HarvSFC

Do we know if Wales were told you only get three group fixtures in the World Cup and they needed to win tonight?

FFS, we'll probably have to close block 1 and 2 because of those events. Awaiting the long email regarding how our hooliganism has influenced the innocents of Goztepe.

Jones has converted to satanism and summoned the devil to play upfront for us.

Regularly hit double figures for Arsenal and that was often from that wide position. 18 goals in 67 Champions League appearances, which is perceived to be the highest level. 21 in 43 in 2012-13 and 19 in 37 in 2016-17. Finishing might have been his weakness, but if he was any good now, his finishing would have been a huge improvement on anything we currently have and would have been a good addition to Ings.

This goalkeeper’s been paid off, but strangely he plays for Qatar.

So, that want corrupt at all.

I always remember his two goals against Dagenham and Redbridge as standouts:

I've previously been on board with the narrative of re-signing players I've once enjoyed in a Saints shirt. I was excited when Walcott re-signed, thinking he'd bring something different to our team and that he was a natural finisher with experience, even if his pace had started to wane. How wrong I was, he's turned out to be a huge waste of wages and a squad place, which we can't replace until his contract expires. He's become the 2022 unsellable and has declined far below the current level we're playing at. This also made me hesitant when the Bale rumours started in the summer, and again, some were on board with it, but most know club football isn't for him anymore and he's started just twice in 17 matches in the MLS this season. Would've been another costly mistake. Oxlade-Chamberlain is now, also very similar to Walcott and Bale. A crock who spends more time with the physio than he does on the pitch and will be asking for a high wage, as he also made it to the top clubs. All of these players are on the decline and they're declining to a level below us. We have good memories of what they were, but possibly like Rooney did, they've now burnt out to a lower level because they went straight into the first team when they were young because they were once that good. Plus, Oxlade-Chamberlain isn't even the winger we had, like Maitland-Niles he has some weird complex about being a central midfielder, rather than his best position where most managers played him. So, I'd avoid him.

Obvious ones been mentioned in Wayne Thomas vs Ipswich, Cuco Martina vs Arsenal and Sofiane Boufal vs West Brom, so I'll go for Tadanari Lee's one league goal against Derby at 5:40 in the video below:

The situation isn't peril. We're six points off 12th, so we're still very much in touching distance of mid-table and two wins could put us in some comfort. We just need to get those attackers in January as soon as possible so we don't lose any more games cheaply and missing good chances. Liverpool announced Van Dijk in December, that'll do. Or, we could go on one of those unbeaten runs that many predicted Burnley to go on last season so they'd catch us.

You'd hope that both Wolves and Forest spent their January striker budgets in the summer. Forest bought Awoniyi and Dennis for a combined £40m, while Wolves put £15m down on Kalajdzic to be their main man, only for an injury to scupper it, while Diego Costa and Raul Jimenez will be on a good wage too and nobody's taking on the latter after his injury problems. From looking around Wolves signed Edozie's brother in the summer, he was playing for Bromley.

Didn't really take much notice until he said in his post match press conference, but it would have been easier to sit out yesterday's match and take charge after the World Cup with a clean slate and more importantly easier fixtures. The new Wolves manager didn't take charge of their defeat against Arsenal yesterday despite being announced 5 days prior to Jones. The same happened with Emery at Villa also, announced on the 24th October, but didn't take charge of the 4-0 defeat against Newcastle on the 29th, giving himself 13 days to work and learn the squad before his first match on the 6th November. So, he deserves some credit there for not hiding from the Liverpool fixture and making himself accountable, as could have been a far worse start than 3-1.

Bielsa only knows how to play one way. Like Ragnick, the hipsters made out as though he was the second coming. However, once, his primary game plan wasn't working, he didn't know what to do. Hence the many thrashing Leeds received. He's basically a worse version of Hasenhuttl, but for some reason he actually does have a cult following.

League One clubs aren’t having a World Cup break, whereas we’ll be restarting our season. That should hopefully be the only factor that causes the match to be a tight one. We just need to get to a semi final and hope the only other three clubs remaining are Football League clubs. It’s happened before. 🤷‍♂️

At least he's got two of his own men coming with him. As said earlier in the week, Mick Harford, who is very valued at Luton and is in temporary charge now is pretty much Mr. Luton, so he would been impossible to get. Hopefully, we've got two good, young and up and coming coaches in Cohen and Sheehan, who I remember from our League One days. The problem with Hasenhuttl was that after Rohl left he didn't really have another individual of a traditional coaching team with him and that was clear on the touchlines. https://www.lutontown.co.uk/news/2022/november/nathan-farewell/ Gave a nice farewell to the Luton fans also. Far better than anything we've ever got from our leavers. Time to get behind him and the team. I was apprehensive regarding the Pochettino appointment and that was a success, so hopefully this is another case of me being proved wrong and those that get paid the big money to find the individuals have identified something that we're missing.

Getting through the tie without a manager was the key. It wasn’t against the League One Skates, so despite being slightly embarrassing tonight, nobody’s going to remember it in the long run. Six Premier League sides dropped out tonight, including Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea. We all know City are going to win it, but there’s an opportunity here and it’s the hope that gets you as a Saints fan.

Brentford found/had a better alternate option in the Championship in Frank, which would imply we could find a better alternate option in the Premier League.

Says he's flattered to be linked with us and calls us a wonderful Premier League club. Semmens needs to drill it into him quick that we're plucky little underdogs who are lucky to be in the position we are. Side note, also smaller than Goztepe.

Just to note, Stoke were 19th going into tonight, so it would have been a match Luton would have been expected to win despite the stature of the two clubs. May have also been why Luton dominated possession, etc.

Plenty of positives. I mentioned the Portsmouth result and top of the league in the other thread, but when he took over, we were a broken club, much as we appear to be now following the mismanagement of Pellegrino, Hughes, Reed and Wilson. He cleared the egos of Cedric and Hoedt immediately, while Austin, Boufal and Lemina got a bit more time, but weren't team players and not up to the Premier League and needed to go the next summer. He immediately got the team working harder and employing a high press, which brought plenty of positive results, wins against Arsenal, Leicester, Everton and Tottenham in his first few months here, while also getting a draw against Chelsea. We stayed up comfortably despite only winning 1 league game in 16 when he joined. Other positives would be unlocking Danny Ings and getting 22 league goals out of him in a single season. We had a genuine top quality striker in the Premier League. We were the best team to come out of lockdown, I don't know how much was down to him, if we had a really good sports science department, or if our players were just really good son-in-laws, but that was a great period to support the club during very dark times when there was little to get excited about. He was the man stood on the touchline, who you could hear for the whole 90 minutes, talking the players through and motivating them, so we'll give him the credit. Then you have the drinks break fiasco. For some reason it correlated with a good period for us, it was something different, within the laws and it appeared on the outside to work. Shame we dropped it after people started cottoning on. Also, Vestergaard was a very poor defender, but he was actually worth having in the team due to his diagonal balls. Another skill and tactic discovered, that got us good results and good money for a player who can't do the basics required of their position. I won't miss the throw-ins that worked once in four years and I hope the new manager takes JWP off corners after Redmond proved more effective taking them over a handful of games last season, but there is plenty to miss from the years gone by. Here he is celebrating on his own after the players have gone, taking all the limelight, as The Athletic states.

Hopefully he gets a good reception if he ever does return to St. Marys. We had some very good times, beating Portsmouth 4-0 and sitting top of the league where it seemed like we had discovered the perfect mix of talent and energy and could match most in the league. We did also have some very bad times, which you don't need to be reminded of as gets brought up most weeks, but we always seemed to recover, until the Aston Villa 4-0 last season. Since then it hasn't been the same, we lost all identity, despite mass coaching and player changers and unfortunately this sacking now seems overdue and it got toxic in the ground on occasion. He was however the man who kept us in the Premier League comfortably each season, despite getting fuck all from above and for that we should be thankful. Shame this season was one season too far.

I don't know what to make of it really. There's a long list of managers who earned their stripes in the Football League, enjoyed a lot of success, but then couldn't hack it in the Premier League. Managers such as Nigel Adkins, Paul Lambert, Carlos Carvalhal, Paulo Di Canio, Paul Ince, Chris Wilder, Brian McDermott and now currently Steve Cooper have all played a part in relegating a team up here after enjoying promotions down in the leagues below. Adkins took Reading down before anyone jumps on that! Eddie Howe, Brendan Rodgers and Thomas Frank are the outliers. It's certainly a risk going for Nathan Jones. Additionally, there are certain things Sports Republic needed to get spot on since their takeover. They needed to get the goalkeeper position spot on and make a Boruc/Niemi/even a Forster esque signing. But we've ended up with someone with a lot of potential, but prone to a mistake and gave his best Angus Gunn impression yesterday. We also needed to get the striker position spot on and make a Pelle/Ings esque signing, but we ended up with nobody. The next thing Sports Republic cannot make a mistake on, or we will 100% be relegated is the vacant managerial position. We've recently seen Aston Villa buy out the contract of Emery, who was managing Villarreal, currently 8th in La Liga, and a multiple Europa League winner, who has Arsenal, PSG, Sevilla and Valencia on his CV. If it doesn't work out for him, you can at least see why they appointed him. While after weeks of faffing around, Wolves have finally appointed a former Real Madrid, Spain and Porto manager, who has also won the Europa League. There's a World Cup in a couple of weeks, there are going to be plenty of names available after that, I'm sure. I'm also getting bored of this underdog narrative currently surrounding the club and that is where Jones has excelled at Luton, a club which doesn't have any expectations in the Championship, other than staying up. We've been a Premier League club for 10 years now and were one long before 2012 also. We're an established team up here now and should be acting like one, instead of what is currently happening. Mick Harford also has a big influence over Luton, he just isn't very good when he's in the manager position, he does however have a big connection to Luton, so I doubt he'd follow Jones here and the last time Jones had to manage big Premier League names and egos at a club with expectations, he failed, losing 17 of his 38 matches, winning just 6. I sure do hope Stoke was a learning curve and Jones proves me wrong if this is the route we are going to go down, but at the moment it does not fill me with confidence. Suppose I should be grateful it isn't a Gerrard/Lampard/Sherwood "name" appointment, or the cheap option in Selles, who hasn't proven anything here yet.

One day we're going to act like a normal football club with no drama around it. Unfortunately, that day is not today and doesn't look to be anywhere in the near future. Our manager's likely been told he's going to leave the club in the World Cup window, with the official line being mutual consent as some respect for the work he's done here over the years. Only, that's backfired in that the manager now doesn't have any motivation to do anything for the club, as is human nature. He's even spoken about retiring after us, so he doesn't even care about maintaining a good reputation so that he gets a good club afterwards. So, you see bizarre decisions like Walcott starting, Elyounoussi playing 90 minutes every week, making subs after going 3-0 down and those shite throw-ins that do nothing for us. You either sack him, or back him. Not, we don't see you in our long-term plan as you're currently failing in your job, but we'll give you a few more weeks to cost us some more points as an act of respect. We went into today level on points with Aston Villa. They twisted on their manager, bought out the contract of a top 10 La Liga team manager, a manager who has won Ligue 1 and the Europa League 4 times and done Manchester United 3-1. That's unthinkable for little old Southampton, as despite finishing just 3 points off the Champions League spots 6 years ago, we're just lucky to be here, looking at massive teams like Brighton and Brentford currently sit in 6th and 11th. The club's got a loser's mentality throughout it. No wonder Gakpo and Dembele didn't want to come here in the summer, imagine the pitch they got. We used to attract Alderweireld, Van Dijk, Bertrand, even Osvaldo and Ramirez were two rated big names in world football. Now we have to settle for prepubescent kids.

Why’s there a pigeon next to the subs players names on Twitter? Never noticed it before.