Saint86

Slightly surprised there has been no statement from the club. Even if its simply to deny all knowledge of this. Would love it if we accused boro of playing silly bollocks.

In fairness, its a hard life being a boro fan 😄

I am surprised we felt the need to spy on their training session, and its pretty bloody incompetent if we have and got caught. Worth noting that leeds got fined £200k only because Bielsa admitted he'd been doing it for the entire season. We'd get a slap on the wrist in comparison. Probably worth it just to see how wound up the boro fans have got 😄

Don't get me wrong, thats a lot of statistical analysis to show that the higher up the league you finish, the greater your chance of winning the playoffs... In truth, 23/24 was always going to sit somewhere outside of the norm - you had 4 clubs at the top that were far and away better than the rest. I would be interested to see what sort of correlation exists between the relative points totals of the playoff teams, and then their ultimate promotion chance. I.e., if a team finishes say 20points clear of 4th (or basically has a high proportion of the total playoff teams points), what's their promotion chance. Where i think Boro fans are complacent this time around, and where i think its interesting this year, is that whilst us and boro have faired almost identically over 46games, we've actually achieved it mostly over just the last half of the season. Which means that when the 2 sides meet in the playoffs, there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that we're the form side and the favourite. If boro fans / players keep going on about beating us 4-0 (or that we've struggled vs the other playoff sides) i think they're seriously overlooking how good a team we are now and that there is a marked difference between the saints side then and now. Here is to hoping anyway. Just hope there are no terrible ref decisions or ludicrous deflected goals etc. etc., that end up costing us - its one thing to lose to a better side on the day, and another thing entirely to come away feeling hard done by.

Note sure this is saying anything ground breaking, but it is interesting to see it broken down this way. Would broadly suggest we should be slight favourites to go up... which is probably us stuffed 😆

Agree with Gloucester Saints on this. Reads like a heads gone moment. Rohl turned one of the worst ever Rangers sides (which was also suffering what i'm going to term PMSD (Post Martin Stress Disorder)) into a side that very nearly won the title (and still may)... For context, Rangers have only won the title once since 2010/11 and are now facing the Tony Bloom Hearts era as a mid/long term prospect - which means another side seriously competing at the top end, whilst Rangers themselves are a dysfunctional mess behind the scenes (hence the entire Martin debacle and poor recruitment generally). Really isn't clear that they'll get a better manager if he leaves... probably hire one of the Still brothers next given their penchant for ex Southampton staff 😅

They are just really poor fans - After Wembley, i can see what Pep was getting at when he has criticised their home support over the years.

But why sell him for less... that's surely the crux of it. We'll have a circa £10-15M drop in revenue from this season to next season. That's not earth shattering. Its 10% of the prem's equal share broadcasting revenue, not the 45% we dropped this season, and not the 45% we'll drop next season. Jander is young, one of our best players, and looks to have a very high ceiling. This season coming will be our last real chance to get promoted (if we fail this year)... The time to flog our best players will be summer 2027, not summer 2026.

Given performances and contract length, we should be pushing for £25-30M for Jander, with sell ons. The only reason i would change that is if we are in a position where we are forced to sell, or want to sell to reinvest - Personally, I think the 3 players we'll try our hardest to keep are Jander, THB, and Azaz 🤷‍♂️. Fail to get promoted and we may lose all 3 sadly. Scienza is going to have interest and is an obvious "big sell", Charles will be sold because of the contract situation, and i'm not convinced Downes will want to stay another season. Worth noting, year 1 parachute payments are 55% (of the prem's equal share broadcasting revenue), year 2 are 45% - which equates to a drop of circa £10-15M for next season to circa £39M. After that, it would have dropped to the year 3 parachute payment value (of 20% or £16-18M per year). We won't get this parachute payment as only in the prem for 1 year. Therefore the scary drop is the cliff edge that's coming if we fail to get promoted in both this season and next season, as we will then have to accommodate the circa £39M drop in revenue (year 2 payments to no payments) in one go. So whilst we don't have to make drastic savings this season. Fail to get promoted and we face a revenue cliff edge in the 3rd season that's comparable to the 1st season relegation - and the gamble of whether to go for it or cut out cloth accordingly this summer.

Haha, I was waiting for that one to get dug up... clearly my blind early season optimism was not enough to make Still into a ginger Belgian legend of the south coast, was worth a shot though🤣😄. And in fairness, he did Belgium the fuck out of the championship... 😆. I did also say he was a risky/bold appointment, and that the job of turning around our form and dressing room might be too much for him - which (sadly) proved to be the case.

Jander was absolutely superb in comparison - how he has the legs for those 2 performances back to back i don't know.

Aside from a little flurry at the end when we were shattered and had to comit men forward, they've scored from a foul and our defence with tired legs (not closing clarke).

I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that they're going straight back down. That bet is free money the second the market opens 😅

Deserved to win that game, despite being absolutely shattered after City, and at least we stopped Ipswich's promotion party and have given them something to stress about during the week. Ipswich are bang average and very lucky the season isn't a couple of games longer. Maybe even 1 longer as i've got no doubts both us and Millwall would have caught them. As for tonight, the Ref certainly gave them every decision going in this one as well. They're very lucky they'll dodge the playoffs as i'd rank them behind Saints and Millwall for quality.

This ref is a joke.

Larin just pushed 2 hands in the back when going for that cross... blatant. That one was a pen.

Should it not be a red card for the tackle on Azaz? If he doesn't jump out of the way he gets his leg snapped or an ankle ligament injury.

Whats annoying is that Ipswich really are pretty average, we'd much rather have them in the playoffs than Millwall ffs.

Clear foul in the buildup there.

Yeah, I sadly think so to. Will likely catch up with us at some point in this match. Ah well, let's see what they can do, who knows, we may still spoil their promotion party.

Lots of silly mistakes first few minutes - tired, or nerves?

He's had a disjointed season, but i agree that there is a decent player in there. Hopefully he stays fit going into preseason and can hit the ground running in August.

Don't think there can be any doubt that we fully rattled them and fundamentally they just didn't like it. We were the far better fans (not even a question), and then we had the nerve to scare the crap out of them by keeping a clean sheet for 82min and taking a lead that left them needing a lucky deflected and bouncing shot to get back into the match. They almost got proper humbled and they know it, and that's just too much for their billy big bollocks "fans" online - pretty funny really 😄

Checked their forum (btw - they have to have the worst forum organisation / layout I've ever seen, what is with all their micro threads all covering the same subject 😅🤦‍♂️), but my lord are they cocky. They may or may not beat us, but it's beyond complacent to be that confident of beating this Southampton side away from home 😅

Very very hard to chose between: Scienza, THB, and Peretz for me - for the top award. But even that is harsh on the likes of Azaz, Downes, Bree, and Manning... and its not like the majority of the squad haven't had very good seasons as well. After the misery that was last season, this year has yielded a special team - one that has to get promoted or face dismantling.