S-Clarke

Not neccesarily true. Brooks cost £13m, Cook was 10m, Ake was £18m. They signed Rico for 10m (new left back) and Lerma for £26m. They have invested a fair bit in that team, but their recuritment is undoubtbly better. And I think the most important thing is that they have the likes of Francis, Cook, Daniels etc to lead the group and keep everyone levelled. They have a core of loyal players who have gone up the leagues with them and they have supplimented it well with good young talent. It's similar to what we did in many ways. It will all come crashing down for them sooner rather than later though, as per the natrual course of things.

It has been 2 and a half years of losing games. You would have to be mad to not sense a relegation in the distance - maybe not this season, but certainly within the next year. We're on a downward spiral which isn't going to change barring some major dramatic action. When you see stats that state Leicester have won more games at St Mary's than us in 12 months FFS, that tells you all you need to know. A relegation is coming.

Does anyone expect us to go down and start competing in the market we'll need to compete in? 10-20m is now the going rate for decent NPC level players. I can't see us competing at that level, which is why we'll continue to drift and dwindle away - occasionally propped up by some academy gems. Without an owner with an ounce of knowhow, interest or ambition, we’re dead. And they’re not getting another penny from me.

He offers very little. An incredibly limited player and a big part of our loser-infested team.

We're dead. It's gone on too long for this to just swing and for us to be good again, there's a relegation brewing in the not so distant future and there's very little we'll be able to do about it. Not much more to say, other than that we were out of our depth.

Yoshida and Gallagher included I reckon. Probably Gabbiadini, Davis, Armstrong.....

He's one of the worst we've had, for sure. Reminds me more of Jackobson though, leggy, clumbsy and ugly to watch. Jackobson was a bit better though and less full of himself seemingly.

The whole takeover process stunk to high heaven from the start. Gareth Rogers doing a runner under a cloud, the PL rejecting the 'FFP' test initially and then it drags on another 6 months until they seemingly reluctantly agreed. It seems to me as if KL was so desperate to sell to 'Lander' as it was for her benefit, with hindsight now you can see that. It made her the quick buck she was looking for, I don't think any other party was willing to pay the figure she put on the table. In terms of the purpose of the takeover for us, as a football club, it means zilch. Gao is just there as an owner listed on the records, he will be happy to sit there and allow the club to pay for its self with the PL money and transfer fees. I think it's pretty clear now that he has no intentions or plans to do anything with us, maybe a token gesture is creating 1 or two academies in China, but even that hasn't got off the ground. As a club we have lost our entire identity and that all stems from the top because we are owned by someone who doesn't have the knowhow or interest to put an identity on it himself. Ralph's answers in the fans forum about him 'keeping quiet in the background' and letting things 'run themselves' is bull****, and a real **** take to the fans. He has no interest in making a difference and no interest in making decisions, he just saw it as a little bit of a money maker for him and a bit of a profile increase for his company. No more than that. The continuing to run us ‘sustainably’ is also complete bull****. You don’t get success in the top 2 leagues by running a sustainable money in/money out model – you have to gamble and speculate to accumulate, else you will just be left way behind. You could say that staying as a sustainable football club requires you to gamble a little these days – as Fulham showed, and even Bournemouth. It's truly depressing, and I didn’t think she’d do it to us, but KL has sold us up the river for her own benefit. We're a dead club now, just breathing on the final scraps of PL money whilst we stay in it. Once that goes, it's all over unless someone else comes in and buys us from Gao.

He'll need to pay back the loan he used to buy us first. Oh well.

This is the main problem really, we've thrown away a great opportunity through poor recruitment and squad management. I'm not even including the crazy re-contracting of people either... If only we had an owner who had a clue about what's going on. Massive compliancy around the place it seems to me, in multiple areas. There are only two ways out of this horrible slide that I can see right now… Gao suddenly realises he needs to invest and ploughs millions into redeveloping the squad We get relegated, shift the squad around and rebuild back in the lower leagues as we did before. *sigh*

The sad thing is that it probably is the likes of Cedric and Hoedt who are the ones kicking up a stink. I don't often hate players, but I don't half hate those two.

I hate this view that we somehow 'have the players'. We don't, we have a load of absolute overrated garbage stinking out this club. Players who have failed for 3 seasons. It really is a sad state of affairs, but a new manager isn't going to come in and turn this awful group into 'players'. It will need at least 2 transfer windows and no input from Ross flaming Wilson. Wouldn’t care two hoedts if we saw the back of: Cedric Hoedt Stephens Lemina Gabbiadini Austin Long Forster Carillo Boufal Ward-Prowse Steven Davis There is a hell of a lot of work needed. We've been given a mini-fortune over the last 3 years as well, so it is absolutely devastating that this is the team we've ended up with.

There are 3 certainties in a day. Sunrise, sunset and Nathan Redmond morning at someone.

Ross Wilson.

or we could start talking about replacement players. They are the problem. Horrible bunch.

So basically, everyone else out before this horrificly unlikeable unprofessional wastes of space, footballers? When do they start getting the blame? Hojberg, Cedric, Lemina, Austin, Hoedt, Long, Gabbiadini. Absolute trash and the primary reason we are where we are and have been for 2 years. Recruitment ****, players not suited to eachother, rubbish mentalities. We can go though as many managers as we like but that ain’t changing.

He's more effective with better players around him, i.e Pelle and Mane. When he becomes the main man, which he has unfortunatley become because we failed to replace either Pelle or Mane, then his weaknesses are shown up for all to see.

Only on loan though.

Hoedt is one of our big problems, not just his footballing ability, but his lack of character. He's one of the guys (along with Lemina) who i can physically see wilt when the going gets tough. He starts doing stupid things, making hashes of clearances or falling over. For the good things he can do in a game (like that great tackle on Bissouma) he ruins it all by being dumb in the box in the dying embers of games, creating nerves for everyone else.

I'm not going to be as critical as others, as I don't think we've played that badly in the 5 games we’ve played (yeah, it’s only been 5 games….). I think we look more threatening and have more of a punch at the other end of the pitch, so obviously that is an improvement on last year. The big issues are the lack of leaders in the side and two crucial positions in the team which have substandard players. In my opinion if we had someone out there grabbing everyone together and leading/organising on the pitch, we'd have taken 6 points from the Leicester and Brighton games. The way we wilt when things go bad is a worry, we don’t seem to have anyone willing to grab the group by the scruff of the neck in the latter stages of games to see us through. You wouldn’t say Bournemouth or Cardiff – or even Brighton – have stacks more quality than us, they just have more leaders in their groups and they keep going, no matter what happens in the game. So……5.5/10 for me.

So that's why it all went quiet on him, I did think he was supposed to be a highly rated youngster. I must admit, the chances of him making it at the high level after 3 serious knee injuries in such a short space of time is quite unlikley.

So it's the fans fault?

At what stage do people start looking at the players here? This is the third manager who has struggled with this bottlejob group. For me the main blame for our current position lies with our recruitment and how they've managed to build such a poor team. We can keep changing managers over and over, but as long as the same morons are still making dumb calls when then going gets tough on the pitch then we're in the same position.

Probably good for him really, not sure if it was just me but he looked to be struggling at times last night. Limping quite heavily at one point.

I've enjoyed his game this season, but as with a good collection of our players he shrunk when the going got tough. He's been a very dangerous outlet for us this season so far though.