Saint86

New Stoke City Club Crest Confirmed

I doubt Saints will do anything until July, it will be the sides in trouble with PSR that need to make moves before then. Maybe we can be clever and get Neil over the line before then and take his sign on bonus and agents fees out of the current PSR budget rather than next season's SCR budget 🤷‍♂️

A few things on this: They used him as a squad player who was in and out of the side. We are brining him in as a squad - end of the day, the championship is a long season and many sides would take him as a starter. Tonda has shown he's an excellent coach who is able to integrate and improve players... he did that last season with a squad that wasn't his own. His rotation and ability to keep the team fit, rotate them, and seemingly get them all match sharp and confident is one of his strongest attributes - runs like we had (with the congestion and quality of opposition) don't happen by fluke - Tonda has got something extra on this front. Both Spors and Tonda have significantly more experience of the championship (in relative terms) going into this window. Performance wise, they have plenty of credit in the bank, and £25M for a squad player (charles) to be replaced with another squad player on a free is surely good business. If it was Downs or Jander being replaced then we be a bit more concerned - and who knows, Tonda might get him thriving in the middle.

Looks good, reckon we should make it happen 😏

John Yeboah looks like he'd be worth consideration... 10 goals and 9 assists in 35 games for Venezia, proving a real handful tonight vs Germany.

End of November / start of december is fairly important i'd suggest. 28/11 - Victims (H) 5/12 - Wolves (A) 9/12 - Burnley (H) Christmas period is kind to us: Charlton (A) on the 26th followed by WHU (H) on the 29th, and then Cardiff (H) on the 1st Jan... you'd struggle to get less travel than that as a provincial team. Similarly end of Jan is: QPR (A) on 23/01, WBA (H) 26/01, and PNE (H) 30/01 - thats another very kind set of fixtures from a travel perspective - all in all we should weather the winter congestion quite well (on paper). The bad periods for congestion otherwise seem to be end of feb / start of march, where we have Pompey (A) on the 27/02, followed by Stoke (a) on 03/03, and then Watford (H) on 06/03. Then the final run in is a bit mean with Millwall (A), Brum (H), and Burnley (A) in one week. But all in all, its not a bad fixture list. SHU home on the final game should be quite a nice one, the season should be largely over for them IMO - unless they have a great window. Fancy we'll return 5-6 points from the opening 3 games. My biggest grumble would be that we don't get to play a relegated side until the 24th October, which will give them ample time to settle and get their runs going post transfer window. A shame really.

I don't understand why we are starting Gordon and Madueke, and why we don't have players like MGW, Palmer, or Foden - you need more than just pace (and minimal end product) to beat sides that sit in like Ghana. And when they were sat back, Tonda would have gone for them with 2 strikers and wide men and flooding their box... I did think that last night was a good reminder for how well Tonda reacts and adapts to games to make a difference.

Who wants to tell them? Lack of fitness was just completely masked by all the other crap 😄🤣

There is no point buying a 5' 9" CM from Hibs ffs - he won't be playing for us in the prem.

Do we? He's not a starting CM and he won't sign a new deal?snap someone's arm of for £20-25M... Sales are needed and he's a huge pricetag for a squad player.

I don't buy this. Why would he sign for Frankfurt if the other club is willing to offer him better wages - he'd make any future transfer to them more expensive and reduce his potential wages with them? Equally, why would he sign for the other club if he's already joined Frankfurt on better wages? These agreements between clubs are nice in theory, but if the player doesn't sign a contract its academic surely? The only difference to that is loan with buy obligations attached, where its essentially all signed and agreed between the clubs and the players at the start. Look at what happened with Alderweireld - we had an agreement in place with his club, but he snubbed us contractually and joined spurs.

We're getting Gibbo FC away on opening day (ole ole)... In all seriousness, we need to be playing the newly relegated sides as early as possible and catch them before they settle. Would lap up a trip to the West Ham or Wolves (or both) mid way / end of August when they're dealing with transfers in and out and the fans aren't happy. Saints should be raring to go this season... 20 games unbeaten with a run of form over those games that equates to 113points over a 46 game season - get the hardest (on paper) matches out the way before those teams can settle.

You weren't alone... My first post on here having initially been raging at us selling AA for £7M (which i think did impact people's views on larin unfairly)... I would say he's done about as well as anyone could possibly expect for the outlay involved, and he's certainly surpassed the "no expectation other than for him to be shit" bar 😄🤣. I do think he struggles against better defenses / more physical center backs, and he doesn't quite have the footballing intelligence that Stewart offered imho, but then he's an absolute menace in and around the box at championship level - and thats all we need.

His movement was constant throughout the game, always making runs off the ball, moving out wide or dropping deeper to offer a pass, calling for the ball, attacking the post etc. He's a "poacher" in that regard - never stopped moving or reacting. Frustratingly though, the Canada players seemed to be at pains not to pass to him... that and the quality of their wide players leaves much to be desired re crossing ability and picking a pass... they just attach the box with a lot of numbers and its falling for them in what is a very low quality group. All in all, pleased for Larin, but also frustrated with him as he really should have been getting more chances and more goals...

Club will be tied to PSR and SCR change over at the end of the month.