benjii

The decline is due to player recruitment failures and managerial appointment failures. Those failures have been exacerbated by a leadership vacuum which means nothing has been done to address the underperformance. Koeman did a cracking job and managed to bring in the likes of Tadic, Pelle and Van Dijk who did very well for reasonable fees. Quite simply, from that point on our recruitment has been rubbish. Not just in terms of quality of player but also getting the right mix of characters. Couple that with bull about the managers (remember the return to an exciting, attacking style of football under Pellegrino?!) and it isn't pretty. We've still had the odd success. Ings is a good signing, so is McCarthy and Gunn looks like a top prospect. But we've signed loads of garbage. Arguably we had been so successful that we were due a drop-off but we haven't acknowledged that our approach is failing and mixed up our strategy. We were desperately weak at centre back and kept looking for relative European bargains when perhaps we should have gone for a grizzly old PL stalwart. Same for central midfield. We've now got a squad of players where only two or three of them have any track record of decent Premier League perfoemances, week in week out. That's a gamble, and it's an unnecessary gamble when you've established yourself in the top flight.

Yes, but they did some of those too and didn't get booked!

Do you really think he would have spent 5 years sulking if he thought we were serious?

Signing Cahill would signal a change of approach. It would make sense but would also be an acknowledgement of failure from Les and Wee Ross. Cahill plus a strong midfielder with leadership qualities and we would look half decent. Cedric---Yoshi/Vest-Cahill---Bertrand ---------------------New------------------------- -------Hoybyeeeerg--Lemina----------- -Gabbi/Mo -----Ings----------Redmond That should be plenty good enough to finish safely.

Personally, I would have let him see out his contract. I would have issued a statement saying that we are happy when our players get recognised by top clubs and we understand we are a stepping stone. We expect, however, that when a player signs a new long-term contract they give their best until we agree to sell. I'd have told Van Dijk to look at the Schneiderlin situation and that if he gives us a proper year of effort we'll consider selling the following summer. I wouldn't have issued some bull**** about him and Hoedt forming a great partnership. That's what I would have done. Can't see him being prepared to sit around doing **** all with the reserves for 5 years.

He did play advantage. Then Bertrand fell over so he gave the original foul. So he did exactly what you're saying he should have done. There wasn't a "second one". The ref booked too many of our players - in particular, the Lemina booking was soft as anything - and not enough of theirs but he didn't give any big decisions against us. If anything, he helped us by not giving them either of their two decent penalty shouts and not sending Ings off. On their second goal, there was some blocking by Luiz but it was fairly minor in the context of the typical shenanigans that go on in the box and the ref can't see everything. People complaining about offside just don't understand how that rule is applied nowadays.

Correct.

Thought the ref got it right. The first challenge was a foul and it was roughly where the free kick was taken. Bertrand made himself look like a complete tool and picked up an idiotic yellow card. Smart captain.

Forren Osvaldo Carillo

Well, if you want to go down that route, it's also worth noting that the home win against WBA would not have happened without a Boufal worldie.

Thanks John Boy. Yes, there are plenty of trains direct from Soton. I was more interested in whether they actually tend to run on time and have the right number of coaches etc! As it's a cross country service heading all the way up t'north then I'm guessing it's probably more reliable than the ****e I used to get into Waterloo.

Actually felt a bit sorry for Hughes today. Clearly we were sitting deep and it wasn't pretty but at the time Ings missed an open goal from 2 yards out - fashioned by some excellent play - it was 0-0 and Chelsea hadn't had a decent sight of goal. The problem is that we just don't have the character or bottle to deal with adversity. When your captain is Ryan Bertrand you know you're in trouble. He's a cracking left back but he's not a leader.

Brothers, time for action!

#Gaoout! #GaoAway! #LetsGao****ingMental https://www.saintsweb.co.uk/showthread.php?60297-Gao-Away!-protests#.W7pdM9DTU0M

Let's hope we can do as well we've done in recent windows. Sub-keeper looks good.

And Mo hasn't set the world alight so we'll probably be after a winger.

And Armstrong can't get in the squad, so presumably we'll be after an attacking midfielder.

Seeing as Vest is now worse than Bednarek and Hoedt then presumably we'll be after a centre back.

Hoedt won the naked wrestling then.

Thanks for the chuckles, by the way.

R.I.P.

How de feck did we not beat Brighton? They're shoite and we were 2-0 up FFS.

Yeah I agree. You either need to be cautious or really aggressive. We can't just hope to muddle through this one. They have too much quality and seem to be right behind the new manager.

Agreed. There should be some sort of sanction.