HarvSFC

The dangers of finishing so strongly last season was that we were going to get complacent, but Jesus Christ, we exceeded expectations on how royally we could toss up the break between seasons. Semmens has always talked a good game and has admitted to making mistakes previously, but then I think most of us on here would also be good talkers if we were replacing Ralph Kreuger. He now has further questions to ask if he has one of those behind closed doors meetings with select fans again: Number one being, how costly was the shirt sponsor debacle. We are a club who is very much counting every penny. Every poster on here could see there was something off with LD Sports, yet the club did not do their due diligence on them, if they aren’t connected to Gao, then this is really poor. He suggested in the last public fan forum that we would be appointing a director of football, who was already employed at a club to follow the appointment of Matt Crocker in a shake up at the top of the club. This has seemingly died a death. Not necessarily a Semmens issue, but why was our preparation for this season so poor/bizarre? One pre-season match, while every other club was playing multiple. I don’t know why we thought just playing the one against Swansea was the way to go and why we had to be different from the rest of the pack, but it clearly has not worked and we are clearly playing catch-up. The communications with fans have also been bizarrely poor during this period. Not expecting the world, but you would think Danso was just a figment of our imagination, and everyone else who was released from last season’s squad. Finally, why have we gone into a new season with only an unfit centre-back being our one addition to the squad. Not counting KWP, as he finished the season with us. This was a team who were fighting relegation the majority of last season… again and we are sticking with the squad. Even the best teams need to improve and keep refreshing their squads. Look at Tottenham now compared to two years ago… The unsellables is an okay excuse, but then look at most Premier League teams and they also have unsellables and are still adding to their side. Palace from Saturday, who are now in talks with Benrahma for £25m have Sakho, Benteke, Sorloth, Wickham and Riedawald… It was clear that we had identified McKennie as a midfield reinforcement, but he went to Juventus, okay, can’t blame the club there, we then move on to an alternative… Errrrr….. For the team, I don’t think the Adams-Ings partnership works. It didn’t at the start of last season, Ings only bagged one in his first seven matches last season, then Adams was dropped and we know the rest… I think Adams is trying to make the same runs as Ings, he is, or at least was a goalscorer at Birmingham, so they are trying to do the same job. Whereas, and I know he isn’t a fan favourite on here, I think Long creates more space for Ings up top and keeps the defenders occupied more than Adams does as a nuisance more than anything. The high defensive line, sweeper keeper is just a mess. Barcelona/Bayern Munich exposed how shit a high line can be and they’re using world class defenders, we simply cannot play it, as Stephens and Bednarek have only ever played well with whatever we were doing after we dropped the three at the back last season. Also, McCarthy just isn’t a very good footballer and got an early stupid booking as well as could have been lobbed early on, but fortunately the Brentford attacker went for a weak curler. The Smallbone/Tella situation. It looks like we’re just using the youth team for the sake of it, because we have one. Neither are ready for the first team, if they ever will be and should be well away from our starting eleven. I was thinking Redmond needed to be hooked for a couple of games before his injury to show he is in danger of losing his position in the team, as he has reverted to type, and dare I say even got worse than when he was booed off the pitch against Tottenham seeing some of his passes tonight (the one he put straight out for a throw-in on the halfway line with no pressure as well as putting the Brentford player through.) But, then who do we have to replace Redmond? Nobody. Potentially why his form has dropped off a cliff. This was also our current strongest eleven minus Salisu and Armstrong playing against a Brentford side, who didn’t have three of their key players from last season in Watkins, Benrahama and Raya. I think that’s it. You never know with Saints and we could actually step up against Tottenham and hopefully this is just a stupid reactionary post and I am forced to eat my words. But, this is how I feel after that shoddy performance. There will be no acknowledgement of the fans who paid £10 to watch that, fortunately I wasn’t one of them, but it seems like the players couldn’t be bothered without any fans there.

He is good off the ball, but you do not win matches by not having the ball. I always felt that he was one of those players who we could upgrade on, if we had any money. In four seasons of being here, he played 22+ matches in each, staying goalless in three of them. Also claimed just six assists in 134 matches in total for the club. His composure when getting the ball in, or around the opposition's box was absolutely horrendous.

I don’t know, possibly. When we were in the same position as Wolves a few years back, even closer to the Champions League than they were, there was always the threat that our best players would still leave for Tottenham and even Everton, and some did. Matt Doherty, who was key in the Wolves set-up in the wing-back role has also just made the same move.

Brighton, another set of fans over the summer who thought we were being bitter that we didn't get Lallana back after some lets say tenuous links. They very much thought they got one over us and were boasting about the signing of Lallana, not just because they thought he would help them to progress, but because they also thought the signing riled us. It has been a good gameweek off the pitch. They can enjoy him on the four-year contract, or whatever it was they put him on.

But, if Ings did want to go then you would hope that he would sign a new contract to at least ensure we got his true value. You do see some players do this, as we could lose 10s of millions if he was to go into the final year of his contract. If he goes on the cheap then he would be near impossible to replace, harder than if we did get the £50m+. Especially, if we still have Gao, as the Ings money would have to be spread over three players as we can only spend what we generate from player sales.

Spurs should go for Raul Jimenez, please.

RLC would be a very, very good signing. He was instrumental at Palace, but a poor spell of injuries has seen his career stall quite heavily. If we can get him on a similar loan to buy deal as Bertrand then I would be more than happy with him. Much better than Choudhury, I think he would bring the same class as Ings and Bertrand have from the bigger PL sides. Lets get a team of double barrelled surnames.

Not a single player came out of yesterday's match having played well, or to the ability that we now know they're capable of. Redmond, Smallbone, Romeu and KWP especially came out looking bad. Redmond, Romeu and KWP, we know can be a lot better, Smallbone, I'm not sure what he brings, looks like another Hesketh. I'm not saying he should be sent to League One, but those who have been dismissive of this also forget how instrumental playing in that league was for Schneiderlin and a number of our other players from that team who then went on to the international stage. We haven't done a lot in the season break when compared to other teams with the information that is publicised - signings (say this every window now) and pre-season matches. Hopefully we haven't made mistakes once more and this is just the usual first match hoodoo, rather than now needing to play catch-up.

Big fat Moss can’t run over to the monitor, let alone keep up with play.

Football is back!

Lemina's starting as he means to go on.

I don't know a lot about that Emmanuel Dennis, but just looked at his scoring record and it's nothing to shout about. Never hit double figures in a single league season, playing in Ukraine and Belgium. Comparing him to Wesley, who was also from Club Brugge and had a similarly average scoring record and he cost £22m and has ultimately flopped so far.

I think now that it's been leaked to the media, we'll pull the plug on that one.

But, yeah, if you can't work out a system that gets the attacking talents of Sterling, Kane and Sancho (this is a top quality, dare I say close to world class front three) firing, then there definitely should be questions asked of the manager. Southgate is still living off the World Cup, which was fantastic on the face of it, but we did have a very favourable draw and there were clear mistakes made in the losses against Belgium and Croatia back then.

Hojbjerg doesn't even start for Denmark. 🤷‍♂️

Always struck me as an old fashioned limited thug of a player in the middle. Could add some steel to our centre, but he's really reckless and quite dirty, probably why Leicester would let him come to us, if they do.

Yep, agreed. We had our best period in recent years when we had the ethos of only signing players who would improve our starting eleven. It was when we got into the Europa League and tried building a bigger squad and fleshing it out that we got a load of average players on good wages, when we could have one star player on their wages with better sell on value to boot.

Clubs are starting to get busy now with six days until the season's start. Wolves have brought in two this weekend, Newcastle bringing in Wilson, Fraser and Lewis, Sheffield United bringing in Lowe, Bogle and Burke, West Brom - Diangana, Button and Robinson, Leeds are reportedly close to a couple more £10m plus signings

Yeah, Redmond, Djenepo and Boufal looks like as good depth as we're going to get for wide options, but if Boufal goes then I feel that we're going to need to replace him. Even though the latter two were non-existent once football restarted and we hit our best form.

West Ham have a fan base that can never be pleased. Complaining about a lack of investment despite reportedly putting in a £27m bid for Tarkowski and just last year they spent £24m on Fornals, £45m on Haller and £22m on Bowen. £36m on Felipe Anderson the year before that. The Allardyce saga as well, who wasn't playing the "West Ham Way".

Forren is now playing.

The club only found out today that Salisu is a Saints player, Fabrice is right.

Oh, ffs. Although, I can only read the headline, but ffs.

Looks like the Schneiderlin who played for us from that video with the bonus of set pieces.

Strange, as Manji has a usually stellar ITK record.