Hodgey

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.

We really need an explosive or creative AM - for me we have 4 substandard players in Redmond, Theo, Djenepo and Elynoussi. We can’t afford to let Ings go - we’re not going to find his goals or all round play with what is at our disposal this window. Equally we need to buy another striker to bed in before he inevitably leaves next year. So a good window: Sell at least one of those AM and Long (free) Buy Armstrong and a AM (sell Vest to fund if needs be) Get two solid 1st team loans in at CB from one of the big clubs (Arse / Chelsea etc) and DM as I think Diallo and Salisu need another year before cementing a place. Also need another loan to cover the full backs. if we did that it would be a good window.

Just goes to show that building a dream team on paper doesn’t always work out like that. Big hitters all failed - couldn’t even get Root away. And our revered fast bowling was totally shown up by De Lange. Tactically they seemed to want to wallop it out of the park from the off rather that display any patience and lost too many wickets. Not sure De Grandhomme is cut out for this format and I’m not sure favouring pace over spin guile works in this format either. Hopefully they have learnt - they have two decent spinners in reserve and De Koch to come in as well. Not sure Jofra will add anything.

Amazing stuff from Hampshire - what a turnaround and Weatherly has proved me wrong about his short form abilities !. Good to see them fight back irrelevant of what happens tonight.

I think that is the big issue - we are basically where we were, remember where we were was worst points in league in 21. It’s also looking likely that we will lose 2 first team players, one who basically wins half our points and things look very bad. Plus we’ve got no money ! Despite our horrific defensive record I think even without Vest our gk / def / defmid is just about good enough to stay up. Without Ings our attack looks distinctly championship standard. Lots of work to do still - for me playing the loans system well is absolutely key.

Well done Hampshire - gubbins looks a good signing and we do seem competitive in 4 day cricket. Youngsters a bit hit and miss but good to see Crane in the wickets - we are very reliant on Abbot but great achievement for that squad to get 2nd.

Odd decision really - he doesn’t have the raw materials to ever be a Prem player, especially with how the game requires ever more guile and control. He could certainly become a decent league 1 player - can see this ending up as a loan to permanent for minimal fee. I guess it’s right that the goal for Saints is to get their youth players into pro footballers and this looks like the right path.

So building on that MLG - would you expect Armstrong to score over 10 league goals to us, if he replaces Ings this season ? Do you think he could have the same impact for us as Watkins and Bamford have straight from the Championship ?

Most of those players were with the same team / style. Much harder to adjust to a new league / style / team. Plus Bamford and Watkins had Rafina and Grealish to feed them - we have Redmond.

Finally a good batting performance, but it wasn’t really the batters who did it ! Like the looks of Organ - surprised he was batting so far down. Getting Amla out twice is going to be very tricky but they’re in a great position. What’s going on with Vince - confidence looks shot.

Terrible situation to be in. You need to score goals to avoid trouble esp when you can’t defend. He wins games - simple as, we’ve got to hope the attacking midfielders step up and actually contribute - and that Che learns to use his left foot (unforgivable for a pro footballer). I think we will sell and will face a huge relegation battle - lots of championship quality players in our squad - Walcott, Long (actually l1), Bednerak, Adams, Redmond, Djenepo, McCarthy, Forster I could go on. Personally I think the gamble of keeping him for another year and risking injury / low effort is a gamble worth taking. In a year one of the youngsters could step up / Adams might improve / we might have a new owner. Or he might resign in Jan !!!

It’s all a bit odd - doesn’t seem that they have any real strategy or direction - what are they trying to be ? Clearly they didn’t take t20 seriously - so are they aiming to be genuine championship contenders?. One minute the likes of Soames, Stevenson and Northeast are the future the next they are gone. Are they going to stick with young players like Currie, Weatherly and Prest ?. They can’t keep relying on ageing players like Edwards and Barker and The Kolpak angle we relied on so much is not available.

Just watched the Somerset game. We are really poor, without the 2 overseas players we would have been absolutely hammered. Weatherly isn’t a t20 player - just nurdles it around and doesn’t have many shots, Prest looked way out of his depth and McManus isn’t a batsman. Again felt bowling was ok - Currie decent, not trophy winning but at least competitive. Compare our youngsters with theirs - Banton and Smeed looked a class above.

This T20 team looks a long way short - once Vince and Short are removed you have a load of non-explosive players getting 10s (Fuller exception). The bowling line up seems OK but the batters are giving them impossible numbers to defend.

17-19 the problem - 2 disasterous transfer years - effectively wasted all the £60m VVD money and saddled ourselves with another c £50m of wasted wages. The rest overall to be fair the expected hits and misses. Also add on a fair few million in manager compensation and agents / signing on. Also puts paid to the myth that we don’t net spend - as clearly we have although nowhere near as much as some. Biggest worry now is looking at current squad you don’t see many profitable assets and the few we have are basically irreplaceable and if sold would see us go down.

We’ve got a strange obsession with English keepers which is one of England’s weak spots. So we pay an unnecessary premium - even recently we’ve been linked to English keepers in the main (Buckland etc). Not sure why this is but it isn’t helping - especially when we seem incapable of improving them.