HarvSFC

That's a young David Beckham. Same initials too, so he can be revered like David Bentley was.

Gerrard probably just wanted to get away from Ross Wilson.

Manchester United have Paul McShane and Brighton have Gary Dicker, replacing Crofts, who is now their Under-23 manager. It’s the new thing.

Van Dijk only became world class when he went to Liverpool, it’s well acknowledged by the media… 🤷‍♂️

American's don't have a favourable record over here, I can't think of many good ones. Off the top of my head: Randy Lerner at Villa, lack of investment, cheap managerial appointments like Sherwood, McLeish, Lambert and Garde, saw them relegated for the first time in 28 years. Ellis Short at Sunderland, didn't seem to care too much about football. Took them over in the Premier League and oversaw their downfall to League One before selling them, where they remain three years later after a lot of well documented backroom problems. The American consortium at Swansea, again took over the club in the Premier League. Appointed Bob Bradley straight away, who wasn't very good. Made further poor appointments in Paul Clement and Carlos Carvalhal and saw them relegated after seven years in the Premier League. Now, given the big sales of the likes of Mawson, McBurnie and Rodon among others in the Championship, they're not really putting the same money into the playing squad and that saw a good manager in Steve Cooper leave in the summer. Then you have the big clubs Manchester United, Liverpool and Arsenal, who all dislike their ownership for not putting in as much money into the playing squad as they think they should be able to.

As much as I would like Pahars to be a top manager, his last job was in Serie D earlier this year, managing just five games - One draw, four losses. I hope you’re on the windup.

🤣 I can understand the slight chance of Villa given their resources, but Norwich... 🤣 They're one of the few teams in this league with less money than us and are a certainty to go down again this season even if they did win at the weekend. I can't see any attraction in leaving us for Norwich.

Tadanari Lee, Maya Yoshida, Takumi Minamino, the now deleted Japanese Saints Twitter page. Has to be us!

Expect Klopp to be fined following his post match comments today...

But, not having a knee jerk board saw us miss out on the great Eddie Howe. 🙁🙁🙁

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/he-needs-better-disappointed-russell-22091166 Seems like we were right to get rid. Shame, as he had raw ability with his pace and looked like he could be something when he scored against Chelsea. However, something's not right off the pitch. Ralph called him out on his professionalism in public a couple of times and now it's happening again at Swansea. I don't think they're going to have much luck either.

Leaves Brighton just three points above us with everyone claiming they're having a great season.

A competent ref and that's a lot more comfortable than it was. The decision to not give him a second yellow after Livramento was running into an open area with Targett caught up the pitch is disgraceful, the decision not to book the dive, which is a certain yellow given the rules is just incompetence. But, he is the brother of Bobby Madley... Although, we didn't make it easy for ourselves either. Armstrong had the glorious chance from a corner that he skied. Still looks rusty and it's a shame he's going away with Scotland again for the 50th international break of the season. However, Martinez had to make a couple of worldie saves, while I can't remember McCarthy pulling off any great saves this evening, despite our second half performance. Livramento had an uncharacteristically poor game, alongside Armstrong, but again Livramento should have just been facing Targett down his side from the 15th minute. Elyounoussi had his best outing in a Saints shirt in the first half and looked like the player we signed originally from the YouTube videos, turning Cash inside and out and confirming why Cash has suddenly declared for the Poland national team. But, the second half he went back to just being solid/dependable. Again, JWP and Romeu also had great first halves. JWP had a cracking shot saved, played his part in the goal and seemingly ran himself into the ground to make recoveries for the team, while Romeu kept making the Villa attackers look amateurish each time they tried to break. But, both had to play a bit more "professionally" in the second half. Overall, good, professional win. We can enjoy the rest of the weekend. (And the next two weeks 🙄) Three points from fifth, seven from 18th as it stands. Villa have lost 5 in a row, Ings made the correct career choice, JWP must be seething that he didn't make the same move. Up the Saints!

That’s why he started! Was always a matter of time.

Austin was Koeman's last signing. We didn't make a single signing in January 2019. Djenepo was Ralph's first signing, joining the following June.

It has near confirmed that, that line was one of those "mutual agreement" statements, that aren't really mutually agreed, only officially. 🤷‍♂️ Fair play to him, though. A fair amount of time out, returns to assumedly the best resourced club that he could realistically join, rather than a run of the mill Premier League side.

I saw this table posted on another forum when discussing Howe's move to Newcastle, which goes to show the resources he was working with at Bournemouth and why their relegation looks really poor on his record: Courtesy of Transfermarkt, we’ve ranked the 20 current Premier League clubs by their net spend over the past five years. 1. Man City – £601.98m 2. Man Utd – £484.88m 3. Arsenal – £267.88m 4. Everton – £225.42m 5. Brighton – £214.86m 6. Wolves – £205.22m 7. West Ham – £187.49m 8. Bournemouth – £176.95m 9. Aston Villa – £166.65m 10. Watford – £125.69m 11. Leicester City – £124.83m 12. Newcastle – £122.91m 13. Chelsea – £115.57m 14. Liverpool – £107.58m 15. Tottenham – £106.62m 16. Crystal Palace – £75.69m 17. Burnley – £59.4m 18. Sheffield United – £56.71m 19. Southampton – £22.32m 20. Norwich City – £25.42m profit

Yes, which is why I clearly stated that there wasn’t an active transfer window. All I’m saying is that there was obviously a lot of media attention given to the Newcastle takeover and how they would soon become a super club. However, so far they have not shown a lot so far despite being in charge for a near month and now Emery has said they lack direction, so it’s relevant. I then used us an example to show what could be done within a month. Sacking an unpopular manager, appointing a new one and signing a handful of players on top of that. Cortese/Liebherr weren’t interested in buying us for 18 months either, where you would expect a plan to be outlined.

I was only counting those who had signed in the first month of the Liebherr/Cortese/Pardew era, drawing comparisons with Newcastle are acting slowly given they've had new owners for a near month now, which seems a bit wasted and is a lot of time in a football season. Hammond was the nearest to just miss out, Jaidi signed in early September and Fonte was of course a January signing.

It does seem a bit odd that the owners had been looking to buy Newcastle for over a year, knew Ashley wanted to sell to them, yet almost a month and three league matches later, they're still managerless. It does seem a bit like it all came as a surprise and only after Bruce lost to Tottenham did they start looking at potential new managers. They're currently six points from safety and haven't won a game yet this season, so it's not like they can afford to throw games either. Comparatively, Wotte was sacked a day after Liebherr took over and Pardew appointed nine days later. We then signed Lambert, Harding, Murty and Mellis within the first month of the new ownership. I know that there isn't an active transfer window, but we were moving a lot faster in 2009.

Targett was serviceable when he had Grealish in front of him, as his only job was to defend, rarely getting beyond the halfway line and giving the ball to Grealish and letting him run with it. Now, he's expected to contribute something up the field, which we know is a weakness, as he has no pace and used to just turn back with us and he also doesn't have any defensive protection from Bailly, etc, again leaving him exposed and we know him to be a limited defender. Last season when we beat them 4-3 we had a lot of joy down their left. Our first goal being from a free-kick that Targett gave away and our third coming from a new Poland international Cash handball (that was actually given), otherwise we'd have been through, as he was the only Aston Villa defender in the area, as both Mings and Konsa were dragged out wide, as Targett was caught up the field. Hopefully more of the same on Friday. We did well to get £15m and Adams for him. Then they tried going cheap for JWP!

The Athletic have also reported that if Tottenham do not finish in the top six this season, they can sack him without paying compensation: https://theathletic.com/news/spurs-can-sack-nuno-without-paying-compensation-if-they-finish-out-of-top-six/NwFfHH15zGIr/ Although, it now doesn't look like he's going to get that far even. Was always a strange appointment on the whole. Sacked Mourinho because of poor results/boring football and then replaced him with a less successful version of Mourinho, who had just been given the boot at Wolves. But, I guess they were turned down by about 20 other managers prior.

Konsa getting a red is a positive for us.

I must be reading the table wrong, as we’re above Aston Villa and Ings went to play in the Champions League.

Imagine what we’ll be like when the camp’s healthy!