Lighthouse

Neither are a big reason we are where we are now. Ralph is the reason we aren't another Stoke or Swansea, when Gao owned us with absolutely zero interest in running a football club. Selles was just the man holding the parcel when the music stopped two years ago. The damage had been long since done by years of terrible recruitment and the appointment of Jones. You seem to be equating clubs and managers. Those teams are average, Saints are woeful.

I really can’t get my head around this kind of attitude some of our fans have towards Martin. If you think he’s out of his depth and want him sacked, fine, but to actively detest him based on sound bites in response to leading journalist questions seems way out of proportion.

Thanks for liking my post from June last year Jonny, I needed that for my self esteem today.

I think if people were coming up to me saying, "hey, don’t you think you ought to be sacked?" Every week, I’d probably get a bit fed up and sarky about it too.

It’s literally the post I was referring to.

That ‘even worse’ is being propped up by a JWP free kick and a win against an equally awful Leicester side. Martin got us promoted, has played half as many games in the PL and has a real chance of making a cup QF on Tuesday. If there’s no sign of any results by December, then I’d probably try a new manager.

People do come up with some bizarre personas for people they've never met.

Mine aren't. We were utterly dreadful under Selles, lost almost every game and managed to get beaten by Grimsby in our own back yard. I'm glad he's doing alright for himself at Reading but honestly, it's League 1.

Heaven forbid he should say something positive and back his players. What do you want him to say, "We're sh*te, we'll probably lose the next game 6-0, this team's definitely getting relegated and I should be sacked!" These are media trained interviews, I'm not sure why you're expecting him to say different.

City have scored two or more against everyone they've played, in every competition this season, except for Newcastle and Inter Milan, so there's merit in keeping it tight and not letting the GD get out of hand. A fair few of our rivals will go to City and let in four or five, so relative to that it's not the worst result in the world.

Three players completely unproven in this league and one whose legs are well past it. There's potential in TD, FD and MF but it's far too early to say they're decent.

I can see the logic in going for a more attacking option if we're playing a back five and need the FBs to get forward. That said Manning is hopelessly out of his depth against anyone in this league, let alone Man City.

We could've afforded him if we really wanted him but from what I remember he had no interest in a second season of League 1 football, which he was clearly too good for. Either way, I can't really see how he fulfills the criteria of the OP.

https://x.com/SouthamptonFC/status/1850156674830545091 roughly what I expected, although slightly surprised to see Lallana ahead of Aribo.

His long throws were sh*t. He clearly refined his technique at Stoke but for us they were almost always is to clear. The best one I remember was for Tessem to score a winner against Sunderland.

I’d say it was a very high percentage, personally, including the majority of our current squad.

Tadic is probably the third best player I've seen play for Saints, after Virgil and Tiss, he was also a key player in the best two seasons I can remember. It'd say we definitely got the best out of him, at least under Koeman, Ajax just gave him the chance to play CL football and a domestic league which Steve De Ridder tore to shreds. Lemina... well he's miraculously below us in the table, let's see if he has another tantrum and downs tools for Wolves too. Hojbjerg is Hojbjerg. Mr 7/10, an industrious ball recycler in any shirt. My personal answer to this question would be Gabbiadini. I know he's not uprooted any trees anywhere else but there were times when he looked like a hell of a player for us. I can't help but wonder how he might have done in a Koeman team, if we'd had him on the bench instead of Long.

Having someone strong leading the line is completely different from playing a ‘knock it long for the big man’ style of football. Pelle was surrounded by excellent ball players, who played it in and off him. All of last season we were notably weaker without Adams leading the line.

It’d help if we didn’t keep signing it. Despite being terrible, we have this weird habit of signing players who can’t even make our match day squad.

For the price of travel and a match ticket at the Etihad, you could fly to actual Poznan and have a much, much nicer weekend.

That's not how we played with Pelle.

Who is selling reliable, clinical PL standard #9s for anywhere close to our budget? TP, Archer, Stewart and BBD can all lead the front line with varying degrees of success but better than them gets expensive.

Muslims ≠ Arabs

Feels like yesterday I was getting called an idiot by quite a few people for suggesting maybe we shouldn’t ’just pay whatever it takes’ to get him in. There have been more than enough precautionary tales across various clubs in January to know to keep our powder dry. Andy Carroll has to be the most hilarious. £35m in 2011 is probably £90m in todays prices.

Shhh, we don’t mention that bit. The slave trade was every white person capturing and selling Africans, end of discussion. Also Arabs have never been involved at all.