S-Clarke

Absolute nonsense by Sky Sports today if anyone saw it. The video is still on YouTube, but it's been removed from all their social media. They're trying to proclaim that ex referee Dermot Gallagher is amazing by estimating 10 yards in the studio, somehow oblivious to the fact that anyone watching can see the black mark he's walking to, which is amazingly 10 yards away. Skip to 3min 15 secs -

He doesn't see anything he does is wrong, but he's happy to have a pop at others for doing the same thing. This is Russell Martin though, so if he does it it's fine. He's totally full of himself and is totally blind to his own reality - it's quite scary really. That little segment summed him all up.

You kind of want to really like Yuki as he's that sort of character, but I just cannot ignore his defending - he just can't defend full stop, there's no argument to be had. All the basics he's bad at, positioning, awareness, defensive intelligence - that can't be coached, that's either there or not. He's an awful defensive full back and that will never change. I can't think of any worse we've had than him, I'll have to go back to maybe the likes of Lloyd James at Championship level to come close. Another fail for the scouting team that's for sure.

You're missing the point though, which is sadly something the club have also been doing. Those VVD level defenders are now £30m (i.e. the level when we bought him). O'Riley is an example of that, not a defender, but a player of similar stature at Celtic but went for £30-35m. Fonte, for our respective level at the time, was a crazy outlay financially. If we replicated that to the level we are now, we'd need to be spending £35m on Sven Botman for example. The fact is that our scouting didn't move on, we tried to replace VVD, Mane, Tadic for the same price we paid for them - without considering that football, and thus finances at all clubs, have moved on in such a short space of time. What people are saying is that there's no issue buying young players, but filling the squad up with those £10-15m signings isn't a good tactic. We'd have been better off buying 1 or 2 £30m players, and then using the rest for Fernandes/Edwards and up and coming. We didn't need to splurge what we did on BBD, Archer, Wood, Suguwara etc - there's around £30m right there which could have gone on a 'match starter'. We'd have lost nothing if we hadn't sign those, such has been their involvement.

Ah yes, that's the one. I knew there was a deal like that around Targett.

Wasn't Armstrong signed before Sports Republic, fairly sure he was in 2021. (when we had to watch every penny). I remember we had to sell Target to free up funds for Salisu (i think it was Salisu). The summer 22/23 and the winter of 23 was when SR put their money in, and that's one thing you can't hold against them. They have put money in, more than we've ever been able to put in at PL level - the scouting has just been horrendous, which is why we are where we are. I see a lot of fans saying that we're where we are because of a lack of investment, but it couldn't be further from the truth in my eyes. Maybe we still focus on that 15m ballpark too much and fill the squad up with those types, rather than 1 or 2 £30m's, but we have been spending money - just really badly.

I like what he's done at Wednesday, they weren't a mid-table club when he arrived, they were adrift like ourselves in that league. They had the worst start out of 92 I think. Somehow he managed to scramble them away and they finished relatively comfortably in the end. With the same base of players he's taken them a little further this year as well. I get peoples scepticism in that he's always been seen as a good coach, but I think his stint at Wednesday has shown he's able to get players on side and doing the things he wants in really challenging circumstances. The comments from Wednesday fans are all pretty telling for me as well. When we got Martin, you had quite a few Swansea fans warning us about propaganda football, errors at the back, goal keeper howlers etc - it played out pretty much as expected. With Wednesday, the general feeling is that they think they've had a special manager and are sad to see him go. It's obviously still very early days in his career as a manager and he's going to (potentially) be coming into a tough gig in the summer, more so than last year. He'll have expectation 'to win' on him for probably the first time in his career. Maybe I let SR off a bit by saying the jury's out, but I do think this is their last chance to get it right before they're done here. They have been an absolute disaster, no doubts, but a lot of that has come from them trying to be left field and clever in their recruitment and manager hires - Rohl wouldn't be someone I'd consider as a left field appointment in our circumstances. Not confirmed yet though, so let's see what happens.

Rohl would probably be the first appointment we've made that would have a collective agreement among the fan base. Martin had questions around him, Jones did and Juric was a bit of an unknown. They always seem to go left field with their choices, but if they go for Rohl it's the first 'no brainer' appointment they've gone with. Everything aligns with him, what with our new DoF, the style of football the manager and DoF support, the foundations laid by Ralph, his familiarity with the club etc. Let's see what happens. The Jury is still out as SR are not known to make sensible choices, so we'll see if this pans out as it truly does make sense. I feel sad for Juric as he seems a decent guy, he's been parachuted into an absolute shit show and he's not been able to do what he wants. Hopefully he can get a new job after this, as his stints at Roma and here have put a massive dent in his reputation.

If we win our last 11 games we can get to 42 points, so we can still do it!

He's an odd one isn't he, he talks a good game and seems to have the right sort of character. I think attacking wise he has decent attributes, but I honestly don't remember watching a RB as bad as him in a defensive sense. Even Jack Stephens has been shown to be a better defensive full back than him.

That illustrates that point even more, those 8 wins are 'in spite' of SR's involvement. A true figure would be 5 wins in 76 PL matches, 2 relegations and 4 PL managers under their full leadership. Awful doesn't even come close to describing that record.

As a player, I'd feel pretty embarrassed to pickup any sort of award on the back of this season tbh, even if the player has been relatively 'ok' in comparison with the rest. It's a pretty low bar.

We've basically managed to create a squad full of average 'squad' players, not players who should be starting for any competitive side. Charlie Taylor, Ryan Fraser, Ross Stewart, Larios, Archer, Gronbaek, Wood - just absolute wasted wages.

That goal was like a non-league goal, I've never seen anything quite as bad as that. It was 6 on 2 at one point, it was ridiculous. No one was busting a gut to get back, and that video emphasises that. I know Sulemana has won some fans in recent weeks, but that clip there is exactly why he's never going to win me over.

Surely that needs to be cancelled, as well as any 'lap of appreciation' at the final home game. 'Read the room Saints' comes to mind.

This just romance, there would be no benefit to anyone by having Nigel back. I wouldn't want his reputation here to be tarnished by the horrendous group of ''footballers' we currently have. It's light a day to the team he was able to pick back in the day.

When we lose 4-0 as tamely as that, no player comes away with any credit. Period.

As good as that day out at Wembley was, that result has created one of the worst ever seasons in my Saints supporting life. What I'd give to have lost that and be enjoying a Leeds style season now (although that wouldn't have happened, as SR own us). But anyway, this promotion was the worst thing to happen to us. The only positives we can potentially take are finances, but when SR are spending the money I don't even think that is a positive. The days under Port and Wotte were bad, really bad, those were some low days. This is a high level but it feels worse, it feels lifeless. It honestly feels like the entire club has taken a year off of football. Being as uncompetitive as this in any league is shameful and lots and lots of heads should roll in the summer, there cannot be any hiding away from the damage this year has done.

The players I consider as good players won't stay, and we'll be left with the scraps of utter shit. So, on that basis, we need to start again. It feels like we need a L1 style restart in terms of squad, build a new team of players who can grow and evolve with the club. This lot are damaged goods now.

Chelsea have been pretty poor, the fans were on their back, any competitive side would have put them to the sword. We're not competitive, so a team playing fairly poor end up thrashing us in the first half. Defensively a horror show, but what on earth do you expect? Aribo, Bree are not fucking centre backs. They never have been, never will be and should never, ever be put into this position. I feel for them, it's like we're putting those guys out to the slaughter. Some of these players will never, ever recover from this season. As a club, I fear we will struggle to recover as well. Structurally everything is wrong, everything. This is not an overnight fix.

What I have noticed with the 'press' approach is that guys like Airbo, THB/Bednarek and the full backs push high, if they miss the tackle then we are wide open. Some of the aspects of the Brighton and Brentford games reminded me of our suicidal high line we played under Ralph, at the start of the season 4 or 5 years ago. We also have zero midfield cover now, the only player offering us an ounce of physicality is Lesley. We don't have the legs or the pace to recover and it's really exposing the limitations of players such as Bree, THB, Bednarek and such. I think it should be the job of a manager to make the players feel comfortable in their own skin, understanding their limitations and not asking them to do things they simply can't do. I get that a manager will play around a bit during his first few weeks, but surely by now he should realise that Aribo and Bree are not central defenders. I fail to believe that Lutons 11 last season was better than our team this year, but first and foremost the players their manager had available were playing in roles which suited their attributes.

Think of that as a blessing!

If we do decide to switch 'again', I'd like our next appointment to be someone our fan base would look at as a no brainer - relative to the level we're at. I don't want any stupid gambles on unknown coaches or up and coming assistant managers from other clubs. I just feel we need someone all fans can agree on from the start, someone aligned with a 'project' (i hate that term though). Will that happen? Probably not. Going by SR's record up to now, they love to go for left field.

To add a genuine positive, no more VAR. Just watching the Sheff U v Leeds match, and being able to know it was a goal without waiting for check clear/check over was just refreshing. (If you haven't seen it, that was the sort of goal VAR would have spent a month checking, for various reasons)

Wasn't that in the summer we last went down? I'm sure Sheff U were strongly interested, as then a PL side (he was stalling on a contract with us too). Don't think we had any interest this summer.