HarvSFC

That was God awful, and I shouldn't be saying that after a narrow 2-1 loss against Liverpool, but it was. You'd think we played an FA Cup final that went to penalties and losing half of our first team squad on Saturday, rather than having the long 10 day break. The tactics were crap. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Broja's crap up top on his own. He jogs around off the ball, doesn't press, nor win aerial duels. The ball would just come straight back to our end because we didn't have anything up top. Ings was as good, if not better off the ball as he was a finisher. Before we replace Broja this summer, we need to replace Ings again, as Armstrong clearly hasn't worked out. But, then we've been calling for a Pelle replacement since he left too. The short passing from goal kicks was another God awful tactic. McCarthy can't kick a ball, but his short passes throughout the match to Lyanco and Stephens were pretty much hospital balls throughout with Liverpool's press. We weren't gaining anything from them other than giving Liverpool possession closer to our goal. Despite it not working it only changed to around the 80 minutes when McCarthy just kicked the ball out to touch, again losing possession. And then you have the subs, again, wait until we're 2-1 down to make any subs. The passiveness was shocking too. Don't play open against Liverpool, but you can beat them for effort. We simply gave them too much space on the ball and stood off them at every opportunity. At 2-1 they were taking the piss and playing walking football, while when we had the ball their players were all over ours like a rash. We haven't been the high pressing team for some time now, which is really strange, as that was what got us to top of the league. I didn't stay to applaud this team after the match. If we got beat by Villa, Newcastle, Watford, Chelsea, Burnley, Palace, Brentford and Liverpool in our last 11 games by giving it a go, but ultimately being unlucky I may have. But, these guys just stopped playing for whatever reason and they earn a lot more money than me and I'm the one paying to watch them turn up half arsed. Hopefully next season's a bit more positive, I think much change is needed through the club. We need to up our standards again, it's all got a bit too cosy. The coaching staff left by Les Reed is very clear a job for the boys and from their just from their records they aren't qualified to be here. I wouldn't complain if Hasenhuttl is sacked/walks, or stays, but improvement is needed desperately. No more sentimental contracts. The Walcott deal was shocking even if he was free, as was the Long extension, as was the McCarthy extension, hence why the club won't announce it. The fans made clear their thoughts on McCarthy this evening.

We beat them 1-0 with Stephens, Diallo, Djenepo and Walcott starting with N'Lundulu, Valery and Tella coming off the bench. I remember Valery especially helped us to see out the game. They had the front three of Firmino, Salah and Mane, so anything's possible tonight. Of course, we'll either grind out a small victory, or get smashed, as is the Southampton way. No in between.

Benfica’s record signing is Nunez for £21m, according to transfermarkt. So, they’re playing with similar budgets to us, unless they make a big sale, which will likely be Nunez this summer. I don’t think beating Befica to a signing would be too unrealistic. It just depends on if the player believes the Premier League to be a greater platform than playing in the Champions League, which Benfica aren’t guaranteed to qualify for next season.

Another week goes by, another week where you're left wondering why Everton signed Alli, El Ghazi and van de Beek in January. Unfortunately, Leeds will have to beat Brentford due to GD next week and that doesn't look likely, however, another poor transfer window for Everton and they could drop. Can see Pickford, Richarlison and despite reverting back to type Calvert-Lewin pushing for moves this summer, and as we know, Everton aren't very good at spending money.

Yeah, the Hughes appointment in itself wasn't the worst thing. We could have gone for another inexperienced manager and ended up as Leeds are now after appointing Marsch. A three year contract and a summer window, where JWP was linked to Burnley and Watford though, that was when we threw out all of our previous strategies. And now he's managing in League Two.

I was bored during the match. Liverpool will play 62 matches this season, that's three more than we played in 2009-10, but we didn't have £40m players making up our bench. As said before, Klopp would combust with the Football Leagues scheduling, a 46 match league season and midweek matches that matter every week, unlike the early Cup rounds when they were playing their reserve squad and the dead rubber Champions League matches. If the Premier League adopted the Easter Good Friday and Bank Holiday Monday matches we'd never hear the end of it.

At least it was Mount that missed. Liverpool can have the FA Cup at the cost of Salah and Van Dijk.

That's Son though, he's the nicest player in world football because he cried after purposely hurting an opponent, which resulted in a broken leg.

Leeds' highest league position has been 15th this season, although this will be just their 4th gameweek in the relegation zone and one of those was after their 5-1 loss to United on the opening day. So, they've been consistently bad this season, there were just worse teams keeping them afloat, but a bad run and it now looks like they're done. Dan James for £25m was pretty disastrous, as was Rodrigo for £26m the summer before. They've spent good money up here, but like Sheffield United before, they've spent it on dross.

Remember thinking he'd have probably been playing for Everton this season, as they didn't have a natural left-back after Digne fell out with Benitez, while he hasn't really got a look in for us. Might regret his move. Signed with some promise as Everton didn't want to let him go if I recall and was rated highly in the youth scene, but hasn't had a first season to shout about, much like Simeu. Agreed that Shaw was an exceptional talent at that age and came along just when we needed him. We're crying out for that now. I guess natural talent is worth more than physique below Premier League level, as both Walcott and Bale were a clear class above the moment they broke through, neither were physical specimens and both needed to be heavily nurtured when they moved up. Probably explains the likes of Hesketh and Slattery from years gone too. Highly regarded and made our first team, which only a minority do. But, neither had whatever the Premier League demands, leaving one at Eastleigh and the other in Scotland.

Hopefully City sign Elyounoussi to help Haaland settle. I believe Elyounoussi had a good game against City once for Basel if they need a scouting report.

And there he's averaging 1.8 goals a league season and 11.2 appearances.

The cynic inside of me thinks they may have been chosen as they agreed to keep Semmens/Crocker in their pretty comfortable positions.

You could slightly forgive the Chelsea result, because they're Chelsea. But, this is Brentford...

We then ended up with Nicholas Bignall from Reading.

Imagine any other Premier League club having a goalkeeper crisis for the last five years and then trying to sort that problem with a League One goalkeeper, who finished tenth in the third tier. Wouldn't happen, we need to aim higher for a position that has been our major weakness for years.

Brentford don't have any pace in their backline, so much so they struggled to contain Juan Mata and Cristiano Ronaldo on Monday. Unfortunately, we don't have much pace either across the pitch, but could be a weakness of theirs that we look to exploit this weekend. Christian Eriksen is a class above every other Brentford player as well as any of ours and seems to have saved their season after they were tumbling down the league before his arrival. He can pull out a piece of magic from nothing, so he's the obvious danger man.

Previous winners: JWP won the award in 2013, Jake Hesketh in 2014, 2015 evades me, Alfie Jones 2016, Jake Vokins 2017, 2018 evades me, Will Ferry 2019, Alex Jankewitz 2020, Will Tizzard 2021. Been a while since one of the winners made it here, hopefully it’s this time.

Welcome back to the south coast’s top club, or whatever it was they used to say. Remember, they went all out for this on the January deadline day bringing in Dembele, Moore, Cantwell, Phillips AND Woodman all in one day, so would have looked a bit silly if they didn’t make it. Don’t rate Parker too highly as manager and can see them staying around the relegation zone, which is good for us. They don’t play with the intensity of Brentford, Leeds or Sheffield United who have proven to be the surprise packages of recent years.

The Kane drama was happening last summer too when JWP signed his new contract, so his agent would have been stupid not to negotiate a release clause were certain clubs to come in for him. Kane will be 29 at the start of the new season, City have turned their attention to Haaland and it now looks like Kane could potentially see multiple seasons without Champions League football, let alone the 0 team trophies won for his career.

Had Newcastle, Everton, West Ham, Aston Villa, Leeds and the big six had the lack of investment that we've had since 2016 when Koeman left, you wouldn't hear the end of it. I think if the plan for the club and the new ownership is to keep breaking even in the transfer market then we as fans need to start making our voices heard again, as selling Ings for £30m and replacing him with Armstrong for £15m and selling Vestergaard for £15m and replacing him with Lyanco for £7m (plus some other cheap squad fillers) isn't too far from the Lowe Premier League days, only prices have increased. As you say, we, a Premier League club with good facilities thanks to Markus Liebherr and little direct competition geographically were bought for £100m, while Sheffield United in the Championship are currently reportedly being taken over for £115m. So, you'd imagine the new ownership have saved some cash and would be able to put it into the necessary changes that are needed. But, then again, we are probably the only Premier League club who had to take a loan out in recent years and need to pay that back, so... Now, I don't know how much it costs to buy Goztepe, and I've tried Googling to no success, but I'd imagine it's the price of a good standard of player. As a fan, I'd obviously prefer that money be put into our budgets, rather than focussing on buying another club. The City group model works because Manchester City's owners have infinite funds, but Watford under the Pozzos have not been aided by their ownership of Udinese and formerly Granada, so I'm unsure of its benefits for us. The new ownership do of course have this summer to show us what their intentions are, but reports of a new deal for Long, as much as I appreciate him as a player aren't what I want to hear. Palace let a number of their long-term servants go last summer and they're now at the beginning stages of a new journey/era. While new contracts for Walcott and McCarthy last year do also show that Semmens/Crocker aren't always as ruthless as they need to be and sometimes sentimentality kicks in. One thing that I have noticed is that the club do not arrange any fan forums when we're going through this current spell of form.

I still wonder why Everton signed Patterson, Alli, Van De Beek and El Ghazi in January. Can see there being a red in this match.

We were still a stepping stone club when we were in the Championship, but we were losing players to mid-tier clubs. I remember Kenywne Jones going on strike so that he could go to Sunderland, Surman going to Wolves, Baird going to Fulham, Davies to Stoke, Dyer to Swansea, Puncheon had loans to Millwall, Blackpool and QPR, who were all the league above us at the time of him joining them. At least now, we're in a place in the hierarchy where we generally lose our top players to the top six clubs in the country and generally get good money for them. We go down, we lose players like JWP and KWP far easier to the likes of West Ham, Palace, Brighton, Leicester, Wolves, Newcastle and for a lot less and then we also have no chance of potentially signing an upcoming star like Mane, Van Dijk, Wanyama and Lovren as they don't join Championship clubs.

The difference between a good squad and a bad one. Long, Redmond and Tella were performing the press well in the first half, causing the Palace defence to make loads of errors. They just don’t have the quality to extend the lead beyond the 1-0 that it was, but they did run themselves into the ground. Broja comes on, his off the ball play is shocking. On the ball, he’s obviously of a very good quality, but for his physique he never wins a header, so doesn’t give us a focus point or a target up top like Long does and he’s too slow to move on the press, allowing Palace to stroll it out of defence. Armstrong has declined massively this season. He used to be in our top three players, now he just looks well off the pace and Elyounoussi is and always will be Elyounoussi. They bring on their best player of the last how many years, who scores the winner, last years Championship young player of the year and Hughes, who is a tidy player. And we voted for 5 subs when we aim to make a profit every summer. Palace will fill up those places with some more £15m players.