HarvSFC

Wanyama retiring at 30. Perhaps he is older… Edit: Oh, it’s an international retirement from Kenya.

A draw will do in the manufactured rivalry. Stops the rat from going top and keeps Crystal Palace within our mini-league.

Serious suggestions only. Looking at Derby's current status, he has a similar effect on clubs as his uncle did. Finished 6th in the Championship with a team of Mount, Wilson, Tomori, Cole and many seasoned Championship players, who wouldn't have been cheap. They signed Waghorn for £5m under him... Jumped at the chance to manage Chelsea straight away, who were jumping on the bandwagon of the former legend turned manager fad, and also because they couldn't attract anyone under the embargo. He did well in his first season, finishing fourth. But, the 12 defeats that season was still the joint highest amount of losses they've suffered in a season since 1998, and like Gerrard, Solskjaer and Rodgers, when it comes to Europe, they're found wanting and out of their depth. But, we won't have that problem. The second season, was when he fell off. I get that they weren't all his signings, but Tuchel's showing the strengths of that squad now. There were also reports of him alienating players during his second season and the squad were turning against him. Rudiger, who is now Chelsea's second best defender behind Silva and Tomori, who's proving a success at AC Milan being two of the most heavily reported. This aligns with the way he was reported to be like as a player in the dressing room alongside John Terry, as the "bulldogs", getting manager's sacked and alienating the foreign group. Ultimately, he's just a bit of a prick, and Jody Morris isn't too great either.

Who would we even attract to the club when we tell them they have a transfer budget of £0, until we sell your best players and replace them with bargain copies? Howe is the name constantly spoken of, and he didn't work with those constraints at the much less reputable Bournemouth. It's the ownership that is the problem at this club and we're not going anywhere while Gao remains in charge. If this was Newcastle, Everton, West Ham, who actually still get investments put into their club, you wouldn't hear the end of it. But, nothing comes from Southampton, for whatever reason. The academy's now non-existent, the first team is seemingly scraping by and looking for three worse teams each year. I don't know what it's going to take.

That’s well shit from both centre-backs. Completely sold themselves and let him through on goal.

We saw Bertrand’s best years, and in those years he could have made the step up to a more prestigious club, but stayed here for whatever reason. Vestergaard, yeah, we were fortunate to get £15m for him. No better than Yoshida, bar the diagonal passing.

Nigel Adkins masterminded a 2-2 draw against the Skates.

They only scored 16 first half goals in the entirety of last season. Their fans might as well switch on after 45.

Coventry top of the Championship. They’d be an interesting promoted club, still owned by SISU.

Looking at it regionally, us and Brighton are the only two south coast clubs playing in the Premier League's youth set-up. Brighton, however, are currently joint top of the division one alongside Man City, while we are joint bottom with Nottingham Forest and Burnley in the division below. Brighton are our nearest competition in the youth set-ups and they've leapfrogged us massively, even if we did beat them to Livramento, which I suspect came down to who could offer more first team football. I wonder what they've been doing, that we haven't. We certainly got complacent with the academy set-up, that much is clear.

Chelsea played a mix of first/second string tonight. But, their second string consists of Ziyech, Chillwell, Loftus-Cheek, Hudson-Odoi, Werner and Saul. Not players you'd view as weaknesses from our end on paper. Will be difficult for sure.

KWP and Livramento would be the best full-backs to go up against Traore’s running.

Helped make Sheffield United a top 10 side, to a team who couldn't win a game after he left. Although, he was replaced by Ramsdale... I think he's the one that's not getting the desired game time at a top club, who's a good player, especially now that De Gea's back looking like his old self. Four years left on his contract, though. I think they'd want £20m+.

Not a Saints record, but Norwich's 15 straight Premier League defeats is pretty miserable. Wonder if they can make half a season.

Nuno was a dreadful appointment after his sacking from Wolves. Spurs fans would’ve wanted an attacking manager after Mourinho, but they can only muster three shots on target against Palace and Chelsea, two 3-0 losses and a 2-2 draw with Rennes in between. Kane’s doing a Van Dijk too and going through the motions.

It could cause issues attracting players such as Simeu and Small in the future. Pros being that there’s pathway for you to get into the first team, if you’re good enough. Cons being that when you’re not in the first team, you’re developing in an ever-losing B team side.

Lingard’s so good these days.

Any bookings for the diving yet? That’s twice.

Never gets overturned if that's the opposite end.

Here's the goal. I watched the match and Vestergaard was poor all round. Keeping players onside at times, slow against Napoli's attack, was booked for a late tackle on the halfway line. He wasn't even playing diagonal balls last night. As said, he had three good months here in three years. He wasn't half as much of a loss as neutrals thought he was to us.

The fact that Ings walked straight into the England team after his move to Aston Villa only added to his misery! Oh...

Good to see Chaplow back, it’s been a while.

Is Small injured?

You're speaking rubbish, as others before have rightly pointed out. Adkins joined before match six of the 2010-11 season. We were 22nd at the time, coming off the back of defeats against Swindon and Rochdale, while Adkins lost his first game in charge against MK Dons. Giving Brighton a slender head start, while ensuring Adkins also had to hit the ground running in terms of his tactics and management of the squad, if we were to have any hopes of the automatic spots that season. He did, winning 27 out of his 41 league matches, on 92 points and just three short of Brighton, who, like I said, had the head start. If it was so easy, like you claim, Pardew would have picked up more than four points from the first three games, and Wilkins wouldn't have managed us to two defeats. 🤷‍♂️ Then, your Championship claim is just ridiculous. Only three clubs in 24 years have won consecutive promotions to the Premier League. We were the last to do so. It's quite the achievement, even if Norwich did do it just the year before. Everyone knows how unpredictable and unforgiving the Championship is, and it's easy to get sucked down there. I don't think many expected us to get promoted at the first time of asking. Lambert, Hammond, Guly and Hooiveld had never played in England's second tier before, while Schneiderlin and Lallana's only experience of it was getting outplayed every week. There were also question marks over Davis and Richardson, given their previous history in the league. Fonte, Cork and Fox were really our only guaranteed Championship quality players before the 2011-12 season. All of these players were obviously the key to our success, but again, on paper, it wasn't plane sailing for Adkins, we weren't the favourites, we weren't expected to get promoted, we were competing against a Sam Allardyce led West Ham side, who were signing experienced pros like Nolan, Faye, Skate Taylor, O'Brien, Carew, Bouba Diop, Bentley and Almunia, and we beat them to the automatics. We were top of the league for 34/46 of those gameweeks, being pipped by Reading, by a point, after they went on a crazy run, winning 20 out of 24 matches. It was then after this, that Schneiderlin, Lambert and Lallana became international and Premier League quality.

Ings definitely carried the team at times and created something out of nothing, popping a goal out of nowhere. Against Liverpool, Burnley, Spurs immediately come to mind. It was shit that he left, but it’s revisionism to forget how good a striker he was and hail the new guy as the best thing ever after a cameo off the bench.