Smirking_Saint

He is a more than capable No.8/6 hybrid that more or less guarantees you 4-6 goals a season… just him being on the pitch means you get a bit more freedom infront of the opposition penalty box as nobody wants to commit a foul there Add to that the fact he is English which ticks a qouta box… Id say 40-50m is relatively fair

He’ll end up at a bottom to mid prem club and will do well because despite the fact you cannot see his obvious qualities he is good enough at this level

I think it’s important to get a new manager in quickly, everything I hear both inside and outside of the club is around a bit of a remodel of the backroom staff… personally I think this is very important, the club was laden with voices that were either too consenting or completely opposed to new direction Get a manager in that can help shape the new direction of the club, this will likely be slightly short term as despite what RA believes there is a significant tactical gulf between Champ and Prem and a prem tactical approach doesn’t always transfer well into a Champ promotion push Identify who is likely leaving, and where our gaps are early… for me the obvious is DM, ST, RB before we even start Get the footballing decisions correct and the rest can follow

He is too good for us once we’re relegated

I mean… this is patently obvious to be honest and explains why we bought defensive reinforcements in the summer as well as Ralph rearranging a semi organised tactic to prioritise defensive action… the same with Selles and Jones

I actually think it is, McCarthy is, or was a half competent shot stopper but struggled with Aerial balls, is absolutely woeful with the ball at his feet and struggles to command his area Pretty similar to Baz as far as detractors go but Baz is much better with his distribution

Yeah I didn’t get the whole story but I was aware, at the end, his relationship with Saints was completely eroded and so what you say makes perfect sense I believe we offered Macca a contract reasonably early ? IIRC Another reason I don’t get the Semmens love in, he did as much right as wrong in my eyes

Forster didn’t want to be here, we tried Baz was never ‘supposed’ to be the first choice, but was thrust in because McCarthy isn’t good enough Neither of them are good enough, quite how we made McCarthy one of the top earners is baffling to me

Doesn’t hurt as much as it did in 2005 because back then I could feel the fight and the want to avoid this We havn’t looked a team up to the task since arguably October and it’s steadily declined. Poor management across the club (top to bottom) and players that effectively to a man don’t seem to have any desire to dig any deeper than to cover their own averages It’ll hurt, it always will because this is the club I was (unfortunately) born to love and to follow, but it doesn’t sting as much as it should because Ive never felt so disconnected from it

And my point is that Semmens came in and did the same, resigning Djenepo on a longterm deal, Walcott on 70k etc, McCarthy Unfortunately he isn’t as blameless as he is made out to be. The Ings money was squandered, as was the Hojbjerg money Transfers this year were equally hit and miss, Lavia, ABK almost certainly excellent but are flanked by terrible buys in Aribo/Orsic etc A lot though, as I said is clearly down to whoever we have in charge of scouting and analytics over the last 3-5 years doing an awful job and we almost certainly need a complete revolution in that area

This isn’t a huge loss tbh

He would of been involved, as part of the transfer committee, as he would of been this year too Frankly I’m finding it worrying that you either have to be in the Rasmus camp or the Semmens one I’m firmly in neither… we need to remove the old board remnants that helped put us in this position… move Rasmus into the over seeing of the SR multi-model which I feel was why he was actually here and get a CEO in to manage Saints that can focus on only Saints

But the argument could also be levelled that there are a group of fans that hero worship Semmens, when in reality he is, in my mind, just as culpable in our slide as the others. Ralph - I agree, he is a very capable manager but unfortunately was hamstrung by, as you say a lack of quality attacking talent and the Lavia injury… should he had been effectively backed when the board retained him then I’m sure he would have been ok Semmens - He was responsible for keeping Ralph, Rasmus wanted shot in the summer… I see both sides to this argument. He was also heavily involved in the appointment of Selles, its not an opinion, I unfortunately/fortunately get information from time to time. He was also internally blamed for our failure to get a striker over the line in the summer fyi (whether this was bred by his historical need to haggle Im not sure).. and after was when Rasmus took the lead on negotiations Jones - Probably the biggest reason we were relegated, and yes almost completely on Rasmus. I can’t comment on who made the decision to retain him for so long but it was a Rasmus appointment Player recruitment - I’m not sure it was as rosy under the Gao reign as people are now saying, probably through rose tinted glasses. We replaced genuine quality with Diallo, A Armstrong, Walcott, Lyanco… We need a serious shake up in our recruitment team because for every positive buy they drop two clangers but I cannot get over Semmens throwing Reed under the bus for ‘over burdening us with long, needless contracts’ and then doing exactly the same Moving forward - I think we need a genuine reset, and with relegation we have that opportunity. Remove Semmens and the previous board remnants. Allow Rasmus to take a less hands on and more over seeing role (which Im told is more of his specialty anyway) but more importantly we need to employ and effective and functioning recruitment team that are cohesive with whoever holds the reigns… there is a genuine disconnect between the old and new board members and we need some sort of harmony In whatever direction we decide to move as its seriously damaged us this season edit - Not really sure whats been ‘dismantled’ as far as the academy is concerned tbh… not a huge amount has changed there

So it was even more vital to make prudent transfer decisions and not overburden us with deadwood on substantial contracts then

He convinced the heirarchy to stick with Ralph and I believe was also heavily involved in pushing for Selles Im not convinced his previous reign under Gao was as convincing as many believe either, he is, in part, responsible for the state of the club when SR arrived by over burdening us with incorrect contractual decisions Whatever happens we need a fresh start without Rasmus and Semmens imo

He averaged a goal every 3.4 games, he was decent enough but not outstanding

Why is James Beattie the ‘obvious choice’ ? I’m sick of the pandering around getting ex players/managers of some description as if they come with some extra ability What coaching credentials does a bang average ex prem striker have over what we already have ? I want the club to go out next year, do a proper job with the analytics and find us a capable management team that fits the clubs current models (to an extent)

Schneiderlin has played only 4 games for Sydney Wanderers mate

We have owners happy to put money in (albeit not directed particularly well), plenty of saleable assets and parachute payments So no I don’t really see any immediate financial pressures… you could argue we’d be looking over our shoulder if we fail to bounce back in that first year but ultimately we’re in reasonably good shape Just selling Lavia and KWP will likely net us 50-60m for a start

The whole Romeu transfer was one of them for me, hindsight says it was a fuck up due to thr Lavia injury and Diallo/AMN being completely inadequate in DM At the time though, especially as he wanted to leave and I respected the bloke (OR not RA) it didn’t seem too bad but due to how this year turned out we can add it to the growing list of misery I still think we probably could of got away with no Romeu or Lavia at the time if we had altered our gameplan to suit… this whole year has just been a fucking mess by basically everyone employed at the club by some capacity

We replaced him with Lavia tbf

Ralph had run out of ideas at the end… potentially you could argue if he’d of gotten a striker in the summer then he may of found his way back.. but I’m not so sure Sacking Ralph late (after admitting he’d lost the changing room before this season had even started), appointing a man that EVERYBODY could see was wrong from the start.. and then replacing him… far too late.. with a guy that has zero managerial experience is atleast 50% of why we are comfortably the worst team in the prem this year Terrible contractual and transfer dealings over the last 2-3 years are also very much to blame

I don’t see why we’d ‘need’ to sell outside of any large incoming bids If they down tools thats a different conversation but they’re on decently long contracts and again we’re under, as far as Im aware, no real financial pressures to sell so I don’t see why we couldn’t for atleast a year

Considering he’s probably been our best CB over the last few games no

Im not entirely sure why everyone believes we’ll have a mass exodus, whether enforced or otherwise.. I do believe SR’s words that we’re on a sound financial footing… so Id only imagine we’d lose those that it makes no financial sense to keep KWP/Salisu will likely be off due to their contractual situations, we have Bree/Tino and a multitude of CBs as replacements there anyway - 40-50m Lavia just won’t stay regardless of it we stay up or not, good DMs are a premium and he has basically everything in his armoury and will be younger/cheaper than Rice… another 40-50m (we’ll likely need to replace him) Smallbone/Tella - I think we’ll probably see these leave, I imagine Smallbone because I don’t see how he fits our tactics, fee will be negligible.. Tella will probably want to remain at Burnley and a fee of around 20m probably fits Outside of that we’ll probably try to recoup some fee for Orsic, may look to sell/loan Onoachu (carillo MkII basically (more ability admittedly) and potentially offload DCC if he is causing trouble… then its a coin flip whether we can find suiters for AA/Djenepo - Might make 10m-20m from that Outside of that Id say the squad looks in decent nick for a Championship charge, we probably still need to sign a striker and a DM, maybe a CB The importance of course is effective recruitment, of which we’ve made a pretty poor hash of overall under the SR banner