HarvSFC

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! 😂

Craig Dawson's a bit of a cult hero at West Ham and he's had a worse career on paper than Keane - Never been in contention for England and suffered two relegations with Watford and West Brom, so I guess it could work.

He made it to the top in that he got to Real Madrid and was the best player in the world behind Messi and Ronaldo for a couple of years. Wales' greatest ever player also. Giggs is a scumbag and used to drop out all the time anyway. Dragged them to numerous tournaments and they saw their future without him and Ramsey a last month and it was bleak. The ultimate big game player for Real Madrid and definitely the most decorated player we've ever produced. This goal is just bizarre, without considering he also scored an overhead kick in a Champions League final, but this is my favourite:

My memory of Blackpool at home in the cup is us being in League 1, them in the Premier League and beating them comfortably 2-0 with a very nice Guly goal. Post-match Holloway lost his head.

How'd he score that goal against West Ham? Would be the best goal I've ever seen live if he does it again.

In order to sign for Southampton, he has to start saying "There is no bigger club than Goztepe".

Every single Saints fan knew Jones was the wrong appointment, I even called bullshit and thought it was unthinkable when Pilchards said that he was our main target after Hasenhuttl But, there has been plenty of actions made by the club in the past that I disagreed with and then got wrong and ended up eating humble pie and I wanted this appointment to be one of those and some untapped genius by the club. However, it's now proven to be the joke appointment that we all knew it would be. We barely scraped a win against a mid-table League One Lincoln ffs. An offside goal and penalty not given gave us that win. 0 shots on target at home against 19th placed Nottingham Forest. Our first tactical substitution after 64 minutes and doesn't change the five at the back formation until the 85th minute when he takes off Lyanco for Armstrong. Alan Pardew had a better record in this league than this Stoke reject.

We've got the Danish Ralph Krueger. Take your shitty little Turkish club and fuck off.

Akpom's always been crap too, Middlesbrough loaned him out to Greece last season. I was surprised by his numbers for this season, but Armstrong and Adams also had a season of very good numbers in the Championship, but then couldn't replicate those here.

Lens beating PSG 2-1 at half time. They're second with 1 loss this season. Play with a back three and Kevin Danso is the central centre-back and seems to be rated in France. Perhaps Ross Wilson did identify a good player.

Aston Villa enjoying the result of appointing a top level manager. We were level on points with them when he was appointed, now 9 points and 8 places behind.