HarvSFC

Positives are that Perraud's definitely staked a claim for the starting 11. Said in the week that is was strange that he had been dropped, as he's a dependable player at the least and has Jones' desired aggression. Him on the left and KWP on the right gives us more balance.

Also offered £30m to Roma for Zaniolo according to Romano. We can just look on with awe, I suppose.

I've got an anomaly. Pellegrino had Carrillo.

It's a Martina/Pied signing. Nothing to get worked up about. If he ever becomes our first choice right-back after selling KWP/Livramento and doing the Saints thing of sticking with what we've got then we'll have a problem. Additionally, if this is our last signing of the window. 6 days left, not many rumours considering we did both the Orsic and Alcaraz deals in the public, but got to have some hope they aren't as inept as we all believe.

Perraud’s nothing special, but he’s an average 6/10 player. Not too sure why he’s been frozen out. KWP hasn’t been much good on the left compared to last season and has looked a lot better on the right, which is helpful as he’s still our best ball carrier. Playing one of the centre-backs at full back has helped defensively, but limited us going forward. Perraud’s also one of the few with any aggression in the side, so you’d have thought he’d have been a Jones favourite like Lyanco.

First half was awful, little to no quality in the team and Newcastle ballooned a few shots over and had a goal disallowed. Second half was much better, we actually gave them a game in the second half up until the disallowed goal. Like Saturday, the disallowed goal killed all of our momentum, but you would say tonight's was more rightly chalked off. They did also bring a £70m forward off their bench, who proved to be the difference. One good, one bad on the new signings. Alcaraz looked real good for just 20. Lost the ball a few times, but is always looking to try something. Had a good shot and played Adams through, two potential match winning plays, which we don't have a lot of in the squad. Worried me when he got the early booking, but maintained his head. We definitely need to play through him more going forward. In the first half he wasn't as effective as a lot of our balls were long, aimless and going over him. Orsic produced his best Elyounoussi impression. Played like a player who's used to having all the time in the world when on the ball, which I guess he is at 30 and playing in uncompetitive leagues all his career. Needs to learn the pace of English football quickly, but then I was also surprised by his lack of pace alongside his poor ball control when he did get one of his few touches. Adam Armstrong and Edozie in comparison were a lot better and threatened Newcastle a bit more. Everyone's become a Newcastle fan all of a sudden, but it's only 1-0 and it would be sweet to be waving goodbye to Jacob Murphy, who's a horrendous footballer anyway after dumping them out of the cup next week.

I don't hate Adams, he plays a good support striker, but as the main man he's hopeless. We create at least one big chance every game and he fluffs it. Man United at home, I'm sure someone put him through and he eased it to De Gea. Wolves open goal. Home against Everton which would have put us 2-0 up. West Ham, which to be fair he created the chance and beat their makeshift centre-backs, but again he hit at Fabianski. Villa on the weekend, offside. Lincoln one on one for his hattrick. Tonight, again through, but hits it at the goalkeeper. This is why we need a clinical striker. The strikers aren't getting loads of chances, so we need to make the most with the ones we are getting, which we aren't at the moment. A new winger doesn't fix the issue.

One day I'm going to come on here and be welcomed by good news. As I posted a few months ago when a few said they'd welcome relegation, we aren't keeping hold of anyone with an ounce of talent if we go down to the Championship, including those coming through the youth ranks with Chelsea and Man City hoovering everything up. If he goes to Leeds that'll be disappointing and should be a big wake up call, but it won't be.

We can't compete with Bournemouth. We're little Southampton and lucky to be in their league, don't you know. Bournemouth have already spent £20m on a winger, last Thursday, who got an assist on Saturday. I thought spending £20m on two separate players in the same window was against the rules, or at least it is to those in charge. In a logical world this would be a blessing in disguise. We don't need another winger who will chip in with the odd goal every four weeks and I know nothing of Jackson really, but I expect he will be another Mara/Edozie, who will take time, clearly has potential, but there are better players in the here and now. We need a striker, a Gabbiadini, who joined a Puel team in January that was firing blanks, who raised the team, scored 6 goals in his first 4 matches and was only stopped due to injury and then suffered the shit managers of Pellegrino and Hughes. My only concern is that those in the driving seat/recruitment side haven't shown much logic/thought in the past year and after missing out on Jackson it's going to be another case of "the right players weren't out there for us, we're happy with what we've got".

After a days work, you find the only news is Jan Bednarek has been recalled. FFS. A leader, a voice, aggressive. We’ve got the wrong player. An overly passive, self-inflated egotistical knobhead full of mistakes and shirks the club paying his wages to sit on the Poland bench is the correct description. Villa couldn’t believe their luck getting him off the wage bill. If only Arsenal would recall Maitland-Niles.

Lets just be thankful Man City rejected our offer for Liam Delap in the summer. 3 goals in 24 Championship appearances. Now looking for his first Preston goal after struggling at Stoke, played 129 minutes for Preston so far. Another good player identified by the recruitment team/Shields.

They did start their new £9m midfielder, though. Which is probably another glaring error from Wolves. #TonicLikeLeminade

It's pretty crazy how in 2005 we went down with having Beattie for half a season, Phillips, Crouch, Camara for the second half and Ormerod (Pahars was out for the entire season). While Blackstock was playing the Mara role with a substitute hat-trick against Colchester and a goal vs Pompey. Unfortunately we don't have any Beattie's, Phillips', Crouch's or Camara's this time around, who would walk into this team.

From the stadium I didn't think we were as bad as some are making out. Villa had spells where they had the pressure and we had spells where we had the pressure with neither making it really count until Villa scored their goal. If Edozie had a final ball he'd be a good player, but his runs are pointless when he surrenders possession as soon as he passes. But, after 18 years of watching the Saints, that refereeing performance is up there with one of the worst. So poor. Not just the big decisions, but the ones that don't get picked up by Match of the Day too. Starting off with Villa making three professional fouls on Armstrong, Edozie and Salisu, all were goal side, albeit Salisu was in our half, but all were done simply to take out the man and stop the game. Okay, it's one of those refs who is going to say it's too early for a booking, we'd expect the same treatment. Wrong, Lyanco gets booked for his first foul, a lunge in the Villa half after losing possession. Villa were buying free kicks from him, we couldn't press them high as on the few occasions we did win the ball up the pitch, their player hit the deck and got a foul, we had a couple of situations where we were clean through, but it was brought back. Unfortunately, our players aren't as well versed in diving to win free-kicks, as would be greatly appreciated with JWP. Then you have our goal. Just watched it back on the Sky Sports highlights and I guess I am bias, I can see why it was disallowed, but that's piss poor and weak. You'll get defenders going down every time a striker goes near them if this is how football is now judged. Finally, stop signing crap squad players because they're cheap. We need players who are ready to come in from day 1 and improve the 11 straight away. At our best Les Reed's mantra was that we do not sign players unless they improve the starting eleven before he fell up his own arsehole. Nowadays, all our new signings make up the bench. Wood signed for Forest yesterday and started today. Bournemouth's new £20m signing who signed on Thursday got the full 90 minutes today. While ours who have been in for over a week now are an unused substitute and a five minute cameo. We're 20th in the league ffs, if we can't find players who are better than the eleven that have started every week of this season then our recruitment team is one of the worst in the business. (If we didn't already know that). Bet we're going to chuck £20m on Wacko Jacko, who won't be ready to start until Easter.

Going 2-0 up against City isn't for everyone.

On the topic of Aribo, where's he in the pecking order now? Behind JWP, Elyounoussi and Edozie for players just behind the striker, possibly A. Armstrong and Djenepo now following their showing's last week. Then that's just the players who he was already competing with. You'd imagine Orsic will take up one of the attacking position's and push him further down, while Alcaraz also plays the attacking midfield and will be looking for first team football. Then, if Jackson comes in, that's again one of the attacking midfield position's gone. Seems like Aribo won't work out here. Signed for buttons, but he just doesn't fit an energetic, battling side. Had it good in a luxury team in a league with little competition at Rangers.

Lis is at Troyes. Only recently started playing for them after they appointed Patrick Kisnorbo as their manager, if you remember him. Played 9, kept one clean sheet and conceded 17, so very Saintsy.

Ings would make this transfer window a perfect one, a CDM would be greedy. We’d stay up comfortably with Ings back scoring goals from nothing. I don’t see why West Ham/Everton would go for somebody other than Ings if he’s available though.

Bottom of the league, but the bigger picture is that we're now 2 points off 14th. Come on you Saints!

I love Ward-Prowse! Never criticise this man!

Ward-Prowse in the right position is so good!

Uh oh. Don't undo the good work so far again Saints!

Fuck, that was confidence boosting. The Saints have got me hoping again after last week and it’s the hope the gets you! Every single player was a 10/10 tonight and did their job expertly. Bazunu, Lyanco, KWP, DCC, Lavia, JWP, Djenepo and A. Armstrong were all at their best tonight. This squad does have the quality. Whoever we get tonight (the draw will probably be done before I get this post sent), we’ve just knocked out the best team in the competition and the Liverpool semi-finals of the Puel era are up their with my best memories as a Saints fan. Let’s believe! A couple more positive signings, who you can already see have impacted the squad despite not featuring too much, or at all tonight and we can make 2023 a good one.

This is why Wilcox is making the step up.

Has Jones made a deal with God? This is unrecognisable from last week and I definitely wasn’t going to go tonight after last week! 😂