, but that just shows me that we need a better CB and Number 6 who can nullify those threats. There's nothing that really stands out about him. He's not strong and gets out muscled very easily, he's slow as all hell and can get turned on the break, he's poor on the ball and is prone to brain fart passes out of the defence and mentally he's not a 'leader' type, he wilts when the going gets tough. Salisu is young, very young. Inexperienced and learning a new league. The difference with Salisu are his raw attributes, he has pace, he has strength and power so immediately he offers us more than Bednarek. But as he's inexperienced he will dip and waiver, that's where he needs a Fonte type figure to see him through which we don't have. So Salisu is our future, we just need to ensure we compliment him with a much better CB who can help his game. No problem with Bednarek being relegated as a squad player, which is what he was signed for in the first place, but we do need to do much better than him. He's been one of the consistent factors in our pitiful defence for 3 years.

Jeez.

Finances maybe? Any free money ploughed into the first team squad player wise?

I'm not saying he's the succession plan, more the approach I think we'll take with coaches.

Not sure what I think of this - Tottenham place £25m valuation on Harry Winks with home-grown midfielder set to LEAVE north London | Daily Mail Online 1) Doing a deal with Tottenham over a midfielder when we have JWP here makes me feel uneasy 2) £25m is just a stupid amount of money for someone pretty average. £10-15m tops I'd say, pretty uncomfortable spending a huge part of our budget on him.

Interesting shout. I think the owners will look for coaches who could potentially evolve into a succession plan for Ralph. That's what they did at Brentford, they gave Dean Smith a new assistant in Thomas Frank with the expectation that he'd evolve into the first team manager if/when Dean Smith left and that's exactly what happened. I guess they looked at Fleming, Watson and Davis and saw no succession plan there what so ever, so they're putting their markers down. This could be a Rasmus influenced change.

Sounds like something out of nothing, trying to make a story.

Seriously? I suggested Fredericks a few weeks back, he was someone we'd been linked with previously and can fill the obvious full back void we have - for free! A full back wasn't a target for this summer until Tino got injured, now we need to get cover. A freebie English rb, with PL experience as a squad player makes total sense to me. This isn't a 'first team' signing by any means, it'll add cover whilst Tino recovers.

I think they are a bit daft to be honest, the goals we can get from them are very rare and a bit freakish. In the main they seem to cause us problems as we automatically become lopsided when we're broken on, and it's not hard to break on us as we know! I think it's a daft tactic to try and gain the most minuscule advantage ever, easily nullified as well. The fact we're looking for these minuscule gains is probably a big admission that our creative players are absolute tosh! Let's just let the full backs take the throw in's as every football club has done, since the year dot and buy better creative players to make chances in the conventional way.

I agree that it looks like there will be no more 'excuses' after this summer, I think we're going to genuinely back him. I guess people will be torn on Ralph and I'm happy to appreciate those views as I can understand why people are not struck on him, but it's just worth looking a bit deeper to the root of our problems, as most of our issues are long-running ones which have been lingering long before Ralph came in.

Of course he has the responsibility, but you have to realise that there is more to performances/results/culture than just the manager. It goes deeper than that. Watford are a fine example of that, they change their manager every 5 mins for a bit of short-term bounce but whatever is deeper rooted in the club comes back and bites them again. It's a cycle you can easily get yourself into by thinking it's all on the manager. You could be the most talented person in the world at your job, but without someone equally qualified alongside you to be a soundboard or to make you think twice about things then you stagnate because you're afraid to take risks, you have no one to validate what you're thinking. Not just in the football, but most professions. We could have easily gone down the road of dumping the coaches, the manager and everything. Where would that have got us? In a position where all of our transfer business would be on hold, and we'd be looking for a manager for weeks and weeks. It wouldn't help us at this moment in time, not with just 4 or so weeks until pre-season starts. The club have shown an awareness here that they're not happy and they've made probably the least 'impactful' change they could make to the coaching setup in relation to our immediate plans. It's now a chance for us to back Ralph with both people who can stand up to him a bit, question him, challenge him. That sort of move can often re-ignite something in someone who has become stale, because I will always stick by my view that Ralph is a decent manager and we'd struggle to replace with anyone better at this moment in time.

I guess you're referring to Ralph? The owners aren't stupid, they'll appreciate that Ralph has not really had any backing or support over his previous years. There's only so much turd polishing you can do on your own. I'm glad they're not reactive and focusing on just sacking the manager and pin all problems on him, they've looked beyond that and have seen the deeper problems which isn't always the most obvious. I've got more confidence in the owners now than I did.

He's a good guy Davis and you can't knock his commitment to this club for what must be 15 or so years now. He'll always be a 'Southampton' figure no matter where he ends up next. But....i've never, ever seen his credentials for being a coach. He just seemed to land there after retiring and just stuck. We've certainly not improved with him around. Wish him all the best, but in a coaching capacity he won't be missed. It's time we got serious and we finally have owners who recognise what is needed.

Interesting that the feeling is that Ralph is resistant to it, I assume he doesn't want to see good people lose their jobs but surely he appreciates he needs some competent support around him, as it's simply not working. I'm sure he'd have loved to have replaced Rohl a few years back but we couldn't afford to do it. Richard is just an analyst really, not a coach.

This is the sort of ruthless action we've lacked for the last 5/6 years. We've just dawdled through pre-season to pre-season keeping the same status quo and never upsetting the apple cart. This is such a positive sign of change and the first I've seen in many years. There is no doubt that there needed to be a big change. Fleming, Davis and Watson have been around for many years - before Ralph. I'm sure Fleming and Watson at least supported Pelligrino and possibly Hughes to a degree, so those areas have been a problem for many years for me. It's also admission, in my opinion, that the club feel that they've never been able to truly back Ralph with his own people, or at least people has a significant say in appointing, rather than just a jobs for boys effort. I don't like seeing people lose their jobs and Davis in particular has been a fantastic figure around the club for many years, but you can't stick on sentiment and you have to be ruthless and that's exactly what we've done and it feels long overdue. This is a positive quick start to what needs to be a big summer for us.

Ah I didn't realise he'd done his knee, that's a shame. I still have a lot of time for Bertrand, certainly got our lot of him when he was here. Let go at the right time for sure.

That's positive news, great times ahead for a lot of them and some security. Some decent investment from the club to fund this, a good sign for other areas maybe.

What ever happened to Bertrand? He seems to have vanished, I'm sure they signed him on a 2 year deal as well.

I don't think WHU fans would describe their owners as ambitious and daring, quite the opposite! You have to remember that WHU talk and they talk a lot without actually doing a great deal.

Good player Dragowski, the sort we need to bring in that would expect to oust McCarthy from day one. I can see the freebie being a replacement for Harry Lewis and maybe an alternative if we don't sign up Willy. Cole Palmer is a very, very talented player. He'd improve us straight away, but it would still be good to sign our own attacking player as well rather than have the panic about him going back at the end of the season with us getting no $$$.

I've just had a look at this site - EPL 2021-2022 Payroll Wages Tracker | Spotrac 13th last season, but the seasons before that Top 10 and even Top 3 in 2018. It does illustrate what a burden the likes of Hoedt, Boufal, Lemina and co were putting on the club. With Forster leaving this year, possibly Long and maybe next seasons will be even lower. You'd hope, based on that alone...we have more scope to play with now FFP wise. This could be the first summer we can actually move.

Brilliant. Watch the ticker at the bottom after 6 seconds. BBC have been forced to apologise to Man Utd 🤣

It's true, we can blame the big purchases of Boufal, Lemina, Hoedt, Carillo etc to a point...but those were still funded by the sales of Mane, VVD, Wanyama etc etc. So we've never really pushed the boat out, even our season under Koeman was created with a net profit because we didn't spend all we got in. Brighton have had a go, Bournemouth had a go. Palace had a go last year. These are all clubs within our level in my opinion, if we cannot compete with those guys anymore then I don't know what we've been doing. You can get lucky with that approach for a limited period of time, but when you run a club so drastically under resourced for prolonged periods of time then it will stand still and eventually fall away. Like you said, it's a terrible way to run a PL club and it shows absolutely no ambition and we might as well not be here. You've got to speculate to accumulate in this day and age. Sure, we can still get excited over the profits we can make in the future for some players...but let's actually show some ambition for once and spend a little bit more than we get - it will open up a different league of targets.