Saint86

No. Was obvious as soon as the goal went in that the players heads dropped. No belief or confidence. United were shit and still beat us fairly easily.

Relegation and PSR will do that to any squad. Let alone when you're playing one of the richest clubs in world football. Its not like united have had rich owners investing in them.

Game was lost when smallbone came on. No presses made, no useful passes or tackles. just an absolute waste of space. Was a terrible sub. If the striker was tired, we should be using someone like Onuachu or Archer, with Smallbone playing in midfield if he absolutely has to come on... and to bring him on before downes was just mental.

What is the point of smallbone. Awful substitute thats cost us this game frankly.

I approve of this set of subs.

I don't want to be harsh on smallbone. But i think this is a bad sub. Will diminish our attacking threat and force us deeper. Would have gone archer/armstrong/lallana here.

Sulemana had to pass. He's playing for himself for his move.

He absolutely was to blame. Suicidal football gifting chances.

Whisper it. Only 7 points from safety.

Token stupid yellow for Dibling for a shirt pull after fluffing an attacking move 😄

Ref has already decided the winner here.

Most obvious one I can think of (because of the ralph connection) is ralf rangnick 🤷. Also, Klopp is essentially DoF for the redbull group, "global head of football" to be exact... I would guess that prominant top level managers (who are by inspection near the top of their game) tend to stay as managers as it's what makes them successful and is their bread and butter livelihood etc. Whilst less known managers probably slip under the radar (as do most DoF in fairness). Edit... An obvious one who I refuse to give any credit to. Les Reed.

Rumours circulating now that we've "recalled him", because Sheffield United want him 😂

Filling in the blanks. I can see that that would piss off the Wednesday Chairman... 😂 Recall him at the last minute, ending their playoff hopes, and then giving him to their bitter rivals. Not sure why we'd want to put ourselves into the middle of that particular rivalry though - even if we are pissed off with their chairman!

Yeah, he had a pretty serious case of Nostrikeritis during his last 18months with us.

Yeah, i have nothing but time for Souness tbh, even if he can be a cantankerous old bar steward with the best of them when he wants to. Sadly i don't think he would be well suited to the game these days, and in particular some of the "modern footballers".

https://www.owlstalk.co.uk/forums/topic/336175-chansiri-declares-war-on-southampton/#comments Pretty f'kn hard to damage us more than SR have this season 😄. I wonder if this is somehow related to future moves for Rohl? Also, what a thing to say about Shea Charles... (if indeed he did say it).

What kind of argument are you trying to make. The reason he did nothing for us is because we farmed him out on loan and then got rid of him... In the meantime we spent £160M on shit (that we're repeatedly struggling to shift or use) whilst tella remains a very promising and effective young player. The star of the championship in Burnley's title winning season, and now a Bundesliga winner...

This has just popped up or me... Seems topical given certain posters' concerns over talksport interviews. https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1DT2NZRnRx/ Quite liked semmens tbh. Performed well with Ralph given the limited funds. Highlighted really by the total mess we've seen since despite all the money spent.

Was a dumb decision to let him go. Just another youngster we've pissed away so we could sign the likes of Mara and Edozie 🤣

Doesn't surprise me that no one has been charged. But it is very frustrating that we've jumped through various hoops to comply with it (upon relegation and this past summer window) only for Leicester to seemingly ignore it entirely.

I fully agree with you (I imagine the overwhelming majority do at this point). It doesn't have to be Chris Wood, but there are/were proven players that could/would've suit(ed) whatever system we've been after. But sadly rather than buying quality, we've spent over 200million scatter gunning on fluff for the squad in the hope that we'd uncover gems or get players for the future (with not enough thought on the here and now). We've also switched styles quite extremely over that period.

In fairness, its also about styles of play. He was never a "Martin" style signing. But agree otherwise - he is showing that there is still a place for good old fashioned centre forwards, and i personally love to see it. Reminds me of the way Lambert was unfancied by a lot of teams but became a real fan favourite at saints and was an absolute weapon for us and was integral to our system. Edit - thinking about it, was fairly astute by Cortese at the time that he picked Poch as the manager, someone who favoured the use of high energy attacking players (for the press) focussed around a target man centre forward who could hold the ball up and link play. He suited the players we had very well for a relatively unknown manager, and obviously went on to execute that with even better players at Spurs. Sports Republic could learn a thing or 2 about footballing styles, and matching it up with suitable manager and player recruitment.

Why are you fearful?

The mistake was sacking Ralph (currently 6th in Budesliga with a transfer profit of 10M euros this season) and spunking £100M to deliver him forward line additions of Mara, Edozie. 6Months of a slow motion car crash.