Saint86

Why do people care what other fans think of our fans? I thought we'd already acknowledged that everyone is going to abuse us as cheats this season and so we had moved swiftly on to circling the wagons and adopting a siege mentality 😅😆

Had forgotten what our fans can be like tbh. 1 defeat and we seem to be going straight back to digging out certain players and hyper focusing any negative facet of their games, social media posts on turning St Mary's toxic if we lose to stoke, and calls for the manger to be sacked. Utterly mental - think some people are forgetting just how bad the atmosphere was at St Mary's for multiple seasons - put spy gate to one side, and we've had a fantastic 2026 - all the fans need to stick behind the team and make sure we don't let go of the atmosphere last season created... We surely didn't stick with tonda just to throw everything in the bin after a poor 45min in the opening game 🤦‍♂️

Personally think it's a bit like moving house at the moment. We did get some good business done early, but now we need to sell players to get further additions (and the club have been open about the desire to shift a lot of players), and we are stuck waiting in the general malaise where other clubs need to make their moves to unjam the chain - still think we'll get 1-2 more players. It's easy to attach negativity to this, and fret about the impact of the -4points or potential Tonda sanction, but end of the day, players come here for a good pay cheque, to develop, and to have a shot at the premier league or get themselves a bigger move in a few years... Saints tick all those boxes comfortably for this division... And if we weren't attractive we wouldn't have signed Peretz (best keeper in the league), Larin, or dobbin. I recall as well that last summer had a similar feeling before we cleared house and then got in the quartet at the end of the window.

Sounds like Anel won't be happening then, seems Burnley have got in ahead of us.

Would have been pretty hard not to improve that squad in fairness. They had nothing coming off the bench really, not for a promotion side anyway. And it's not like Conway or Whittaker are good enough for autos either. Saints don't need to go scatter fun all over the squad, we need 1-2 quality additions - it's a totally different scenario.

I wonder if we might be able to get Emmanuel Emegha on loan from Chelsea. Very talented young CF, they signed him from Stasbourg this summer (so they obviously think there is a good player there) but he hasn't featured so far, which suggest he might be available on loan. 6ft 5", good in the air, pacey, and good finisher...

Ultimately it is just noise. Was never a serious bid and his agent will know that. They just did it to flush out the sale of the Australian CB.

I don't want to dig Stephens out over the 2 goals (manning also at fault, and the first one is frankly a superb finish given he had a lot to do) - but we all know he has mistakes in him, particularly when he hasn't had a settled run of games in the team. Personally i wouldn't have played both him and THB vs Watford as they were always going to be a physical pacey side that hit us with direct balls - was crying out for Quarhsie or Woods.

With the colcehster game we essentially played 5 pre season friendlies (ranging from national league to Bundesliga) - how many did other teams place? Middlesbrough played Celtic (championship level), Huddersfield (below Bundesliga 2 level), and Espanyol (similar to Budesliga). So less games but comparable. Wrexham probably the best example of a side that went the other way, and look off the pace and unable to buy a win currently: Fitness wise, we were far superior to Watford, who were knackered after about 50min vs Saints on the weekend and couldn't live with us after their first half exploits. We lost to watford, people are over reacting... we gave away two poor goals to a Watford side due to individual errors. Fine, mistakes happen early on in the season. Its annoying, perhaps people can argue that one more tough game would have made a difference in terms of technical sharpness, but equally it was internationals this year and we've had arguably the most unsettled summer of any club in the league. Physical fitness wise though, we look pretty good imho - other than the outstanding niggles for Azaz, Larin, Jander - which can't really be helped that much and where we've balanced getting them through the summer with some match fitness against having them available. If we beat stoke on the weekend this place will be a lot rosier.

We have Dobbin who can play there... we just didn't play him there 😄 (And to be fair, when we switched Dobbin and Scienza back to there standard positions, we started to dominate Watford and scored)

Pretty much this tbh. It didn't work and it was certainly a significant factor to our first half showing. Don't think much more than that needs to be said.

Yup. The bed wetting on here after Watford is really quite something. I guess its been a while since we lost a game that wasn't vs man city, had forgotten what its like 😄

Yeah, Peretz and Larin signed as a PR stunt and they really don't want to be here. They've actually got a gentlemen's agreement in place that we'll sell them on by the end of the window. Meanwhile Solak's running around threatening to leave horseheads under their duvets if they let slip. It's dark days in the SFC dressing room... Won't laugh if that actually happens 🙃

Its one defeat Hypo, relax. This squad will get wins as it is, its far more settled than what we had this time last season, and we know its good for the league - and if we lose a couple and buy a couple, we can only really have faith in Spors at this point... he bought in Azaz, Jander, Scienza, Peretz, Larin, Fellows, Roerslev, Dobbin after all - Those are all good players for this level and the only blot on his copybook is Downs for me.

Regardless, for £4M we should be all over it 🤷