Lord Duckhunter

Exactly. Which makes Blackmores “Firstly, I don’t wish ill of anyone & I try to be positive & fair to people always” a bit revisionist. Letting someone come on and say an international centre half was faking an injury, that Lyanco couldn’t get in a non league side, is disgraceful & undermines his new found “honesty”.

No, no & no….

I agree, but I’m just passing on what I heard. They want a manager who will make the players better, ( im not saying he is) not one that’ll bin the ones he doesn’t fancy. Personally, I’m all for freezing useless players out but I’m not running the club. If you’re running a club by spreadsheet it it probably makes sense.

But we didn’t have good enough experienced pros around them. The keepers shit, and the jury is out on the rest of them apart from Lavia.

Did I say it was a strength? It’s the way it is, or the way I was told it was. I don’t see why a Jones family member would make it up, as it doesn’t reflect particularly well on him. Yes Janny B is a good example of a player frozen out by Ralph but I imagine Jones rates him as he’s chucked him straight back in. It’s about players Jones doesn’t rate. The example I was given was Adam Armstrong, instead of sending him out on loan or freezing him out, he is willing to work with him and make him a “better” player. Hence protecting SR’s “asset”.

Ralph was a yes man when it came to signings, they all are pretty much nowadays. He didn’t take a hard line, he’d have gone in the summer if he did. As I’ve said, it’s what they’d do with players they don’t rate that was the difference, not who they’d sign. To make it simple. If Big Paul is shite, Ralph won’t play him, Jones will.

There’s loads examples where players have been given to managers & managers haven’t rated them, and therefore frozen them out. These are assets, and freezing them out devalues them in SR’s eyes). The words used were “that’s my job”, when he was discussing making poor signings better.

His in laws live in the same town as me, one works with a good mate of mine. I’ve been priming him for info, but none has been forthcoming. The work colleagues tip toe around the subject of Saints, & he himself (family member) has told my mate that Jones’ family tip toe around it with him. One snippet he gave me back in Nov before it went tits up was about player recruiting . They would give the manager the players, and as far as SR are concerned they’re assists. Clearly some won’t be rated by the manager and whereas they thought Ralph would freeze them out, Jonesy told them he was prepared to work with these players . He told them making players better was “his job”, one that was specifically mentioned to my mate was Adam Armstrong. Obviously the Bree signing casts doubt on this theory, but it’s peanuts in modern terms, so maybe a case of chucking jones a bone. Assuming that’s true (and I’ve no reason to doubt it, and it’s 100% fact my mate knows the bloke), I don’t think SR are dictating formations, but they maybe giving him players that lend themselves to certain formations.

I’ll defend him when it’s pony. When people claim he’s a Sunday league manager, or Lyanco couldn’t get in the Havant side. Some of the pony written about the Newcastle game was ott as well. But yesterday was every bit as bad as Ralph’s “effort” up there last year, so I’m not going to defend that. I didn’t mind him calling out the twats in our fan base or our useless spineless players, but yesterdays interviews weren’t that and weren’t appropriate. I get where he’s coming from, he hasn’t played the Jones game. But I think the conflict is with himself rather than others telling him how to play, but he’s not man enough to admit it. Like Graham Taylor did at England, he’s compromised his natural game and pulled back from going for his own style because he probably thought he needed a more sophisticated version at the higher level. Once you go away from your core beliefs you’re fucked. He looks like he’s trying to buy himself time, but the time to impose your “play book” is the first few weeks, he’s now going to try from a position of weakness. A more or less impossible thing to do.

I stand by what I wrote on Jan 5th Personally, I prefer to see who comes in during the window before pulling the plug, see if there’s a change in attitude and culture within the club. Somebody needs to take it by the scruff of the neck, get rid of the losing mentality and upset a few of the precious darlings. Personally, I think he deserves the chance to do this. I understand peoples anger and don’t think I’m a “better fan” than them. But with this shower of shite, the next bloke that comes in will face exactly the same problem. As he’s SR’s man, and the loss of face that’ll come with sacking him, he maybe given more leeway to do the nasty stuff and kick a few arses. Making a few tweaks to Ralph’s playbook won’t cut it.

Probably cost him his job.

Close but no cigar

Bingo!!!!

Showed some glimpses that he could be a decent addition to the squad.

That’s face facts 1-0 down up there, there’s not many sides outside the top 6 that’ll pull that back, and we’ve been horrendous up there before with far better players. All I’m hoping is we don’t lay down and die, we make them fight and scrap for it.

The 5 games before us they played us were Fulham, Palace, Spurs, West Brom & Newcastle, winning only 2 of them. They were on the slide, a slide that ended up with 3 wins in 12.

💤 😴

Hey Sid, is there 3 wins in 12? Is this woeful form? Did any other manager cry?

Everyone was beating them around that time, they were in woeful form. Within the next few weeks, they’d lost at Home to Burnley, Brighton, Everton & Fulham, as well as losing to Leicester, Chelsea & Man C. They were in a run of winning 3 out of 12. Despite all those defeats only one manager thought the achievement so great he started crying though.

Sidney will be happy, he can meet up with all his Luton mates.

We’ve had some bang average keepers.

I genuinely think the way we handled the loss or Poch, a load of international level players & Cortese will come to be seen as one of the most remarkable transitions outside of the top top sides. It was quite remarkable, and I’d be amazed if Brighton or anyone else of our size could do the same. The only disappointment was that we didn’t have a decent cup run until we’d dipped slightly.

Cheese & Onion, I’ve never actually eaten them but I’ve got a gut feeling they’re perfect for me.

What flavour crisps do you like?

All the love for Brighton, but they’ve only done what we did when Poch & a bunch of players left. Replaced the manager & players whilst maintaining, or even bettering what came before. All this “why can’t we be like Brighton” is pony, they became like us under the hated Les Reed. IF they manage to continue this trajectory for a few more years, then yes we can look longingly at them. But at the moment, they haven’t got into Europe or a cup final, and haven’t been able to keep hold of players any better than we did.