Lallana's Left Peg

Did anyone honestly think he was going to sign a new deal? Even if he wanted to stay and could earn a great wage, the club can't afford to sign anyone that will do anything to stop us dwelling in the bottom half for the foreseeable and he's probably fed up of kicking off over 100 times a season.

I see what you did there...

Brighton have a net spend of £202m the past 5 years. Their owner invests a lot. They don't have to sell. They will eventually get it right and head up the table.

Brighton about to drop £25m on a striker while we're operating in and around the £7-10m mark 😬 https://www.theguardian.com/football/2021/jun/16/brighton-agree-record-25m-deal-to-sign-stuttgart-forward-nicolas-gonzalez-argentina?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other That is arguably a direct rival in the part of the table we operate in with about 4 times the spending power we have. We're only heading in one direction unless we get an owner able to invest.

I find it unlikely but also clubs don't often chase players they haven't been led to believe there is a chance of a deal - either from the club, the player, or people connected to both.

Haven't you also exactly described Eddie Howe's tenure at Bournemouth in the above as well?

People writing off Elyounoussi are holding our team to a higher standard than I've seen in a while. I've no doubt he could match the output of most of our other attacking midfielders bar Armstrong if he had the same amount of opportunity. I'm not against moving on from him and I think he has struggled at Saints but the question you have to ask yourself is - can we afford better?

Clearly had his head turned. Ings as well. Club has no respect from its players and we've always been a soft touch, even moreso now because of our financial situation. He will go where he wants in the summer.

Bumping this ahead of the summer. The talk of giving loaned out players a second chance is confirmation we're broke. There is a lot to fix this summer and it all revolves around money - shipping out players for it and spending the required amount on it. I'll start with a little poll - anyone think we'll outspend a single other team in our division this summer - including the promoted teams? I can only see us and Burnley fighting it out for that honour. It's pathetic. Takeover needed.

For this to succeed it has to go one of two ways: 1. Ralph is backed and we sign players of a required quality and type to meet his ideological view on how he wants us to play. 2. Ralph finds a pragmatic bone in his body and adapts his ideology to fit what he has to work with, which is clearly a lower half quality of player and a bottom three transfer budget. What is happening right now is neither and its very very messy. Saints can't afford to sack him either.

I wish him well, can't complain based on the service he gave the club and overall body of work. But can't help but think selfishly in the short-term that its now two left backs we need to buy this summer with what I am assuming is a small transfer budget which isn't supplemented by his departure because we won't receive a fee for him.

I was never worried about us going down, but only being the 17th best team in this division is worrying for next season, because we won't outspend anyone above us in the league this summer and if one of the teams coming up gets their transfers right we're in for a crappy season come August.

That team had Ings and Bertrand. This team does not. That team also had Ramsay and Jankewitz to be fair. But I bet it would beat this team.

Have we fielded a worse 11 for a league game since our second season back in the league?

Most concerning part of that news is that Gao is understandably holding out to ensure he doesn't sell at a loss, but the state of our club and debt means 1 person has only valued the club at half the amount Gao wants. Half! So the upshot is that as long as Gao holds out for what seems to be an unrealistic price the club will slowly decay as it doesn't have a pot to piss in while the teams around us in the league spend £20m+ on players. This only ends one way for us in the medium term...

On the plus side in the league over the last 18 weeks just three win bonuses to pay out and four clean sheet bonuses. So that'll help.

Whilst I don't disagree with you I look at Leeds and they have been able to sustain it over a season and we haven't. Maybe a lack of access to recovery facilities doesn't help us. But when you consider Leeds have only just been promoted and have had to adjust to the jump in quality they have been able to play games with relentless energy and we have not and are 10pts ahead of us and it'll probably be 15 by June. They can also manage games and we can not. There is a problem somewhere completely independent of our ability to maintain energy levels, and even then I think we should question why we can't piece together a game for 90mins.

No backbone to this team and questionable management right now. We don't have enough talent to win games in those circumstances.

I had heard that the Chinese state banned investment in foreign sporting organisations, which I assume means even if Gao wanted to, he wouldn't be allowed to invest in Saints. So he has to sell really, but I guess selling in a pandemic means he wouldn't get his money back and he'll be refusing to sell at a loss. So we're stuck in limbo slowly but surely dying. Happy days.

I'm happy for them, and their circus, to go and the rest of the clubs in this nation can normalise with respect to income and we can enjoy things a bit more. I'm fully prepared for my boy to have a 'TV team' he watches in this silly European Super League and a team that he goes and watches and supports in this country outside of it.

Today's disappointing performance isn't really just about missing out on the chance to play in an FA Cup Final to win a trophy, it's that the distraction from the last 4 months of awful form has gone and it brings into focus the future of the football club. I've pondered this for a few seasons now, but this past summer really brought it into focus: Is the Premier League becoming too rich for us to exist in? It seems nice and normal to think a club of our size could sustain and self-fund itself in the lower half of the league, but I think those days are coming to an end. To even exist in this league now you need to invest more than you earn, and have the appropriate leadership and funds to do so. The return of Aston Villa and Leeds means we can forget about ever competing with them again, so each season right now I think it comes down to the three promoted clubs, us, Burnley, Newcastle (under the current ownership) and Palace as to who goes down. Brighton invest and will get it right through sheer financial muscle eventually, and everyone else operates at a financial level considerably out of our means. and even Palace right now are spending properly. We've already had the reports that this summer we'll spend under £10m each on a couple of players, and that's just to fill holes - clubs pay that to get a player on loan these days. Not to mention doubt over the future of two of our starting defence and a striker (who happens to be our best player). Each season the clubs ability to complete in this division erodes, and we delay the inevitable. The only chance we've got is a change of ownership, but that seems unlikely. I don't feel optimistic about the ability of this club to operate in a rich mans playground - can anyone try and present a crumb of optimism and hope in response? I just don't see a way for Saints to exist in this league in the medium term and each season is a step closer to the moment we do get relegated.

The biggest problem this group has, or maybe its our Manager, is an inability to stop the rot and dig out a result to give us a foundation to go again. When we're good the momentum makes us very good, and when we're bad the momentum makes us very bad. It doesn't really cost us too much given other issues (club ownership, lack of funding etc.), but if we're to make progress as a team we need to take a thumping then shake it off - the hangover of things - both in game and across games - lingers far too much and it's not right.

Remember, the team are asked to defend space not players. Against the best teams, or teams with the right sorts of players, they will destroy us. I'm not excusing mistakes or lack of focus which we clearly suffer from, but the team is set-up to play in a particular way and that way gets massively exposed against teams with real quality who manage to circumvent the approach we have towards defending as a team. Over the course of a season it serves us well, but we'll always be on the end of some thumpings with this system.

We're not going down, I think there are at least 6 teams worse than us in this division. But I don't know for how much longer that will be the case over the course of the next few years. We haven't got any money, we don't spend any money, and we don't produce players other teams want to generate money. Eventually that slow rotting will cost us and we'll fall out of the division. It won't be a shock, its entirely inevitable and its a slow and painful death.

When the opposition doesn't even have to turn up to beat you then there are big warning signs that something is wrong. Team is devoid of confidence and lacking the quality to achieve anything to act as a catalyst to generate some. Just a complete lack of cohesion in the team which is entirely down to Ralph. I don't want him to go, far from it, but he deserves to be properly questioned about what is going wrong and why.