S-Clarke

I don't think so, Dibling is a one of a kind really. Ballard was just there in the kids teams to finish off all the chances! Sadly the injury didn't help him, bit of a bummer really as it was a bad one. If I'm totally honest with you I see another Josh Sims/Jamie White type career with him, some promise, bags and bags of goals at underage, fans clamouring for him to play, but never quite good enough to make the step up to pro football consistently.

I think there are two ways you can make it work. Do what we did under Adkins, and buy players who improve and take the same journey of improvement as the club. This requires an element of luck and very careful planning. The scouting needs to be top notch and so does the coaching. A lot needs to click and we were very lucky with how well it did back in 2010. The other way is to come up and break our transfer record a few times on players who walk straight into the 11, not just focusing on squad fillers - but actual starters who push existing starters out of the way. But both approaches require good scouting which we simply don't have. Step 1 is to overhaul that entire football department, analysts, scouts, dof etc and start again. Once that is in place and all joined up with an approach, we can start building. It's not going to happen overnight though as they've made such a mess of it that we have a lot to unpick. At least Dragan has somewhat acknowledged the glaring issue, but time will tell if they're just words.

But we really need to focus on our average possession percentage over those 6 defeats, that will tell the true story of how good we actually are. The only stat which matters.

Here are a few snippets: - Juric is an ambitious manager, here for the longer term. He WILL be our manager next season, there is no situation where we break in the summer and the plan is to continue. Appreciates we don't have the right squad for his style and we will continue to remould so it fits him better. - We have had no football structure since Jason Wilcox left (no shit) and we are working on building an entirely new football department to oversee things and make us competitive. Then the usual about how he loves the club, wants to make it work, passionate etc. Let's see where the next 18 months lead us... It does once again raise massive alarms around SR's flip flopping between philosophies, we've basically gone backwards to needing a team similar to the one we had under Ralph, after we've spent 18 months taking that apart to build a 'passing' team. A very confused club, it has to be said - hopefully with Dragan at the helm he can now direct his frustration into making things right, fully hands on, rather than waiting for Kraft or Rasmus to do the work.

It's weird reading this thread, reading that in any normal teams forum you'd think we were still debating a chance of staying up and wins against those teams will be huge etc etc. But no, we're actually not debating staying up - we're debating making sure we get more than 11 points. It's incredible how this season has been allowed to happen.

I think it's best we just draw a line under this debacle. Let him go in the summer, we might be able to get some insurance claim out on him. I feel sorry for him as a person, but from a club point of view he's stolen a wage for 2 years here. Time to get ruthless and stop being someone's rehab home.

This is certainly one of the rare situations in that it makes some sense to cash in on one of our best players mid-season. Like you say, he's not staying next season and will leave for free, and keeping him for the rest of this season is going to make absolutley no difference to how we do - so we might as well take what little cash we can. He's put his shift in over the years, has been one of our better players, so even though he's associated with our worst ever team I'd say he's one of the 'few' who can still leave with their head high.

Yep, agree. Although I think Leicester are a bit batshit and probably as unstable as we are ownership wise. Be interesting to see what they have to sell in the summer given their financial constraints as it is. (EFL is primed to dock them points apparently). Depressingly though, even in their predicament, they're still better than us (As they proved emphatically last season, and also at home this season)

I expected around five at this stage from both Armstrong and Archer, not ground breaking numbers by any means but even that would have probably put us closer to the pack. I naively thought we'd discovered the best way to use Armstrong, he was coming into this season on the back of 25 goals and with the same managers/coaches who got that out of him, so I think most would have expected more than 2 at this stage tbh. I also expected goals from BBD, not ground breaking numbers either but enough to at least put us in the pack. I'm not saying any of these guys are any good, but I still thought they were a tiny notch better than this.

I don't think people are against Dragan, he's put his money where his mouth is. The issue we all have is the management of said funds and how it's been used. That's on SR as an organisation and their 'plan', which I don't think anyone really knows. Everything they have touched has gone south from the moment they gained real control. Staff turnover is huge as retention seems to be difficult. Recruitment has been an unmitigated disaster and we have financially lost so much money. The only people we can point at is the organisation running the club up to this point, which is Sports Republic. The slight positive is that Dragan has now stepped in himself to oversee much more closely so we'll see if things improve.

I think Wolves will pick up enough between now and the end, but it will be close for them. I see them as the only team involved from the rest of the pack though, it'll be quite an isolated relegation battle. Personally I think it'll be Ipswich, Leicester and ourselves down as once again the 3 promoted go down.

Do we have the players in CM to be able to protect against transition at this level though? I don't think we do. Downes is too slow, Lesley is incredibly erratic, Aribo is a lower league footballer and so is Smallbone. The recruitment in the summer was a mess and we are totally under prepared for this level. That's on Martin as he wanted to build a team of his lower league mates. It'll be interesting to see what/if we do in the final week to mitigate the big midfield hole we have. (and CB hole, and wide attacking hole, and ST hole etc etc)

Just to emphasise that even further, Jan Bednarek is joint top scorer with 2 goals - alongside Aribo, Tyler, Archer and Armstrong. I think even the most negative of Saints fans expected better returns than that.

I trade you Alan Bennett, quite possibly the worst CB I've ever seen play for us.

Yep that was a terrible feeling, but oh I long for the days where we actually compete to stay up like that year! I think the worst feeling I had was Ibra in the final, we'd done everything right in that 2nd half, we were perfect in so many ways - as good as we'd played under Puel. That last goal was so inventible though, I think it came from one of our efforts being cleared off the line. We didn't really create anything in the final few mins, totally defeated us. That was our chance to win something and it took me a little while to forget that one.

I think Martin smuggled him out of the door with him, they're probably cosied up most nights watching Netflix.

I'd argue that Sam AA hasn't had anywhere near enough opportunity for a club who bide it's self on providing a pathway. I don't know why. In the brief times we've seen him (back end of our last PL stint) he looked ready, but I don't know what it is. Even if he's not ready for PL football, putting him in place of Armstrong isn't really an issue as Armstrong isn't ready and never will be ready for PL football. We'd have been better off giving him more mins in my eyes. If anything SR could look to recoup more $$$ if he looks decent, as that's their model at the end of the day.

He's another odd player, similar vein to Lesley. In the same game, sometimes within the same 30min period, he can look decent with a tight touch, yet the next second looks like a pub footballer and lumbering mess. If Paul doesn't score then there's nothing else to his game. He's obviously very big and strong, but I think decent defenders will always have his number. For a guy of his size he doesn't win much in the air as his timing is all wrong. You can see why he'd do well in much lesser leagues, he can bully CB's at those levels and he has a bit more time. At a higher level though he's nothing.

How have you come to that opinion though? Don't get me wrong, the club have made a cluster fuck of nearly every single thing they've touched, but I think it's very, very hard to have a fair assessment of this change when the feeling of losing every week is there. We haven't had an opportunity to 'create' a wall of sound to see us over the line in the later parts, because we're never in a position to be seen over the line - the game is always long gone by then.

I think that's a fair view. We look to have more of a structure and plan to us under Juric, from the limited sample we have - but ultimately he is always going to be let down by the level of player he has available in relation to the level we're at. I don't deny that they're trying, certainly after the Brentford game, but the lack of ability/quality is so glaring when up against even the most mid-table of PL sides - there's only so much you can do. I don't think shoehorning 3 at the back is working though, when we have a squad as limited as we have I think there's an argument to keep it as simple as possible.

Sorry, I realise I must have overreacted at us losing 19 of 23 games of top flight football. Easy to turn that around for sure, my mistake.

It hasn't been too bad at all in my eyes/ears. But it is hard to truly judge it when all we do is lose games of football at our home ground. But based on what we've seen I think us fans have all been hero's this year and the club should fricking well reimburse us all in some way, I'm being serious too.

Last time we were miles better than this outfit. We have played 23 games and have 6 points. The worst ever at this stage. We will be the worst ever PL team. That is a huge hangover, losing every week doesn't just 'vanish' from a players mind with a change of manager in the summer. I'll be really surprised if it's anything other than a big old slog next season. I don't think you can underestimate what a season like this can do to players, coaches, clubs etc. How we went down last time and how Sheff U went down are different stories. We won't even get near 20 points.

The 3 at the back with one right back in centre back seems a bit bonkers. Bree isn't good enough as a RB at this level, let alone a right sided CB. Shouldn't be on the bench for a competitive PL side. I really don't get the fixation with 3 at the back when there aren't the players to do it. 3 at the back works when you have mobility in the middle and pace with at least one of the centre backs. All of our centre backs are slow as shit and we are about as immobile as a tanker in the midfield. It also helps if you have attacking pace to stretch the game and we don't have that either. Sometimes there is merit in 'keeping it simple stupid' when the players you have available are so, so , so limited. Les is a really odd player, no middle ground from him. He can look good, then he looks like a fan trying to play football - quite often during the same game.

I feel totally lost with this team, even more so than our season under Wotte and co. It was pretty miserable but it still felt like football and there was 'something' to hope for. This is just shit, the entire place just feels dead. The players use us as a temp stop over, so we never have a chance of building a team anymore. I don't know what the future holds. There's no way we compete in the Championship next season, no matter what anyone says. The club will take some time to recover from the absolute shambles of having a 'season off' of professional football. I see us heading into Stoke and Swansea territory at lightning speed and becoming an absolutley nothing Championship side.