tajjuk

To be fair, we are only little old Southampton, but we are financial solid, have a good set up behind the scenes, decent stadium and are not in dissaray like most clubs will be looking for a new manager, so there are worst jobs around.

Tuchel seems very unlikely but wishful thinking says the lure of the premiership maybe gives us a shot.

Selling Tadic would be stupid IMO, as would not trying to sign Ineacho at those sort of prices.

Nope.

30th in the morning I reckon.

See I don;t really buy this, I actually feel last year we finished 6th because we deserved to, we actually beat plenty of the big teams to get there. I mean yes there have been big money and big managers come into the big teams but are they actually any better? Chelsea and Leicester have basically swapped places, with Leicester taking Chelsea's 'fallen champions' spot from last year. Man City under Guardiola seem no better IMO than Pellegrini's Man City. Arguably Arsenal are worse this year than last, Spurs are about the same having not fallen away as much as they did last year. Man Utd despite Mourinho, Pogba, and Imbra are on about the same amount of points they were last year. Liverpool are better almost purely because of Mane, who we sold them, without him they are no better than the 7th/8th place team they were last year. Swansea and West Ham, two teams who over the last couple of years been round our sort of level have dropped dramatically, with Everton improving essentially swapping with West Ham. IMO the league conditions have been no worse, probably the teams near the bottom are even worse, yet we dropped plenty of points against them and we haven't got a single win against any of the top 6, despite Man Utd, Arsenal and Man City all being pretty inconsistent and Liverpool being not great without Mane. We showed what could be done in the League Cup against these teams but didn't reach the same performance levels in the league against them. Yes we've had injuries, yes we lost Mane and Pelle, later Fonte and we had the Europa, but we spend quite a lot, several youngsters stepped up our of pretty much nowhere and several players have improved their performance. So overall I can only get a sense of underachievement for the season. I kind of feel 8th flatters us and is more because a lot of teams below us were a lot worse.

Just shows what game time and experience can do when coupled with a hard work ethic to improve. What impressed me last night was him bringing the ball out of defence to help start attacks, very few centre-backs do that these days and it seems (for the moment at least) that we have two. With Romeu about I think they can be quite confident to do that. He was done a bit easily by Bailly after JWP gave the ball away and should have scored when free at the back post but overall a very good performance in a very solid season for him.

Actually to be fair initially he seemed pretty lazy at closing down and not chasing back, but later in the game he was actually doing it quite a lot, at one point he started an attack doing it. At a guess he might have been annoyed at the booing when he came on. He definitely looks comfortable playing that no.10 role and it means we get some closer to the lone striker.

First off have to say as someone who grew up with Man Utd dominance of the 90s and early 2000s how odd it is to see a Man Utd team play like that. If you didn't know who was playing you'd think West Brom had come to town for a clean sheet. First half was dire, no tempo, wasn't a pen as it was outside but JWP should have taken it. Second half we clearly upped the temp, some link up play was there and the players actively looked like there were trying to get closer to Gabbiadinni/Jay Rod. We were still too deep most of the time, the commentators said it several times and it made us sluggish when turned over possession. Though most people did ok, felt sorry for Gabbiadini first half as he was so isolated and he still worked hard but had nothing to work with. Then when we started to get going he got taken off. Sadly aside the penalty, our best chance fell to Stephens who fluffed it but overall had a decent game. Was good to see him bringing the ball out of defence and he looked to have a good turn of pace, drifting past players with the ball and getting back to tackle on the few occasions Man Utd broke. If we'd played like we did from about 55 mins to 85mins for the whole game I'm pretty sure we would have won, the first half was very lazy from our players. Don't get the booing of JWP going off, he'd done ok but not amazing, he'd been caught in possession several times and on the right he offers little because he can't get down the outside or run at people. I thought Boufal looked decent when he came on, he actually ran out people with pace and committed defenders, which oddly Redmond hadn't really done all game and Tadic doesn't do over long distances, he seems to prefer slowing his man down before trying to beat him. Boufal's attitude though seemed pretty poor, couple of times he just gave up, threw his hands in the air and stood in the middle of the pitch as Utd countered, plus there was a spell down on the right wing where he laid of to Tadic and then seemed annoyed he didn't get it back, so just stood there rather than trying to make another run into the box. He seemed to brighten up nearer the end of game as he actually started closing people down and tracking back, at one point getting Utd on the counter after he stole the ball off someone. Dunno, seemed in a bad mood, maybe it was the booing? Targett looked exactly like a player who hasn't played very much in a long period, very rusty, some poor deliveries. Overall poor first half, better second half, a bit frustrating but their keeper was man of the match and it was Man Utd, so difficult to be critical. People should remember their forward 3 cost £100 million, so 'reserves' is a funny comment.

8th is 8th but we have stumbled there more than got there. We are 20 points behind a Man Utd that has stumbled along for most of the season (despite investment) and they are only 6th. A Man Utd side that we clearly showed in the cup final that we could compete with (and should have beaten). We are only 7 points from the 17th team, so it's more a case IMO of a lot of teams being crapper than us, rather than any achievement on our part. Plus the distinct lack of goals as well. 8th IMO papers over the cracks, not to mention we could easily drop to 11th by the end of the season. And the 16 points behind an Everton team that really on paper is no better than ours IMO.

Not to mention Barcelona and PSG that could have onwards repercussions. ---------------------------------------------------- Not sure you can say several of the big boys have improved. If anything Arsenal are arguably worse than they were last year. Liverpool and Chelsea have improved, but then Leicester dropped out of that picture and I reckon both those clubs are benefiting from their lack of European football. Man Utd and Man City, arguable despite massive recruitment are not really any better than they were last year. Also West Ham (who were around us last year) are worse than they were. If you swap Chelsea for Leicester in last years picture, then the only significant movers are Liverpool who have gone from 7th up to 4th. Basically Everton have replaced us and if you look our record against the mid table and lesser teams, teams we generally beat quite easily last year like Hull, Burnley, West Brom, Sunderland, Palace etc. are where our big points loss is from. Not scoring enough goals being the main issue, home draws and losses to some pretty average teams is another 10-12 points alone.

Yeh I read 'necessity' as meaning that the players sold wanted to move clubs and basically forced the clubs hand.

We also lost 2-1 and drew 0-0 to that same Hull team (well in fact a probably worse one) that lost 4-0 to Palace. 5 points lost to one of the weakest teams in the league which would quite comfortably put us 8th. People talk about our record against the top 6 but we dropped a hell of a lot points against some of the weaker teams that we were beating last year.

We should do all we can to keep him and if not sell him outside the PL IMO, even if it's at a lower selling fee. I'd rather see him playing for Juve or Real or Barca etc. for £40 million than for Chelsea, Man Utd, or effing Liverpool for £50 million.

Tuchel is not going to come to us. Neither is Emery. People should also remember that at the very least the Arsenal and Barcelona jobs are going to be available this summer and this will open up other jobs further down the pecking order if those jobs go to someone employed at a decent club. So we could for example be competing for a manager with say Everton, if say Koeman went to Barcelona. That may cause issues in attracting people. ------------------- Personally I don;t think Puel has done that good of a job. - The league position itself is not a bad per se, but the number of points and the number of under par performances thart go with it is more cause concern. - Then you add in the Europa league early exit (for which we rotated a lot for and possibly sacrificed PL points for). - The at times dour and negative football. - The multitude of rumours of him upsetting key players. That as a package is not that great IMO. Everything I've heard about Silva, plus his almost miracle work at Hull makes me think he's the right sort of fit for us and he's realistic out of the options that would be available to us.

Sorry why is Charlie Austin 'injury prone', he's played like 30 plus league games in 7 out of his last 10 seasons. he's 27 and played nearly 400 career games. He's had a couple of injuries in the last two seasons, one was nasty impacted injury, a dislocated shoulder is hardly an indicator of an 'injury prone' footballer. I'd get rid off Long and Jay Rod. We can probably get a pretty big fee for Long off a Championship club. Also how many successful teams in football right now play two out and out strikers?

I have no issue with zonal loads of teams use zonal and do fine against set pieces it just depends on how your players implement it. The criticism of zonal marking is because most of the commentators are old school and just like man marking, also Crystal Palace conceded as many goals from set pieces and they use man marking.

I like Silva, he's done well with what a is a very poor Hull team. Just as a comparison look at the Hull team on paper to the Palace team, massive difference in quality there Hull have no one that is the level of Benteke, Cabaye, Zaha etc. but handful of points between them. Even Swansea have quality players like Sigurdsson and Llorente, who have Hull got? IMO he's done a great job just keeping them in touch. Plus hardly like it's the only thing in his record, he did excellent with Estoril a completely unfashionable club in Portugal getting them promoted to the top division then got them to 4th and 5th. We have underachieved under Puel, no whether the manager is ultimately to blame or the players have also underperformed a bit I don't know but I reckon our pre-season targets would have been higher then 9th, going out in the group stages of the Europa league (with a fairly easy group as well) we will only have 4 more points than Palace at the end of today and could be level with West Ham who have had a disastrous season. Hardly like he wasn't backed in the transfer market, we've broken our record transfer twice this year. Really without the league cup final he's ultimately not done very well, a C at best.

14 points in 8 games? lol, they are not that bad. We'd have to win all 8 (unlikely) and they would have to lose at least 3 and draw a couple. Plus we are home to Man City, away to Chelsea, away to Liverpool in our next 4 (currently scheduled) games, so that is likely 3 losses right there considering how those teams are playing.

£10 million for a 17 year old that has only played 13 game? What?, can't see us paying that. Plus how good can the guy be if he was in went from Uts to Stokes youth team then got released. No young player should be going to Arsenal, just a waste of talent. They only have to look at Chambers and the Ox, on loan and sitting on the bench most weeks through the crucial development periods

Liverpool once again showing they are a one man (maybe two with lalanna) team, we really should have charged them more for Mane. Hope there is a sell on clause there for when he inevitably goes to Man City or Real Madrid for like £80 million.

I don't think he was ever going to be one of those instant impact managers, he was brought in for a long term job. We've been pretty unlucky this season IMO, we were unlucky in Europe (Inter games for example) which meant a few bad performances cost us, we were unlucky in the cup final and we've generally had bad luck with injuries (I suspect had we had a fit Boufal, Van Dijk and Austin for most of the season we'd be much closer to Everton and have won the cup). There have been some bad inconsistency no doubt, but he's new to the league and we have struggled for a settled team. One thing that was clearly in his job description and he has done pretty well is he has used and improved the young players, that can only benefit us long term. I can only see the like of JWP, Redmond, McQueen etc. being better next year and improving us. I always kind of thought after losing Mane, losing Koeman, and the pressure of Europe this would be a bit of a transition season. The cup win would have made it a massively successful season, but a top 10 will of course be disappointing after recent seasons. But at the same time I cannot say he's done a bad job. But the crux of it all will be who we sell or don't sell in the summer and who we get in. Whatever Puel does, if we sell Van Dijk, Redmond etc. and just replace rather than improve there is not a huge a lot he can do aside try to improve the players we have which takes time.

Always been impressed with him, obviously had a lot of talent and crucially I think he has work attitude to go with it. Arguably Shaw is more talented but seems to be throwing it away, for that reason I think JWP will have a better career. Never really got the criticism many people give him on here, seems like unless you are super fast or super strong people get written off. I mean Wanyama is like 3 years older than him with much more experience, but his passing and technical ability is so much worse. He's a young player who has had to establish himself and improve at the top level, in one of the most difficult positions to play that most players don't master until their late 20s at least. he's clearly shown a lot of improvement this year, credit has to go to Puel in part for that, but also the guy has clearly worked hard off the pitch to improve and he's benefited from game time as well. Can only see him improving and glad he is starting to add goals to his game.

LOL no he isn't. God people are so stupidly over dramatic, he's just not in great form, happens to all players.

Spurs are absurdly good at home and our defence is looking leaky, I'd reckon we'd have a chance at grabbing goal with the way Gabi and Redmond are playing but can't see us stopping Kane and Ali scoring. Draw would be a great result.