S-Clarke

We have to be clever in the market, and to our credit I think we've shown that we can be in the last two windows. Those are the sorts of signings we'll be looking at - generally unknown, young, need easing into the team type of signings. Even Ralph said he can't see us signing someone who can help us 'straight away' as we don't have the money for that. We've just got to be clever and hope we unearth a gem who can mature/grow into the side. Couple of shrewd loans thrown in for good measure and it might not look too bad.

Yep, we're fine. We need two wins, maybe 1 win and 2 draws. We have to play Sheffield United, Burnley, West Brom etc. I'm not being complacent, I just don't understand why fans have so much confidence in other teams. We are on a bad run, we haven't won since the start of January - that will change sooner rather than later and this won't even be a debate come March. If we were in Fulham's position this forum would be full of the same posters saying 'it's game over'.

The problem we have then is how do we strengthen the other area's, such as full backs etc? I can't see us spending big on an Ings replacement if he goes, I don't think we can operate like that.

Give your head a wobble.

I imagine we will need to be creative in our approach to incomings, so the first question - as it always is - is who can we sell to raise the funds? And we'd almost certainly have to sell, and have the money safe in the bank, before we even attempt to buy anyone. Ings is the only one who springs to mind, could get us £30m to fill out the squad in a few places.

No. We are as safe as houses in mid-table as you can get. Fulham have had their best week and will probably not have another week like it. Newcastle have right to be nervous, we don't really.

Sheffield United are full of half decent Championship players and a sprinkling of L1 players. They are absolutely out of their depth. Their biggest attacking threat came from their sub, David McGoldrick - I think that says all you need to know about the quality they don't have. They were relegated in October tbh.

I'm not Redmond's biggest fan, but he did alright today in terms of his job tactically. He was more effective in the two than Ings was, anyway. Yeah, he didn't contribute a great deal of end product (apart from the assist), but he was genuinely our only threatening attacking outlet today. That probably doesn't say much for our attacking showing...but he still deserves some credit imo.

God knows how to call this game. Leeds games are always batshit crazy. Could be any score, take your pick. I'm sure we'll score though.

Our first two transfer windows without Ross Wilsons influence have been very positive. KWP - Loan in the Jan window KWP Perm, Salisu perm, Diallo perm in the summer window. Theo and Minamino loans.

10 points clear of top 6, 11 points clear of the bottom 3. The definition of marooned in midtable nothingness!

Let's be honest, it was a bit of a strange situation. No one ever really knew what was wrong with him! The signing was done under the radar as well! But who cares now. He's clearly a good player, got some traits in his makeup that are natural and the makings of a very, very competent top level centre back. Hopefully he's over his problems/injuries. He deserves a run in this side.

We needed to get a scrappy result on the board, just like that. Just a shame that once again we lose a lead though, we really need to work on that. We didn't play well in possession or attack, but we defended well. Midfield was poor though, esp. Romeu who was just a yard off it. Moussa was like a simmering firework on the right, he was great value, but you always felt nervous and wide open with him there. Ings anonymous, but mainly because of the lack of midfield stability. Redmond with a delightful defence splitting pass, he made good runs off the ball but didn't really cause them too many problems during the game. Minimino good on the ball once he settled into the game (he started poorly) but he needs to be much better off the ball and much more aggressive if he's to be a success at this level. Last and final note to Salisu. The wait was worth it by the looks of it. I honestly didn't have a clue what was going on with him, maybe we will never know the full story...but he looks like an excellent player and well worth the wait. He reads the game amazingly well, seems to sniff out danger - an un-coachable trait and often the signs of a very good football player. On wards and upwards I guess. 30 points at last. We are truly marooned in mid table nothingness, so the next 3 games is a test to see if we can push beyond that or that's where we will be staying.

It'll be Moussa at WB, would be surprised to see it line up like anything else. This is how we ended the game against Wolves.

That's actually a really good point. Every manager seems to, by default, stick Redmond on the left. He's described in most places as a 'left winger'. Cut inside tactic I guess? All that does is tempt him to stop and go backwards though, at least on the right he can carry on running and then whip it on without having to stop and cut back. He is very one footed.

Yeah, they have great owners. Similar circumstances what with the death of their main owner though, although the son was always heavily involved in the first place. They're a similar size to us but have left us a long way behind. I will go as far and say that Leicester's success has been mainly driven by their scouting. They don't throw money around. They do sell big....Chilwell, Maguire, Kante, Mahrez, Drinkwater... ...but they've progressed on the back of those sales because their scouting has been top notch. They sold Chilwell and bought in Castange, they sold Kante and bought in NDidi, they sold Mahrez and brought in Maddison. They'd planned for Maguires exit a year before and bought in Evans and Soyuncu - so when Maguire was sold, they used that money to invest in the wider team (Tielemans, Praet, Justin etc). The frustrating thing is that we should have been in a similar position as we also sold players for similar fee's, but our scouting lumbered us with Hoedt, Lemina, Elyonoussi and that useless crowd. It really is quite depressing to see how Leicester did it and how we've made such a mess of it. And didn't Les even say that they copied us...?

Report: Southampton eye Angers midfielder Angelo Fulgini - The Boot Room (tbrfootball.com)

I'll let you think that if you want! Crack on.

Please excuse me whilst I continue to laugh at them languishing in League 1 with Marquis as their top scorer.

Shall we just start the build up thread to Leeds away now? Might as well forget this game tbh.

Yeah, we had a shitty setup for around 4 years. It was the point in time where Ross came in and started to oversea everything. We had the change around which gave him and Les more and more influence on incoming player transfers. Their decisions in and around the 2016-2018 period have killed us, we had a huge amount of money from the VVD, Mane deals (100m ish) etc that should have been used sensibly by us to build for the long term. Yet we made a complete and utter mess of it. The fact our club thought Redmond was a clever replacement for Mane says it all. It'll take us some time to lose the influence of Ross and co. I think the first signings we can judge to have come purely from our new setup have been KWP, Diallo - so that's an improvement already. It wasn't all bad though to give them some credit - we did sign Armstrong, Ings, Bednarek, Vestergaard amongst the carnage and they have been sound investments for us. It's just a shame that the failure rate has outweighed the success rate, certainly on the 'big' statement signings which we couldn't really afford to get wrong.

At least Werner has broken his duck, I was sensing the inevitable 'werner hasn't scored in 1000 years, here's Southampton' headlines.

No idea who I'd seen, I reckon I thought he was someone else! You could tell he was too slow for this league the moment he stepped out on the pitch for us though, you'd have hoped professional scouts would have figured that. I do remember at the time we were battling it out against Everton for Hoedt, apparently. But again, as soon as he stepped out onto the pitch you could tell he wasn't suited. We've got scouts paid thousands to be the judge of players suitability for this league and they got it wrong too many times.

He didn't play RB. We went to 3 at the back, Salisu as left sided CB, Bednarek as right sided CB. Moussa as RWB.

Did you play RB? Get your boots....