Saint86

Familiarity with the playbook? 😆

Might sound really negative, but after the effort of the Swansea cup game, i'd take a point tonight. At full freshness i'd expect us to go for the win, but nothing is guaranteed with saints and we all know we drop points when at full strength - So as it is, tired players, a few injures and absentees, i'd take the point right now.

KWP is our best RB or LB. No debate to be had 😅

I thought the comments were quite reasonable. A bit of mutual respect over the 4-0 and how Southampton fans applauded them at the time. Should be a good tie. I have some friends who are coventry fans and they're all pretty decent footy fans. They were a similar club to saints - the only real difference being that they got their (absolute dogshite) owners and we (thankfully) got Marcus. Could very easily have been reversed!

I'm not sure you can argue Chelsea's academy setup has gone wrong. They have superb talent on their books - the very best break through to their first team (like mount and james etc), then they have other top players like Broja, Gilmour, and Gallagher - players which other premier league (or European teams) develop for them? If they prove themselves good enough they go back into the chelsea first team... or chelsea sell them. Even players like Livramento have buy back clauses - which effectively mean that if an academy product ever becomes a top level player that they'd want in their first team, they effectively then pick them back up on the relative cheap. I would say its functioning fairly well tbh.

Absolute class for us tonight, and to be honest he has been for the past few games. Leading the team by the scruff of their necks to get results in the past few matches.

Very professional performance from the team in difficult circumstances - and very impressed by fitness levels. We were pressing their box after playing with 10men for nearly 90min whilst they were going down with cramp. Some key players really stepped up tonight, not least JWP and Romeu, Diallo and ME also with some key contributions and a lot of threat from Perraud deep into injury time when really he ought to have been knackered by that point. As for this thread, hilarious. Honestly so much slating of the players/manger, and writing them all off midway through a game - like it was their fault we were down to 10men. They didn't stop working all night and would have been very easy to lose that game. Superb effort to get themselves back into it and take the lead in ET as well. Shows a lot of togetherness and spirit from the team - they are certainly playing for the manager and each other. Also good to see their heads didn't drop even for an instant. Promising performance. We do need to stop practicing with 10men though...

Yes, but at least they can't confused valery and tella anymore. They also said we had a midfielder at left back straight after saying about JWP playing at right back. Terrible

good man!

Basically full strength today vs Cambridge - absolute shambles and they lost. Final shot of the game by Almiron, and he shanked it from just outside the D to almost hit the corner flag. Absolutely beautiful result. Surely going to make players think twice about joining them when they can't even beat Cambridge (60th in the football league) with the squad they had today. Shelvey, almiron, joelinton, ASM, Willock, fraser, trippier, ritchie, schar, and Dubravka.... Embarrassing for them!

Turkish and co surely tier 1 or 2 for the recent takeover news? That would drag our average up?

He makes a point of wearing plain black old school boots 😅 Also what should have really given it away that it wasn't bale was that the foreground player was shorter than the guy behind, and bale is a giant. We are not signing Bale. People need to stop with this now 😅

I would say we owe Kat a significant amount for allowing Semmens to find the right buyer tbh. I know she gets a lot of stick - but ultimately she's done the right thing for us here. Makes up for Gao. Telling that she's handed over her veto as part of the takeover as well.

He's an infectious character for sure, and a good talent on the pitch. He's got a lot of ability when carrying the ball and driving at defenders. Could see him developing into a zaha sort of player.

in FM terms, we are secure.

He's a great poacher tbh. I'll always have a bit of a soft spot for him and its good to see him doing well. Nice little Southampton celebration there with yoshida.

I assume you meant to quote my other post about the bale rumours (not this one about JWP's quotes) 😅🤔

In his interview last season, he stated that his dream was for his kids to seem him lift a trophy with Southampton. Now... I mean make of that what you will 😅🤣

Just seen a hilarious rumour linking us with Bale. Honestly, one measly takeover and the rumour mill really does go crazy 🤣

Hi Alex. Thanks for sharing. I watched one of his interviews after reading some of the terrible rumours about him after the takeover. Was extremely impressed by him and what he advocated. Any doubts i had were over in minutes!

Hi Sheaf, that was me. It was based on this analysis here (below), but it only covered 2014-18. Obviously beyond the period covered they continued to sit at the top of the championship table before getting promoted and getting the new stadium. This is several years of success back to back. Very different to the Reed/Kruger era with the "Black Box" model of selling players Koeman signed and then spending the money on utter garbage (simplifying 😅). Consider that Brentford made a comparable profit (from the championship - to our sales on just VVD and Mane) whilst selling more of their best players than we did, and then managing to reinvest it year after year. Rasmus has a very good track record and its exciting to see if he can help improve us (although we've been doing that much better ourselves in recent windows). Worth noting as well, then when Brentford arrived in the Championship in 2014 - they had the smallest playing budget. Is it too much to dream of that being scaled up to Southampton? 😆 I'll say one thing for Gao chairmanship - he got rid of Reed, Krueger etc. and got us running with Semmens, Ralph, Crocker etc. Plus he's left us with what looks to be an exciting future.

I have tried to calmly reflect on the takeover, take in as much of the information and snippets that are out there, and to reach a level headed perspective on it all. I am buzzing. Rasmus got brentford to run a circa £140m profit at brentford between 2014-2018, identifying such talent as jota, maupay, watkins etc on the cheap, and selling them year after year to improve. This isn't like the cancer (Reed) spunking circa £110m from VVD and Mane on the likes of Hoedt, Lemina, Boufal, Carillo etc. These guys did it year after year, and rather than spending their way out of the championship they turned a huge profit on player sales, stuck at the top end every season despite player turn over, and funded a new stadium. Plus ofc his other club dumped us out of the Europa league under Koeman https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/34056532. This is an exciting new period for the club.

I would imagine that any prospect of signing Broja has taken a serious dent with this takeover. Depends if he buys into the bitter Albanian / Serbian hatred.

Its going to take some to beat this post to the title of most like post of 2022 - You've got in early 🤣

Haha, i will eat it 🤷‍♂️ 😄 - i did put that comment about FT fully hoping to get egg on my face 😅