Saint86

What?!?!?! We barely have a squad of 15 premier league quality players... The main reason we aren't playing championship football already (or in the relegation zone this season) is because of ralph. And if the ref's hadn't been screwing us out of goals every single game since Christmas we'd be pushing for Europe... despite the injuries we've had.

They're 7 points off a sinking Bournemouth in 6th... Its more likely than saints failing to get circa 6 points from 39points - there, I've said it. 🙈

For starters it shouldn't be drawn until the table reads P38, or in the unlikely even that we actually look like slipping into the relegation zone and things are really bad.... If we lost another game 6/7/8 nill this season but finished top 10 or top 8 would you still sack him? Or equally came 12th and reached a cup final? To our reactionary fans - the ones who were over the moon until Christmas - is it Ralphs fault that we're losing (on average) a goal a game (+) to bad refereeing decisions? Or that the club has no money and a tiny squad? Or limited access to treatment rooms and some very bad luck with injuries? Or all of the above coinciding with the better / form teams in the league? It seems very harsh to blame / sack him just yet imo.

Nigel Pearson has just joined one of our rivals for next season (Bristol City) and isn't available. Keep up!! 🙄

Wow. I don't miss Alpine that much anymore. And sacking Ralph to get Howe? Would be unreasonable to sack Ralph and Howe is certainly no better. He got relegated with arguably a better squad and his Bournemouth team were equally poor defensively.

Its routine. The second the ref is against us we lose our heads. Tbf it's been basically every game since Christmas... But ref + goal behind and you can give up. Scarring of the leiceater 9-0 game imo.

We have a significant debt which will worsen this season, and we make a loss every year. You're going to need to tailor your expectations. Bertrand especially is a must keep as we won't be able to replace him without a significant net spend.

So I didn't realise this, but I just checked. You get one guess as to who the VAR referee was when we lost 0-9 to Leicester.

It really is as simple as this. For any fans out there that don't think we can get 7 points from a possible 45, where are your "Hassenhuttle out" posts?

I think you mean, "In Djenpo we trust"!! 😆

We've got 16games left and we're 7points off 8th. We're nearly back up to full strength and have had our bad patch (form/injuries/refs) - no one wants to play a full strength saints! We should be giving everything we can for the league, i'd expect us to be challenging for top 8 as a minimum.

15min gone and I like him!

Nonsense, saints win tonight!!!!

Replace "clean sheet" and "scores the winner", with two own goals and "match abandoned" (specifically not due to a meteorite hitting Shropshire which Wolverhampton isn't in...) 🙈 Reckon that's about right and should make for an entertaining debut - Saints to win 4-3 by arbitration 👌

Well, I do consider it unlikely that Man City will let Leeds sell Harrison to us on their behalf.... 😆

Its unavoidable that McCarthy's confidence won't have been knocked surely? So i won't be too surprised to see Forster get some games.

Both good players that would do a decent job for saints. It would cause a small issue in that we'd be selling our only decent goal scorer and have no cash to replace him with though .... 🙈

Pitch was atrocious today, made it very easy for Newcastle to sit deep... but agreed. Worrying from the team that we lack this much creativity.

If the fans were in the ground for the next game, i actually think (given all that has happened), that he'd get a loud resounding show of support for his next appearance.

Hopefully all the guilty parties are named and shamed, and receive due punishment - which absolutely must include a lifetime ban from the club regardless of whatever the criminal charges are. I just hope it doesn't knock the lad even further. He waits his entire life to make his full debut, gets the chance at Old Trafford, and it turns out like this. Hope he can pull himself up from it.

Good post mate. The team basically stopped giving a shit after the bednarek red card - Armstrong laughed in Dean's face after he booked him for having the ball in the wrong spot for kick off (which in itself was ridiculous). I'm sure we all feel like they just gave up last night, that they didn't do enough to be professional and keep the score down. For my part, as soon as the first red card happened i had a sinking feeling, then at 1-0 and 2-0 i thought the whole affair had shades of the Leicester game, especially with the attitude the players were portraying. Almost like, "well this one has gone against us" / "ten men vs 12" etc. In a similar way, once we went behind against Villa and Arsenal in recent weeks, the players heads dropped a bit and you got the feeling that they'd almost had enough and just felt that things were too stacked against them. And to be fair to the players, we have very small squad riddled by injuries, have played consistently all the best teams in the league in recent fixtures (United and Arsenal twice), and have basically been bent over by the officials in multiple games. All that lumped on top of lockdown Britain where frankly they must just be at least as jaded as the rest of us. I feel like this is the low point in the season and that perhaps we needed something like this to happen. All we can do is wait for the Newcastle side and see what Saints team turns up. The danger ofc is that confidence / suspensions / injuries continue to take their toll and we struggle to pick up wins. If that happens for any significant period of time then we'll start dropping down the league and things could snowball in to us getting dragged into a relegation scrap (although i consider that unlikely). The whole situation lately (finances/injuries/form) has highlighted the precarious position of the club generally and in the short to mid term. Hopefully the fans realise just how well the team has performed since the Leicester 0-9 and where we could be otherwise! On the Ralph front. I feel for the man. He could easily go to a club with the means to at least support his ambitions. But saints can barely sustain a fit matchday squad of suitable calibre. We're also clearly so financially skint that we had to loan out 2 academy players and Shane long just to get in a midfielder that doesn't appear to have been a primary target. The recent period at the club will undoubtedly knock him back (granted he recovered superbly last time and was certainly happy enough to extend his contract) - but the last thing we need is Ralph of key players seeing saints as a club with no real future. Precarious times for the club. Will we look back in a few years time at a successful rebuild by Ralph? Or are we about to witness a period of financial trouble, losing our manager and best players, and a drop in quality and league status?

Yes, we'd all love an owner to prop us up at a great level financially... But the reason the club can't run sustainably is because Reed bought hoedt, Ely, boufal, carrillo, lemina etc... None of that is Gao's fault, and at least he got rid of Reed!

In his defence.... it was still 0-0 when he was on the pitch! After all his fuss about expecting first team football, he can at least walk away from that performance pointing out that he is untarnished by the 9 goals...

I think the blame for our financial turmoil and recent transfer losses can easily be laid with Les Reed. We still haven't shifted out all of his dead weight that we bought for the vvd and undervalued mane sales. Gao at least got rid of him!

My Dad took me to see us play Arsenal at the Dell for my birthday in 94. Sat in the chapel end and watched us win 1-0 curtesy of a second half Magilton goal.