Saint86

Amazing the amount Redmond's had to say to the athletic about saints recently...🧐

The way i see it, we only have £30M for two attackers - they want £50M...?

Concerning appointment. Massive leap for NJ - stepping up to the prem for the first time, and with a disillusioned low confidence young squad. Feels like massive error by the club. The only way this works is with serious monetary backing in January - to the tune of a 17+ goal a prem season striker (or similar), a quality addition at CAM, and cover at CDM. Particularly given NJ plays two CDM's quite often.

Our atmosphere (and fan bond with the team) largely died when Les Reed dismantled the promotion team in Summer 2014. It has never really recovered. The Puel, Mope, and Hughes really did kill it.

Was this it? https://fanbanter.co.uk/video-newcastle-fans-in-home-end-get-attacked-by-southampton-supporters/

Going down with this attack. Simple as that

Che Adams made Ralph's case for him at Palace. We create the chances but can't take them. We'd have a lot more points if we could convert our chances.

Our head scout for the south of England may also be on his way shortly. https://trainingground.guru/articles/forest-green-turn-to-southamptons-stanton-for-director-of-football

Yes agreed. Should be obvious i feel. As for Daft saying we kept the academy staff etc when we dropped down the leagues. We definetly lost key staff, and i would say its just a total fallacy to imply that top coaches / players wanted to work for / stay at Saints after we got relegated from the prem as a general rule... Let alone during the Championship relegation scraps and eventual administration... or even as a League 1 club that almost went out of business in 2009. One very prominent example. Huw Jennings (our academy director) left us in 2006 after the prem relegation - became Fulham's academy director in 2008, 10 years later they had a top quality academy turning out players like Sessegnon (who incidentally joined fulham in 2008 as an 8year old) amongst others, and obviously then went on join tottenham in 2019 (11years later)... Also worth noting that as good as he is, he also wasn't a regular first team prem level player at age 18. So again - our fans need to have patience and let the academy changes, upgrades, funding etc. work there way through the age groups.

Its ultimately irrelevant what they think... we've got access to the prem money and they never will - ergo they will be our feeder club one day.... if they ever produce anything of note. Its not nice for them as fans or a club though, but hopefully they get some success out of the Southampton Republic years.

Reasoning as follows - we got taken over (having had the academy staff and players poached by other clubs). From there, as a 3rd tier club (on - 10 points), i would expect it is very hard to attract top talent and top coaches to rapidly have an academy capable of producing Premier league starting level players? - which is the point I think you are maybe debating? At that time (and the following seasons) we were attracting (and able to sign) such Premier league level mega stars as Barnard, waigo, hooiveld, and Danny fox etc. (to name but a few). Also, Marcus took over the club for the 2009/10 season, not in 2008 . The training ground's "Marcus Leibherr Pavilion" upgrades weren't completed until autumn 2014. So that's 5 years to get the ball really rolling... And that took until we were once again a Premier league club. Worth noting as well that none of our best players from our peak period of academy players (theo, bale, oxlade) made it as regular first teamers in the prem until they were older. So fans that moan about our current academy should (I think), be happy with any first team quality players that emerge over the next couple of seasons. In a couple of years time, players like dibling / ballard etc. may become some of the first real success stories - and they are probably some of the first proper cohort (at circa age 16), that have benefited from the training ground and academy upgrades from 8years ago. Anyway, you're welcome to disagree ofc, but I'm not holding my breath for any currrent 3rd or 2nd tier clubs to regularly churn out ready made prem first teamers at age 18. Academies are long term projects, and changes take years to work fully through the age groups. Fans need to be patient on that front. 🤷‍♂️. As for SR, they have a long term plan and modest resources. If fans want instant success then they won't be a happy i fear, especially given what have been quite disappointing years under Gao. But if we do get some good years with lavia/abk and co, and then have more academy prospects coming through in a few seasons, then it represent a good form of progression for the club - and hopefully stand us in good stead 🤗. Just need to stay up this year.

Yeah, currently our defence is pretty solid. If you consider that KWP, ABK, and livramento have all been out, and yet we've still managed to field a reasonably competent back line - its fairly impressive really. As has been said to death. The error in recruitment was not getting in some quality attackers, and no getting back up for Lavia as the midfield anchor. Romeu and Redmond have been big misses for us the last few games - which says a lot about quality and depth in their positions. Getting Tella back from his loan would also add an extra threat for us.

I am curious as to what you expect a League 1 / administration / championship level youth intake and academy infrastructure to have achieved? It takes circa 10years to get u18s (that often join the club as 8year olds etc) ready for first team football at 18 - otherwise why get boys on the books that young Reality is that we only really started recovering our academy in 2012 onwards, and within that there has to be a gradual progress towards higher levels of performance - we can't just immediately get back to the prem and instantly have the best youth setup. Especially with the funding issues we had post cortese. i really don't think its rocket science to grasp that, and its fecking bizarre how our fans continue to piss and moan about it despite the obvious progress the academy sides have started to make lately - i.e. we had the best u18s in the country last year outside of city's mega bucks players... that's pretty damn good all things considered. As with the SR recruitment strategy, investment and improvements in the academy are a multiyear project 🤷‍♂️! Also, we've now signed loads of city's all stars.... so happy days

We've had two uncommitted heads of recruitment in the past 3-6 months, both of them moving to teams in Blue. Suggest it lies there.

A lot of that has to do with us actually pushing up and attacking this half. Beginning to wonder if our tactics are simply to park the bus first half, let the other team tire, and then have a go second half.

Need the world cup to come around, get our best players back fit, and get 2 premier league quality attackers in!!!

Lyanco should be off. Absolute liability. one and a half games and he could have had about 3 red cards total in that time!

Should have signed Openda in the summer. He was so cheap... Just grabbed a hattrick for Lens as well 😭😭

Did you read what I put... I said he offers a decent attacking output compared to our other attacking mids... And that we need better attacking players? So you agree with me basically I would say... Except on your. Lyanco proposal. What moi does offer is a good work rate and key defensive contributions to go alongside his attacking contribution 🤷‍♂️. The reality is that I would expect him to be regularly getting game time on current form and given the players he is competing with... And we shoudn't be playing lyanco as right attacking mid over Moi!

Palace are off form and we are coming into this off a decent patch of form. Almost certainly means we won't win!

If edozie had played instead of Ely vs Arsenal, our MoM doesn't play - and with his absence we'd miss two superb goal saving tackles (abeit one ultimately ruled out for crossing the line after the tackle) and the opening for our equaliser. Ely deserves his place in the team no question atm - puts in a great work rate and carries a decent level of threat (at least for our attacking mids at anyrate). When you start suggesting we play a CB as a wide attacking mid its time to put down the crazy juice - If it was that easy arsenal wouldn't be top of the league We'd all love better quality attacking mids, but we didn't get them in the summer, and consequently we've playing till at least the world cup with Ely, Stu/Adam Armstrong, and Edozie. I also forgot Walcott, he'll be getting some game time as well

Could and probably should have been sent off vs Arsenal (double punch on jesus, the headbut, and hands on the throat of martinelli to name just a few), would imagine the refs have reviewed that and will be on him from now on.

If a goalbound shot is stopped by a hand/arm - its a penalty in my book. It may be an accident (fair enough), but its still stopped the other team having a potential shot - the fair response is to give them a penalty and give the keeper a chance to save it. Just ignoring the fact that they'd have scored but for a stray arm is nonsense. If jesus had hit a pearler going for the top corner and it hits salisu's arm 1m into its trajectory - could fan's legitimately grumble that they get a penalty? if it was deliberately stopped by an outfield player obviously using their arm/hand to save the shot - that should be a penalty and booking.

Arsenal made 6 or 7 changes for their midweek game as well - not to mention our injuries atm. Bloke is just pedalling popular narratives.

Suffice to say - in Ralph we trust. .