Smirking_Saint

My issue is that Maguire isn't even running yet, so why are we gambling on him ? Its just odd, and despite our lack of options at CB I'm still struggling to get my head around it The uplift to 26 was to ensure that we had cover IF we had issues with fitness at the tournament due to a busy season, which is a legitimate risk, but instead he decided to call up an extra 2 that were injured or lacking fitness I can just about understand Henderson, he is a leader, and without him OR Maguire we will effectively have lost our C and VC BUT it is, imo, madness to call up both I can only assume Mings is called upon as he is a left footed CB, but lets be real, he isn't even the best CB at Villa, he is a calamity waiting to happen and I would comfortably bet money he'll cost us at least a goal this tournament Rose tinted glasses off - JWP is likely all round a better player than Phillips, but he isn't AS good as Phillips as a pure DM, which is probably why KP got the overall nod. It feels as if Rice will be our first No.6 with Henderson as the No.8... JWP doesn't break into that Then accommodate Mount/Bellingham (Who I think is worth being in the squad, he is a real talent) and Foden/Grealish Ultimately I think JWP was the Henderson alternative and I think since JH has been given the fitness nod then that is the death of JWPs chances Ben White has been called to cover maguire, which again goes back to the question I asked before..... why take him in the first place ?

Yes Les Reed was in sole charge of all transfer activity, youth player decisions and team bus seating arrangements

I'd genuinely be over both for that price

You can say that about a lot of teams Fact is they have Grealish, and they are willing to spend money I'd don't like Villa much but you cannot deny they have serious intentions of breaking that top 6

Whilst I agree... the fact that the greater footballing community isn't boycotting Qatar, or actually tackling racial incidents is pretty depressing that doesn't really correlate with booing players taking the knee

FWIW I wouldn't want Adkins back either

In all fairness, whilst I do agree with the overall consensus that potential cannot be adequately identified until a higher level of maturity, if we simply stopped recruiting under the age of 14 then the promising kids will still be recruited by satellite academies, it just wouldn't be ours The trick is to have a bit of both, clubs around the UK have a different model of youth recruitment. I think Brentford changed tack completely to move to a system of binning off the academy in general and only, like you say, pick up players released from other academies... thats fine, and saves a chunk of youth budget, but you then rely on your success through the players you have picked up and no longer have a chance of picking up a young player under 11 that 'makes it' There is of course an issue with players falling out of love for the game through sheer volume of coaching at a young age, but that is more of a symptom of how coaching works at those ages, so change the way you do it rather than stop it altogether 'Why is our academy output broken ?' Its probably a multitude of issues, changing recruitment/youth heads probably doesn't help, as well as academies of clubs our size being cyclical. We were in league 1 ten years ago, that probably caused us problems with youth recruitment at the time, and now being a prem club it means that those recruited 10 years ago need to be at a higher pedigree then they probably were signed for at the time, and have less opportunity available to them

Im not convinced that there is a huge amount of confusion about it, unfortunately I think the majority of people see kneeling as a 'them and us' movement, in a similar way to the fact that we have a vocal minority on social media arguing about the merits of the LGBT month or MOBO's Personally, Im not convinced that taking the knee is having any more affect for the issues at large, it now just feels like an empty symbol. But the 'it has links to the BLM political group' is just nonsense that has debunked over and over and is used as an excuse to ignore the greater message at play, if there was not a BLM link.. there would be another reason to ignore the message too Nothing will change as long as the governing body see any racial events within the sport as arbitrary compared to many other problems such as financial fair play and ESL challenges etc At the end of the day, if the players still accept that what they are doing is a worthwhile symbolic gesture then I will support that right, if you don't support it, thats fine, ignore it... but to boo it shows a lack of respect both to the players as well as the issues at large

Agreed Ive never seen the overall clamour for Eddie Howe really, yes he punched above his weight for a time at Bournemouth, but only really when they had a high level of investment. His playing style, very much like Ralphs, was high risk high reward and was eventually found out. Transfer speaking his overall record wasn't great, worth remembering, like Ralphs and managers before him, that isn't solely down to the manager, but also the scouting team. A lot of the current agenda against Ralph feels heavily recency biased. If we flip this season on its head then everyone would be talking about what a good recovery we had. Of course, the overall drop if form is indeed worrying. I am very much now in the sceptical camp, but Ive see enough to know Ralph knows what he is doing to be the best bet moving forward It isn't like we are in a position to fund a manager with a higher pedigree, who would also like a significant spend. So really what is this alternative to Ralph people want ? It certainly isn't Howe for me either

Id put Che Adams and Vestergaard both into the good signing categories with KWP Diallo’s early season for was very good, but still reserving judgement, similarly Salisu looks very promising Walcott I’m 50/50 on, he had a decent enough loan but 75k a month over a 2 year contract seems weighted in his favour Djenepo Id but down as a failure, but not a huge failure Overall transfers during the Ralph era havn’t been anywhere near the disaster of previous regimes

I find it quite funny how good signings are attributed to one man and bad another Reality was that we likely sign players based on a managers need, scouting consensus and a comittee agreement Paul Mitchell seemed to be the man that found a great many of our gems, and Ross Wilson a great many of our overpaid duff Ive got no love for Reed really but I’d be very surprised if it was just him going out of his way scouting and negotiating as one entity Our issues are/were a culmination of Gao rocking up and providing no direction, bad chief scout/manager appointments and this weird power vacuum that both Krueger (what was the point in him) and Reed seemed to be vying for and neither accepted ultimate responsibility

After putting up with you on Saintweb and twitter for the past decade I can’t say Im overly surprised he hasn’t reached out

I’d find it very surprising, after Semmens words on Gao at the fans forum that effectively lobbed him/his tenure under the bus, if there wasn’t something happening in the background We can only hope that we are taken on by somebody with integrity and a will to drive us forward instead of chancers looking to take on a club to add to an investment portfolio for a few years

I’m done with him to be honest. Absolutely done For me, he is the worst kind of footballer, within which he HAS ability but rarely has the aptitude to actually use it... certainly not in any meaningful way - Consistently blames others for his poor passes, tactical reaction or tracking back - He’s given about 3 pens away this year by literally running into people in the box - Despite actually being a good dribbler of the ball he literally NEVER takes his man on... preferring to stop play... I actually thought this was a tactical thing but its been consistent over every manager he’s ever played for - Bad footballing brain, often choosing to just sky it from 30 yards instead of finding a pass, recycling possession or dribbling - That fucking grin and surprised exclamation he has when one of his ‘wasteful’ shots doesn’t come off... He did it yesterday when he missed from 7 yards out 😂😫 It beggars belief that we played him infront of an inform Che after his Scotland call up and Tella over the last 2/3 games.... how the fuck did he get 90 mins yesterday

Huge performance from a morale perspective yesterday and obviously has the added bonus that we will be in another Wembley semi final (that we won't be able to attend......😫) More so than what it meant to us as a fan I think it was required to reaffirm direction, and although I do feel like we are safe, I think its important to carry on this momentum into our next couple of games. The whole team in general performed brilliantly, it was for me, a performance that has been significantly lacking for a while (as we all know). The players, for want of any other descriptives, turned up. We showed a level of passion, work ethic, decisiveness and responsibility in key areas that we just haven't seen since January. Diallo again is hugely impressive for me, its vitally important that we have a player of his quality to fill in for Romeu (and I actually think ID's dynamism is more important). KWP again showing why he is a vital piece of this side and the way we play Redmond, what a performance, one that we have all been waiting for from him. Im not going to jump to any conclusions here, in a similar vein as to how I held back my thoughts when he was out of form. Simply put, Redmond has this performance in his locker, but for some reason that I haven't ever been able to fathom we just do not see it with any consistency. Far too often in games we cry out for a player to take on their man, commit the fullback and CB if nothing more than to create space. Is that a mental issue or a tactical one ? Hopefully we see more of it moving forward.

I don't really understand some of the bluster on here to prioritise the league, we are still effectively a 40-1 shot, I'm not entirely sure our premier league survival is going to pivot on how we do against Championship opposition leading into an international break Frankly, if we fail to survive, it won't come down to the squad we put out tomorrow, it will because we were not able to overcome our general malaise over the last and next month Survival is still VERY MUCH in our hands, and we could, quite conceivably already be safe. But in all likely hood another 3-6 points will see us secure the chance to wallow around premier league mid table next year. We have every chance of getting to another semi final, which would at the very least give the fan base and squad something to motivate them and lift morale. I for one will be hugely dissapointed if Ralph decides to field an under strengthed or under motivated team for this

I think its quite lazily written to be honest, that Gagenpress of which we use a derivative of is effectively a press triggered and carried out mainly in the last third of the pitch, and both us and Liverpool use a long ball (or used to) from the defence into a 'weak' area of the opposition in order to trap them What I am saying is that overall the biggest taxation to the squad would be in the attacking quartet and midfielders, but their injuries don't really follow that trend. In fact, the overall majority of Liverpools injuries have been contact related. Of course, you could argue that playing this way with injury prone players such as Ings and Walcott has accelerated their time off the pitch, and one 'could' argue this is exaggerated by the schedules and the fact that we are unable to use a lot of our rehab facilities due to covid restrictions, but ultimately moving away from this philosophy isn't easy for a coach such as Ralph or Klopp That being said, I do still carry an issue with the overall footballing decisions to release the players we did out on loan when it was evident that this season will be incredibly taxing for us, both because of the way we play and because of the compressed schedule. I'm still not convinced the overall injuries are systemic of tactics though, and us and Liverpool are not isolated cases. Crystal Palace for instance have one of the longest injury lists and they play in with a much more compact and mechanical game-plan, so realistically the injury crisis' we see across the whole of the Premier league is largely due to the strain of attempting to play the number of games we have had to in such a small space of time It's only going to get worse, not only do we have a compact schedule this year, but we are squeezing in a Euros at the end of it, and then 2022 has a world cup effectively early season as well

Considering our current predicament I imagine that a lot of the waiting was to see where we ended up at the end of this season. This probably affects the negotiations on both ends to be honest. Relegation obviously affects the price and the overall saleability of the club in general, would the parties still be interested in a large club, with large outlay no longer receiving Prem payments and under the cloud of a restrictive loan agreement ? An FA Cup win will probably flip the favour to that of Gao/Kat, European entry will of course increase the potential price etc So for me its not beyond the realms of possibility that potential consortiums are waiting for our position to become a bit more clear, plus the overall impact of Covid on football in general probably becomes more clear this summer. A release to clubs to allow spectators back is massive for balance sheets etc Hopefully, all being well, we can be under new ownership come the summer, or at least headed into that direction... a lot depends on how desperate Gao is to release control and regain funds. As per Jordan/Reed etc, I'm not sure I really care much.... Reed gets a terrible terrible time on here but it seems to me he was pretty integral at building the clubs background footballing facilities such as the medical science/training ground/academy structure. It obviously all went wrong when he gained more power and involved himself more with recruitment.

I don't have a huge problem with the fact that his has no plan B Most tactical set ups these days, and this is very much the case for us, have to be coached so as that the players act automatically to certain situations and this is something that our 'press' is set up to do. Our tactical rigidity has always been both the cause of our success and failure at times (Previously I found this very much to be the reason that we were effective away but not at home) The issue I have with Ralph right now is how stubborn he is with this rigidity. Going back to my previous point, where the fans were scapegoated into being the 'issue' for our home form, the actual reasoning was our insistence to attempt to play our open gagenpress even against opposition that decided that set up to play defensive, obstructive football and counter on the wings.... still we persisted with our gameplan. He also, is quite poor at his in game management, often applying substitutions and tactical tweaks either too late or not at all, unfortunately we don't have the reinforcements that say Ole does at Utd, that can change games despite Ole's lack of tactical nous. We need a manager able to effectively think on his feet when required, and Ralph, unfortunately does not. Our lack of reinforcements, especially through our injury ravaged period, is of course not solely Ralphs fault, one can obviously question the decisions to send out certain players on loan. Another issue I have is again.... his tactical rigidity despite the fact that the players he had available were just not up to the task of carrying out his gameplan (and unfortunately, a gameplan such as ours needs players with the correct tactical and technical ability) he isn't the only manager of this failing of course, Klopp again is another that has failed to adequately adapt his tactics to the playing staff available. Do I think we should part ways with Ralph ? Not at all, I think from a coaching perspective he is as good a coach as we have had since Poch, but I think it is right that he is questioned and it is only right that he takes the bulk of responsibility for a season that has faltered. Perhaps we need to bring in an assistant able to think better on his feet, and bounce ideas to Ralph when required, Im still not convinced about what are extended managerial staff actually bring to the table. We do lack leaders, and probably have done since Fonte/VVD, this is something that I've been banging on about on twitter for months. Plenty of posts on here about the issue so I don't have to embellish further, but to be frank, a lack of characters on the pitch doesn't help our mental fragility. Reinforcements, yes, Ralph is working with an arm tied behind his back, I get that, a lot of the issues we have encountered have been out of his control, however, I still think he needs to accept the bulk of the responsibility for; Yet another 9-0 loss, a disastrous collapse in form, players abject and unmotivated performances In conclusion, his tenure has been a rollercoaster of high highs and low lows, but he is going to need to find a level of consistency if he is going to be here for the long term, part of that is on Ralph, and part will be down to reinforcement. I don't agree with us parting ways yet, partly because I'm not sure who we will be able to attract that has the ability to do a better job in the long term. But I do think he deserves the bulk of the critique going his way. Sorry for the long winded waffle guys

Forster KWP Salisu Jannik Bertie JWP Diallo Djenepo Armstrong Che Tella We don't need another change of system at the back, and certainly not to one that will encourage them to take less responsibility, Bednarek unfortunately deserves to sit one out and lets see what Salisu has to offer, I am a fan of Jan, but his recent issues (own goals etc) have seen him drop his form a bit Forster gives me more confidence than Macca, who had a poor showing even with the poor defence in front of him vs City Like another poster said, 3 of the 4 midfielders pick themselves, so the only other option is Djenepo vs Redmond and frankly Redders hasn't shown any improvement whatsoever.... He has the ability, but shows no forward intentions at all Che, again, picks himself, and I fancy Tella to give a championship defence a lot of problems with his pace and trickery Could we rest players ? Yes Should we ? I don't think so, of course league form has us all looking downwards but frankly if we don't pick up another 3/4 points in our run in we deserve the drop, I almost fear a loss to Bournemouth as more calamitous to our already mudded mental state then the benefits of resting our main players We...should.... should... beat Bournemouth, but I am genuinely worried tbh.... One things for sure, if Ralph cannot get these lads fired up and motivated after that shit show on Saturday then I think a lot of the recent criticism of his tenure are justified

I find it difficult to not question Ralph after that, of course, I don’t want him to leave and feel if anyone is the man to turn things around then it is he.. but last night was nothing short of capitulation The sending off, the officiating and the depleted squad certainly did not help but we ended up on the wrong side of a morale sapping mauling and you have to question where the pride and damage limitation was

https://twitter.com/alex_crook/status/1356747872260263936?s=21 Effectively Crook has stated that he has been told since the De Grossa exclusivity period has ended there are a number of parties interested in looking at Saints Could very well just be a shot in the dark soundbite but obviously could add a hint of hope that our current ownership situation may be on borrowed time

Neither of those players have had major injuries to both their knees though have they Ings also suffers with reasonably consistent niggles here and there (atleast 1 or 2 injury enforced absences a season) So no... its not an unfair criticism to highlight his likely lack of longevity

So what is up with Salisu now ? He has been on the bench a few times... but now it is long term ?

It all feels very very much weighted in Ings favour, and Im not sure I’m overly comfortable with that A 20m or even 30m release fee is absolute peanuts if Ings goes on to have another barnstorming end to the season, which almost negates tying him down in the first place... I would imagine even the likes of Leeds/ West Ham / Villa would be able to find that if they were looking to become much more clinical as an attacking outfit Add to that the fact we’ve offered a likely 3/4 year deal at inflated wages (as reported), the flipside is if he has a reoccurrence of his injuries (not unlikely unfortunately) then we are saddled with an unuseable asset with a large financial anchor around his neck There is no denying Ings is an exceptional player for us.. but he has realistically had 1 1/2 good seasons so far as well as a period of injury on a few occasions... so Im not sure it makes solid financial sense to abide by these terms