John B

To quote an imfamous poster what a lot of old Pony

Football is a great game ask Grimsby and Sheff Utd fans this morning they would disagree with you

I have been supporting the Saints when I was a kid nearly 70 years ago when we were in Div 3 South 

Yes we are poor now through lack of investment and a suicidal recruitment policy

But there is no reason why we cannot return to be one of the top 15 or so teams in the country again especially if we have the a bit more rub of the green 

We did not play well I know but we conceeded one unlucky penalty had two goals not scored because of marginal offside decisions whilst Grimsby had a penalty after a successful marginal offside decision and could have conceeded a penalty and possibly could have lost a player with a bad foul on Lavia

Luck matters in football so please stop whining and feeling sorry for yourselves at least we are not as bad as Pompey

They have done really well in not getting a decent striker to join SFC

On 20/02/2023 at 20:18, Fraser Spinney said:

We're at our best when we are aggressive and on the front-foot. It was the foundation of Hasenhüttl's side previously and Sellés brought that back this weekend. This piece takes a look at how Sellés lined up the side and the tactical approach used in the win over Chelsea.

https://analyticsunited.co.uk/2023/02/20/selles-brings-southampton-back/

Really I thought we won because of a JWP special

10 minutes ago, OldNick said:

Scott Parker, please nooooooooo. Talk to Fulham and Bournemouth fans and I doubt you will get one who is positive

Well getting both teams promoted to the PL seems pretty positive to me compared with your negative response

1 hour ago, egg said:

Depends if you're looking from a saints perspective or an objective one. Objectively, there is zero prospect of expecting anyone who has almost 2 1/2 years contract at £3.5m a year to sign a 3-6 month contract. Trying to push that into JM is naive in the extreme - we needed JM more than he needed us and the club didn't play the room. 

Quite right it no one is to blame we are going down there is only a faint chance that we can get over twenty points in our remaining games

JM currently has a contract with Leeds for another two years it would be stupid for him to sign another contract with SFC for anything less than that similarly it would be stupid for SFC to sign a long expensive contract with a PL manager at the present time.

I would be happy with somebody like Scott Parker to manage us in the Championship as I just cannot see us surviving especially after we were 1 up against Wolves who had 10 ten and we lost

The squad is too inexperienced and error prone and I just do not feel they are a team just a collection of young players who have found their way recently to Southampton

I am fed up with all this despondancy these wins two wins got me really interested in the Saints although I lived 130 miles from the Dell

MANCHESTER CITY 1 SOUTHAMPTON 5 FA Cup 3rd Round 9th January 1960 Southampton Reeves(23, 32, 67 & 86), O’Brien(64)

7th January 1961 – FA Cup Third Round – Southampton 7-1 Ipswich Town (O'Brien 3, Mulgrew 2, Penk, Paine)

and I still support them today after moving back to Southampton in 1962 and watching them regularly

In those days they were a team not a collection of millionaires with no passion for the club

6 minutes ago, spyinthesky said:

Home                                          Away
                                   5/3          Villa         0-4
Newcastle   1-2        10/3 
Watford        1-2        13/3
                                    2/4         Leeds       1-1
Chelsea       0-6          9/4 
                                   21/4         Burnley    0-2 
                                   24/4        Brighton   2-2  
C Palace      1-2         30/4  
                                     7/5         Brentford 0-3
Liverpool     1-2          17/5
                                   22/5        Leicester   1-4
   

P11 W0  D2  L9   F8  A30  Pts  2

Season so far

P21 W4  D3  L14  F17 A38  Pts 15

Total since Villa

P32 W4 D5 L23  F25  A68  Pts 17

Up until Villa last March the team was doing well.
From the Villa game, apart from the occasional Cup game eg West Ham, Man City, the team's form has been abysmal and the only home League win in 15 games has been against Chelsea.

Southampton 1-0 Arsenal  16 Apr 2022 

But you are off course right in highlighting our dismal record and that is why I have thought we are going to be relegated since September

20 minutes ago, Fitzhugh Fella said:

Jones will go today. He hasn’t helped himself with his ludicrous post match comments, references to God etc but I hope he recovers. Whoever appointed him should have a long hard look at himself and his methods because the appointment was one helluva costly mistake and so so predictable. 

Very similar to Liz Truss becoming PM with little exerience and crazy ideas

7 hours ago, Saint Fan CaM said:

We can but hope. There have been some significant managerial appointment failures in the past, but this one takes the biscuit. The due diligence in choosing him was clearly negligent…he’s not ready and may never be. To be fair on Jones, once selected he was not likely going to turn down the opportunity, but then there’s a bit of me thinking he’s delusional enough to believe his own hype.

Sacking him will be the easy job…the very hard part will be choosing a competent, respected replacement.

That is why sacking managers without a decent replacement is clearly wrong has now happened twice with both Puel and Ralph

Worked well with Adkins and Poch 

47 minutes ago, Dman said:

Jesus. Tell me you know fuck all about football without saying you know fuck all about football. 

I have been watching football for over 60 years so I probably know more about than most

What was the point you were trying to make

4 minutes ago, LGTL said:

This was always going to happen. Some of these players are internationals (hard to believe at times I know) and they’re taking shit instructions off a lower league idiot. 

DCC maybe a knob got red carded in the last game and may have been told to calm down

I have found the last two windows pretty bizzare and realise that now PL football is not for the fan but for the money man

We have brought it something like a dozen players got rid of Romeu and Forster have Livromento on a long term injury

We also sacked a manager who had kept us up with limited resources and replaced him with a manager with dubious credentials who only Mick McCarthy thinks is anygood

Plenty of the old guard have also gone out on loan and we are currently bottom of the PL do not play in red and white stripes so it hardly seems that the team is Southampton anymore

None of the new players have really proved to be consistent PL players except for Lavia who appears to have injury problems even the latest three who have actually played have question marks over their ability

With so many so called first team players in the squad I feel it may be difficult to form a focused team of players most of whom  I expect had never thought they would be playing here this time last year to start turning out quality performances to get us out of the bottom three

The fixtures that we have in the next two months are

Brentford Away
Wolverhampton Wanderers Home 
Chelsea Away 
Leeds United Away
Leicester City Home
Manchester United Away
Tottenham Hotspur Home and I would have thought we needed a minimum of ten points from these games to have much chance of not being relegated

4 minutes ago, Dman said:

It’s not if you’re willing to invest properly in your squad. Brighton being a prime example. 

Years of poor recruitment, penny pinching and underinvestment have left us with under qualified staff (on and off the pitch).

we’re now seemingly willing to spend a bit of cash, but it’s too late. Destine for the drop there are 19 other PL clubs who are more attractive options than us. 

Where do think the money was coming from in the past for more investment the club just did not have any and they did well to keep us in the PL

If Ings had signed another contract we would possible not be in the position we are now.

SR have invested heavily but in my opinion it would have been better to have done in gradual steps instead of gutting the squad and bringing in young and inexperience players .

10 minutes ago, miserableoldgit said:

To look good.... "Look what I got for us and at only (insert suitable figure). Aren't I clever?"

Really

I doubt that it is unlikely that a person n his position would do that but of course some people on here would like to believe it

Any idea who alledgedly the player involved was

9 minutes ago, Ex Lion Tamer said:

Supposedly haggled over a few million and missed out on a striker when he had a free rein to spend big

Why would he do that ?

9 minutes ago, Saint Fan CaM said:

Out of interest, does anyone here think Koeman or Poch would make a better stab at getting this squad to play better football and win games of football? I do - I don’t think it’s all about the money all the time. If that were the case we would never beat City 2-0 for example…it just wouldn’t be possible.

I am not sure they would if the players  keep making mistakes or missing chances

At the end of the day it comes down to what the players do 

Doubt Ralph or Jones planned for Adams to miss numerous chances 

5 minutes ago, miserableoldgit said:

I am supposed to be a Miserableoldgit but some people on here do make me laugh. When we beat a top team (which we have on a number of occasions) and the pundits all put it down to the opposition playing badly rather than Saints playing well, they are all up in arms saying that Saints are not getting the credit they deserve, but when it suits the doomsters agenda we get this sort of response.

City played pretty badly that night and we played better than usual so we deserved to win

26 minutes ago, aintforever said:

Think the formula was 'play a team in a competition that is 4th in their list of priorities'.

and played pretty dreadfully as well

8 hours ago, Chez said:

You've heard of JWP, right?

Sure, we haven't developed too many absolute top class players in recent times, but Jan Valery, Michael Obefemi, Harrison Reed, Matt Targett and Sam Gallagher have all be sold for a few bob. Part of the reason we have struggled is the likes of Chelsea and Man City have taken the youth development to another level over the last decade, spending a small fortune and offering huge contracts to youngsters, which has helped them to attract the very best young players. Luke Shaw went with Saints back in the day, despite being a Chelsea fan, because of academy reputation and quality at the time. If he had come along a few years later, with the reputation of Chelsea's academy much enhanced, then he'd of joined them.

The academy lost its way. People moved on, and the club was unable to find and attract the real stars. Without those star prospects entering the academy you don't get the very best talent coming out the other end. In more recent times we have spent some serious money bringing in young talent and in the next two or three years we could well reap the benefit. JimmyJ, Ballard and the two Spurs fellas Sam Amo-Ameyaw and Jayden Meghoma may well make it at the top level.

 

Of course I know all that but you have not answered my question 

In the past we regularly produced players from the Academy to play in the PL  contribute to the success of the team and then in some cases move on for large transfer fees 

The ones you mentioned apart from JWP who started playing years ago have not contributed much to our PL team

As Pilchards alludes to in an earlier post the lack of Academy players  is causing us to buy sub PL standard players to fill up the squad making the team uncompetive.

You may well be right that there are young players who are going to make it but I have heard it all before and they may not 

Our club was well known for producing PL players which made us relatively successful keeping us in the top flight for such a long time now it does not and is contributing to our decline and our eventual place in the Championship

3 hours ago, InvictaSaint said:

Afternoon All. Not trying to be defeatist or negative....but given our current position it would be naïve not to think about what happens to the club if Saints go down at the end of the season. I thought therefore that this section - which I have transcribed - of the recent BBC Solent interview between Adam Blackmore, Rasmus Ankersen and Martin Semmens is of particular relevance and importance. I've highlighted the bits I think are worthy of note....Thoughts welcome.

MS: You’ve got to have a plan you’ve got to give Nathan the resources he needs.

AB: How much is the reality of relegation a catalyst for everybody? What happens....how much do Sports Republic worry about relegation and the impact it has on the future of the club or do you think long-term the club will be okay anyway the club will recover if things don’t go well with the backing it’s got?

MS: let me answer that and then Rasmus can answer from a Sports Republic point of view, but yes absolutely... so a football club in our position every year focuses 100% on staying in the league and winning games but there is a plan in the background if things you know do not go our way so there’s nothing different or complicated to that. The one thing I can say is that we are having a wonderful ownership group now who have an investment, that are committed to the long-term. It is not a short-term plan so we are in a very very good financial position for the league we are in and any league we’re in and any plan that we have in future so I can only really say that we’re in a stronger position than we’ve ever been. I know that sounds counterintuitive when we’re bottom of the league but from a club structural point of view and an ownership-investment point of view we are in the best position we’ve been in since I’ve been here.

AB: Rasmus would you like to add anything to that?

RA: Yeah I mean (laughs).... if you are in one of the bottom 12 clubs of the Premier League, you have a certain risk every year of relegation you know and it would be you know irresponsible not to take that into account, but this is the risk of being in the Premier League The risk in the investment. And we fully bought into that but what I can assure you is we are fully committed to the long term of Southampton Football Club. You know we really want to make this successful. We are working as hard....we are fighting as hard as we can and we hope we can get everybody behind us for the last 19 games of the Premier League and then I’m sure we’ll get there.

Surely the title should have when instead of if

57 minutes ago, Hodgey said:

It infuriates me when people buy the clubs nonsense around ‘we can’t compete’ and ‘we can’t find someone better than out championship standard players’. We’re the 30th richest club in the world, we play in a division 90pc of players aspire to, we pay well, it’s a decent place to live, we’ve produced or helped world class players like Bale, Van Dijk, Mane. And if anyone still wants to argue - can I suggest they take a look at Brighton who seem to be able to spot and get the next superstar with regularity, without having to spend 30m plus. Someone should be asking big questions about our scouting network and not making excuses for them.

Very true - something that annoys me is that the Academy has not produced a regular PL for SFC for years in fact yesterday there was not even an academy player even on the bench

So what is the point of the Academy 

36 minutes ago, saintwbu said:

Some of the worst logic i’ve ever seen - if a referee disallows a perfectly good goal, of course you can blame the referee. At the top level one goal can be the difference, it’s very fine margins. 

Sometimes Saints win because the ref makes the wrong decision that is football you have to live with it

We squad is poor the manager is probably poor so relegation awaits

1 hour ago, S-Clarke said:

He had been playing for Chelsea, but he did his ACL and apparently his MCL - so a very, very significant injury for the lad.

Hope he's ok, but given his game was pretty centred around explosive pace you do have to wonder if he'll ever be the same after this.

My daughters brother in law a Chelsea season ticket holder is pretty devastated about the injury

Most Chelsea fans think Broja had a great future before the injury

52 minutes ago, Whitey Grandad said:

We did have Perry Groves at one time.

and Denis Hollywood one of the hardest Saints players I ever saw

Forgotten Heroes - Denis Hollywood - Southampton News | The Ugly Inside (fansnetwork.co.uk)

1 minute ago, AlexLaw76 said:

3 wins in a week, against Premier League sides, including Man City and a massive 6-pointer

Yes he is doing OK it was a shame that we did not hang on for a draw at Fulham like we did today and against both Palace and City

Not only for the extra point but also for the confidence we could have brought into the Forest game

Things are looking up with new players to come into the team the future looks brighter than it did in 2022