Hodgey

My first thought seeing that team was keeping Bednerak and KWP happy in a game he knows we can’t win. Fully expect them both to be dropped after we get our arses handed to us today - harsh if so

They gave that a good shot - Weatherly gave them a defendable total but again dreadful batting from the top order. Then a bit of inexperience from Wheal whose radar was a bit out. Disappointing but to get to the final with such an average team was a great achievement. Ultimately Somerset’s long tail won them the game

Spinners doing all the damage now. Having 8 players who all seem to get similar averages with the bat seems to confuse the opposition - that short tail has worked wonders. Funny thing is that it was a similar story with Southern Brave - seems like Vince captains best with a lot of all rounders. Either way it’s been an excellent season from Hampshire led by a talisman captain.

Latest amazing article from the Athletic - after 3 draws Saints need to convert draws to wins. Brilliant, incisive, deeply analytical stuff !!!

Agree - they have something about them, seem to get better results than their quality suggests they should. The bowlers have got them out of trouble so many times and ironically not just with the ball !. If they had a decent couple of openers they’d be a top outfit - see we lost early wickets again today, no wonder Vince can play opener, he basically often does anyway…

The excuses for this B team are wearing thin. There is something not right about the whole set up - coaches / players / strategy / tactics. they get thumped every week and show the paucity of talent our expensive academy is churning out. it might have been a little men against boys - but looking at that Fulham team I’d wager a fair few of theirs were kids too, and don’t forget they are a championship club. When your own site write up highlights last minute challenges and early bookings to take one for the team you know they’ve been utterly outclassed. Prem 2, div 2 is clearly well above their level - worrying

Fair point on the Echo / haven’t read it for ages. Still think my point stands - I’ve not seen anything in the athletic not previously mentioned here or speculated on in the national press. When Carl did it you were getting stuff a million miles more researched and in depth than anywhere else. I thought that was the point of the athletic - fear it’s becoming like the nationals in terms of Saints coverage - but with a dedicated full time journalist it really shouldn’t, especially with a subscription model.

The articles on Saints are pretty woeful, really basic stuff with no real insight at all. That latest article didn’t even have any context or facts - we all know KWP must be pretty cheesed off but he doesn’t even mention that, or reasons why he thinks Hassenhutl made that decision. Also aside from KWP who exactly does he think is currently unhappy and why etc.. Agree that unless you like all the other Sports stuff there is nothing on the Athletic Saints wise you can’t get on here or echo….

Things certainly pointing to Sam Johnson - no doubt we are wooing him already with promises of 1st team prem and in return hoping to pick him up on a free, makes sense if we are that skint. I’m still baffled by why we seemingly only go for English gks - wasn’t long ago we wanted Butland and recently linked with Accy keeper. Then you have Gunn, Forster, McCarthy and we bought Lewis when he was going to be the next big English keeper. It’s all very odd, like we don’t trust non English gks when Boruc and Niemi were far better than this mob.

Weaker 1st team but much stronger squad. Failed signings replaced with high potential youngsters. Total failure to improve our two stand out weaknesses - centre back and gk, and don’t think the additions of Walcott and Ely improve us at all in no 10s. so all in all I’d give it a 6 out of 10 with the acknowledgement that money is tight. We’re going to ship a load of goals again with those CBS / Gks so have to hope that Ings match winners are replaced somewhere - hopefully Armstrong can be that man.

West Ham’s transfer dealings were a joke but recently they have been excellent. coufal , Souchek, Benrhama, Dawson all reasonable price and 1st team improvement. Also they picked up Areola for a couple of million loan fee as a sub gk - I know another club whose first choice gks are below that standard. Not sure why anyone is mocking them now for transfer dealings.

It’s a calculated risk as is our transfer strategy this year. We needed to improve 3 1st team positions - Gk, Cb, No10 but we also needed to have a much better squad. We’ve decided to just concentrate on the latter - and actually have also got worse in the CF position (and maybe cb) This is clearly due to finance which must be absolutely dire - that £80m loan is clearly only to service debt and none of it will go into investments. Statistically you could argue the data backs up this move as a key reason for us plummeting down the table was having no competent back up in certain positions. As others said though the Walcott signing was utter farce as we had enough average no 10s with Moi returning and he definately doesn’t improve that position. That should have gone on a GK.

He looked class yesterday - but like Redmond my fear is he just doesn’t have the qualities to be consistent in the Prem. You can add Djenepo and Walcott to that list though - 4 good sub options but none of them suggest they can consistently deliver in the Prem.

This is a very odd Hampshire side, often seemingly completely out of it and often look well short of talent but with the capability for a couple of players to produce heroics. Prest, Fuller, Wheal and Currie the hero’s !!

I’m utterly shocked reading this that some people have Forster as one of our highest ranked gks - people have short memories, he’s been utter garbage since his big injury. That said McCarthy isn’t any better - our obsession in buying English gks has backfired horribly. Scandalous we haven’t sorted such a key position and are kicking it down the road again.

Indeed - learnt quickly getting the spinners in and I read somewhere recently that Jayawardene teams are notoriously slow starters. De Kock made a huge difference to the batting - he plays the situation. Seems like they have taken the Hampshire way of qualifying at the last !

80pc of fans know our cbs weren’t good enough last season and we’ve just lost the best of a bad bunch. I genuinely think if we don’t solve that we will have an almighty relegation battle on our hands. Salisu will make mistakes like the rest - need an experienced campaigner there. And the keeper situation should have been solved too. You have to invest if your players and youth aren’t good enough - we’ve decided not to and it’s a false economy as £100m loss from going down is much more than say £30m. I know the response will be ‘we have to live within our means’ - fine, but be prepared for our means to drop £100m a year. That line up today had a huge whiff of championship about it (and yes some of that is due to selection - but certainly not all). On the plus side if we do drop we have a decent championship team !

To be fair they’ve done well in t20 and 4 day, but their batting is a big concern when you take overseas and Vince out. Gubbins has saved us somewhat in this competition but Prest, Alsop, McManus, Weatherly, Holland were all below par in this format. Hopefully they’ll learn and improve.

Very late I know - but have just binged watched Sunderland Til I Die. I can’t help but feel I’m watching some kind of premonition of Saints future plight. It’s all incredibly similar. Anyway hope not but we are going to need some absolute top notch negotiation/scouting next couple of weeks. Maybe it’s just me but I can’t help but feel that for whatever reason it’s not a happy camp at the moment (either player or manager), really hope that isn’t the case as a split camp would spell certain relegation. Feel like Ralph’s solution to Ings is to try and split the goals amongst the squad - so a few others need to take responsibility.

Interesting debate on here - great leadership is about risk and reward. The risk/ reward is relegation - £100m a season. So quibbling over £5m if it costs £100m is bad management. If Armstrong is our number 1 choice, paying over the odds isn’t such a big deal. I’d go further - pay Chelsea £40m for Abrahams, a known quantity who will almost certainly keep us up - generating £100m a year and with sell on potential. That is the kind of big idea leadership I want to see from the board. I know the response will be ‘we don’t have the cash’ - but we do, we have £80m loan which we’ve been told is for investment, get him in - sell Vest for £15m and job done - net spend of c -£5m.

Think that’s fair, but they are falling short on succession planning

Buy back is annoying - we could lose a £50m player for £30m (or whatever it is). On the positive side if he does become worth £50m then it’s a hell of a signing for £3m and gets us back to what we were - a great place to learn and turbocharge your career to play for one of the big boys, plus hopefully we get a few years watching a top talent.

Strange competition, as most quality players are in the 100 a lot of these games are down to which youngsters step up and how consistent they can be. What’s frustrating for me is it’s a great opportunity for the likes of Alsop / Fuller / Whetherly / Holland who are experienced enough to shine here. Meanwhile Brave got away with one today - some really odd decisions there - Garton batting 5, the ineffective DeGrandhomme opening the bowling (and batting 7), think they are a bit lucky to have won 2.

Back to the £79m loan - nobody knows exactly where the club are financially as any company can skew accounts with accruals etc. What we do know is we took out a £79m loan at 9 pc - so interest alone in 5 yrs is £42.5m. Clearly no sane person who didn’t need that cash for something wouldn’t take it out. We also know the club made a £76m loss last year and £34m the year before, they made a £29m profit the year before that due to VVD transfer. So yes COVID had a big effect but according to accounts we have made consistent losses the last few years save for the VVD year. Now it could be that some of that loan is earmarked for player investment and not servicing outgoings / debt but the facts above dispute that. I guess we will see post this window but it suggests we need to have made savings / new income streams of £35m a year + £7.5m a year debt interest to break even. It all looks precarious and short term to me - ie keep the club afloat and in the Prem league until someone buys us who can at least clear that £79m loan. That’s not a dig at the club btw - many similar clubs are in the same boat, but it is reality. If we go down then bankruptcy is a very real prospect so stakes are high. Successfull player trading over the next few years is crucial

Our CB pairing isn’t right and Ralph has tried them all. They all have too many big mistakes in them at this level and aside from Stephens (who is the worst CB skill wise of the lot) are too quiet. It’s a position we can probably upgrade cheaper / easier than the others. Of course it shouldn’t be our priority - but if you don’t have the resource to upgrade other areas you have to do what you can. Also think Vest will be sold to generate funds.