Saint86

I notice De Gea is without a club...

I know its a running joke, but the catchment area for Southampton FC fan's is is pretty large - and mean for matchgoing fans. There was a thread on it recently this season where (some) people on here were actually looking down on saints fan's from outside the city... And i still think its mad that that outlook exists tbh. Do people actually walk around thinking the traffic through Millbrook and down the avenue on matchdays is for Ikea? All that should matter is we've got dedicated fans that attend matches. I grew up 15min from salisbury but have supported Saints my entire life, lived in the city for a bit, but then moved to Bristol and kept a season ticket going until Puel.... he (and kids) was the final straw for the season ticket. My eldest is 6 now, took him to 4 games last year including the play off final, and he's been in to Staplewood... (i'm doing my best to get him hooked before he picks a glory club), whereas pretty much all his mates at school support arsenal/city/liverpool etc. (🤮), and they'll likely never go and see a game... Also, when travelling up to Wembley we were sat near saints fans from Taunton and Devon that had been going to see saints all season (which following the dreadful relegation season is some effort). And yet we have fans that look down on them for being outside the city, weird. As for meeting saints fans out and about, we're generally great. There used to be a bloke on the bristol bath cycle ride that would yell "up the saints" etc when we'd go past each other on our commutes, and i'll always remember chatting to a fan in old Rhodes town many years ago. That atmosphere doesn't exist with the bigger plastic clubs, whereas saints are just big enough to have fans all over the place, but don't have glory fans (because we don't win anything 😅🤣🤘). Plus we benefited from the boon in 90's football and having someone like Le Tissier being broadcast all around the world showing of spectacular goals.

Personally think this is a class signing for the money. Fancy him to become a bit of a fan favourite at saints. He's got something about him for me - good movement, bursts of pace when he needs them, strength in holding off defenders once he's beyond them, a hell of a shot on him, but also a directness and calmness/composure to vary his finishing. Takes a mean penalty as well. This is a good signing for us. Reckon he'll bag 10-15goals (provided we aren't god awful next season 😅).

Just that we really do want to be man city 😂

I've only just clocked that Man City are with Puma... Of course they are... it all makes sense now 😄

We outperformed them on xG. Yet in the league, they're +14 on goals scored vs xG (which is the best in the league and far and away ahead of the other promotion sides). So much luck its unreal. Defensively they were beyond jammy as well. Take the last game against us, multiple clearances off the line where their players didn't even know where the ball was before blindly hacking it away, and scoring a winner from the worst touch/shot you'll ever see that afforded the player a tap in afterwards. That one game alone is a 6point swing. Nice story sure (if you turn a blind eye to their man city level spending for the 3rd tier), but jammy as hell to go with it.

Agreed. He's also a moron. Saints outperformed Ipswich as an attacking force last season, and equally Ipswich had a tremendous amount of luck to make the automatic spots in multiple games - not least vs us (twice) and Leicester. Don't get me wrong, i think they'll make a fist of it next year as they've got a lot of momentum and financial flexibility, but saints will do just as well as them. At the end of the day, very little separated the top 4 sides last year - and our squad has a lot more depth and prem experience - two critical assets in the premier league.

Wow

Just checking my list of urgent weak links that desperately need addressing or we'll get relegated... Nah hypo, I'm not seeing Smallbone on there i've got to be honest. I'm looking forward to seeing Big Willy smash some goals in this season, hopefully vs Forest to background chants of "You're just a shit willy smallbone" being directed at Shelvey 🤘. Smallbone will do fine. He's got a lot of minutes under him at the champ now and he's not fresh to the prem like Spiderman etc were. Plus he suits Martin's system and has good chemistry with the likes of Downes and Arma... i'm pretty damn sure we'll see him in and around the first 11 many times. We'll wind up with something Alcaraz / O'riley /Aribo in front of Downes and Smallbone. Its good enough to keep us up - Its still a striker, full back (assuming kwp goes), winger, and goalkeeper that really need sorting.

Alright mate, to each their own, but a significant proportion of our goals against occurred in 4 games. 3 of those were at the very start of the season when we completely changed the style of play, had to tackle squad morale, and had a hugely unsettled squad generally - with players arriving and leaving en mass. That made it a difficult period to bed in the team/tactics. If people want to consider those games as a basis for Martin's defensive record then that's up to them, but i don't personally. Similarly the Leicester game at the end of the season is quite clearly an anomalous result - intensive fixture run in (due to two postponed games), bad injuries to key figures in the squad, and our automatic promotion hopes were all but ended. Its really not that surprising what happened, albeit still disappointing. As for, "coached choice", its an interesting choice of phrase given martin very clearly chose to switch to a back 5 for the final 4 games of the season, which saw us conceded 2 goals in 4 games vs Leeds and WBA. Consider as well that the WBA game was a total consolation goal where everyone had switched off - including the wba fans themselves 😄.... To quote the commentator, "i've never seen a goal be less celebrated". People may not like it (whatever their reasons), but if you allow for just a few clear outliers our defence starts to look a lot more respectable. If you then look at the games where we set up actively to be more defensive we looked very solid. To come full circle - Martin's time with saints (and his maturing tactics and drilling of the team) is surely a better basis for next season than his earliest seasons as a manager with MK Dons and Swansea 🤷‍♂️. Obviously time will tell, but i can see us employing a mixture of attacking and defensive styles next year - and all that ultimately matters is that we get the points. If that means we tactically go for it in a few games and win 4-3, i don't have an issue, but equally i'll happily play a back five and get 1-0 wins or low scoring draws - martin has shown he's capable of either in the champ.

Maybe, but in an industry/sport where people sit down to watch 2 hours with only a 15min interruption, that approach is nonsense imo. I checked on the app and its the same crap there, 30second soundbites. If we take the time to interview the manager, or clips of the players training, show the whole damn thing or stitch it together in one place. There is a reason why the most popular sports journalists are the ones that can provide depth and detailed breakdowns etc., and why clock bait articles from sources like football insider or sports mole get given a wider birth. Club should get this together as there is a lot of interest in the pre season period and their current content provision is pretty poor. What are they going to do with the press conferences this year? Is every single question going to be split out into its own short video, and we'll have 4 adam blackmore videos to find and watch through? or even worse, if the question takes 2minutes to answer are we going to have to watch multiple videos 😄🙄

Only if the buying team needs a "home grown" wing back... Personally, if we're down at £8-10M for him, i would throw money at him to keep him and give us 2 very strong wing backs plus Taylor for the season. Obviously that doesn't allow for KWP himself wanting to move.

Peachy...

The Italian press well in the know on Scottish football matters are they? 😄

Am i missing something re the official site, or are all the videos these days like 30seconds - 1min in length? In my mind coverage used to be a lot longer for the preseason training and activities. Same thing applies to new signings - is all the material basically just in short clips rather than one concise video that can just be watched without having to go searching for all the constituent parts? Its like the media team have lost the ability to focus for more than a minute...

I mean, you're more the one using statistics here Golac 😆. I'm just using a bit of judgement / reasoning to say that certain games weren't very reflective of the overall team performance... You're taking the actual data and repeating it verbatim to produce a 1.4 goals per game average 🙃 Plus ofc, we managed all of that with the bazunu factor between the sticks. Thats actually a very solid outfield 10 👀 (reaches for coat before i get lynched for doubting baz).

Hah, well... i know you shouldn't read too much into preseason friendlies, but losing to a 2nd string sligo rovers side is a far cry from beating national league Eastleigh 7-1 😅. Can imagine there would have been a mini summer meltdown on here if that happened to us 😅

Since my post was a comparison against the relegation side, i maintain that our defence should be better than that teams defence next year... Also, i've already broken this down on here, but if you take out the first 6 games (Norwich 4-4, Sunderland 5-0, Leicester 4-1) - when we were changing style and had a hugely unsettled squad - and the Leicester one off game in the run in (which has plenty of mitigations), we were a solid side last season; averaging basically goal against per game whilst also being the most attacking side in the league. The playoffs as well saw us switch to a more defensive shape in which we let in only one goal (vs WBA), which was a consolation goal deep in injury time. Leeds in the final we kept comfortably at arms reach bar a couple of long shots when they were giving it their all. Seems unreasonable to me to base next season's expectations off of Martin's defensive frailties (with other sides) when he was a very new/young manager, let alone in preference to his time at saints. If he wants to keep it tight, our tactics at the end of last season show we're more than capable of playing that way.

Thought it might be interesting to look at other team's transfers and found my way to Everton. Maybe i've been living under a rock, but they've not signed much quality this far, and they've sold Onana (played for them 30times last season and easily one of their best remaining players) for big money to villa. I'm assuming this is also related to PSR regulations as there appear to be multiple villa everton shenanigans going on, with 3 players changing over between the two sides - all of them under 22. They also sold Godfrey from defence (played for them 15times in the prem last season), and left winger dobbin (played 12 times in the prem and scored 1 goal), plus danjuma has returned to Villarreal (14 prem games, 1 goal - left wing again). On the face of it, i'd say they've got some serious strengthening to do if they want to stay competitive at the bottom end... Although they're probably sat there looking at Leicester (points deductions and limited funds), us, and ipswich and thinking they've got it comfortably wrapped up - let alone the likes of forest etc. This is their current outfield squad... It doesn't exactly scream quality - alot will hinge on whether they can keep DCL fit / the quality of their back up strikers.

Scored 11 goals in 39 last season. People will laugh, but i actually thought he was a good player for WBA. He played in a very defensive WBA side but was always a threat when we played them. Very powerful player that holds the ball up well, carries it, and stretches defences. With the way saints play he'll offer the physical presence that Che Adams offered, but is more mobile, and would be a good foil for Armstrong/smallbone/alcaraz/sulemana/edozie/fraser running off him if introduced late on or as a squad player. Given he's out of contract this summer, we'll be picking him up on the cheap - so as a minimum its more shrewd business to add depth and players for a worst case return to the championship. You'd like to think that this is a like for like che adams replacement, i.e. not the first choice prem level striker we're after!

Agreed.

The academy just isn't valued that highly by Sports Republic.

Stunning kits. Remind me again which cretin at the club is in charge of choosing our kits - need sacking asap.

So... i think what you're trying so suggest is that Downes is Martin's inside man and snitch on the inside of the squad? 😰

This is hardly a ringing endorsement of the website 😆.