Baird of the land

Not a fan of this Redmond as a striker plan.

Sorry disagree, think this game is more important and won't be easy. If Verstergaard is available we should play him, as he adds so much to the team.

Wonder might we go 3-4-3 with Djenepo and redmond as wingbacks if Bednarek remains out.

Well can't say i expect anything based on that lineup. Ramsay at least gets an outing for his career scrapbook.

Reed understandably developed by playing games, so has targett. Elyounessi was a massive waste of money, 20 useless games and we're still loaning him out. We bought a raw Djenepo, now 22 yr old has already had 30 games at saints in 2 seasons despite having numerous injury problems and being pretty erratic. Sims made an impact on his debut at 19? Had a total of 27(50% in his debut sesson) appearances, of which 8 were starts and 5 of those starts were during his debut season. The next 2 seasons we had manager chaos (Pellegrino, Hughes, ralph arrival).

Think the likes of sims/reed/hesketh were messed about by blocked pathway. i do feel we should sometimes be using targeted loans earlier to get real league experience. A few of the players to come in this season have looked reasonable but u23 games seem to lack in preparing them.

Terrible time to be playing them, just after refs have told them they made a mistake. Fernandes soft penalty incoming.

Well there’s always next season to look forward to.

Only 2 fullbacks in the club. Yeah that's going to end well. If we get one injured are we going to end up thoroughly annoying our captain by making him spend the rest of season playing as a makeshift fullback.

Really i'd really prefer no one over a player who has shown zero ability to adapt to the league. No doubt we'll be forced to play him every game too.

Really can't for life of me understand why we are in for Minamino. What a garbage signing

We looked better when we brought Adams on. Too little too late. We let them get a lead and sit on it. Before that it was one of the insipid displays of the season. Annoyed about the handball decision but more so by the way we approached the game, against a very average Villa side.

Why was Walcott starting in the first place

Why are we bringing on another winger w've already got one too many on the pitch already

No clue why we thought leaving Ings completely isolated was a good idea. I could maybe understand it against the likes of Man City but not a very average Villa side

Atrocious by saints deserved to be losing(despite the bizarre penalty call) Bring on Adams and stop spending the whole game passing ponderously backwards

We’ve slow ponderous with zero cutting edge.

Odd decision to drop Adams imo. Nervous about the makeshift right back.

I'd definitely advocate resting walcott and using him as an impact sub today.

I knew there was someone else terrible after Groves.

Interesting read. I'm one who thinks he's deserving of credit for his part in the good years and deserving of criticism for his role in the bad years. Think the interviewer could have done with pressing him more on issues like Carrillo(why splurge money on a manager's personal preference of signing when writing was on the wall about his fate). The issue of compensation is interesting too, the club obviously was perfectly happy sacking managers(paying compensation) but not paying it to get their manager of choice. Did he request to break company policy, if not(why not), if so who refused him permission. Also find some of the rationalisation funny, Carrillo had played champions league that must mean he was good!, hoedt wanted to play left side so why was he so bad once van dijk left. (apparently he's now a success i missed that startling turn of events)

Leicester haven’t had quite the same series of horrendous transfers after selling talent and lucked out with windfall from champions league year. However they still feel similar with us aiming to get back the levels and they followed. They still have to sell to the big boys but A big thing for them was keeping vardy and i’d really hoped keeping ings would be similar to us. It’s a thoroughly depressing thought that he might go there meaning they have a quality vardy successor for 3/4 years instead

Ahh I was hoping they’d caught the kwp situation early and with a week’s rest he’d be ok. Think any of any options is a bit of a roll of the dice.

Definitely in the camp of he could do with a loan after Tuesday's display. Hopefully it's a sign that we are in advanced stages of bringing a cover loan in.

If he's the great talent you maintain he is the most likely reason is he isn't putting in the effort and therefore not impressing despite being talented. Maybe boxing training wasn't what Slattery should have been doing in preparation for that season. I'd want to review the academy and check that they are firmly communicating what's expected of the players. There's certainly not the blocked pathway to the first team that there was previously.