UpweySaint

Fuck me this is poor. Can't name a single player who is coming out with any credit. Tactics not working either. Credit to WBA who are playing some good stuff and are determined to win every ball but we need a rocket at half time.

The fact that he was third choice as Spurs is irrelevant. The way he has played this season I would be quite confident saying he is better than any of the right backs at Spurs. Broadly though I agree with your point we can't be so reliant next year. Our lack of depth at full back is no plain for all to see and we've been trying to remedy it in the loan market.

Adding ‘with respect’ doesn’t make the sentiment you express respectful, it actually comes across as callous. If a football club is no bigger than the 11 players on the pitch on a Saturday what’s the point of even supporting a club? May as well just rock up at any given ground and watch the spectacle.

Not much between the sides and there fans must be scratching their heads with the position they are in. They play some really good stuff at times, very fluid and possession heavy. I think we may just edge it, 2-1. I expect them to be having a few nerves with Fulham catching them up. It’s been nodded to by others on here and Sheldon on the Athletic said it but I tend to agree Ralph’s decision to rest KWP, Diallo etc against city will only look sensible if we get a result. I’d settle for a point here but 3 and even the twitchiest fan has to feel we’re safe! It would be great to see the pressure of and start building for next season.

I think generally the most positive thing about Che is that he acts as a positive partner for Danny (when both on song). He’s ‘okay’, shown flashes that suggest the could improve and IMO be a 10 goal a season prem striker. If he was our main goal threat I’d have serious concerns though. I’m a bit of an apologist but I find it hard to be too critical of individual players when collectively the team is in such a funk. Very few coming out with much credit at the moment. Armstrong aside I think we’d all struggle to agree that anybody else is performing consistently well. Also, in mitigation Adams was relatively cheap for a young English striker. The fee paid for Watkins and the mooted price tags on Armstrong and Toney suggest as much. His goal record is inferior but if he develops into a 10 goal a season striker for us £15mil will seem like small beer.

I don’t often go in with the ‘must win’ game but we clearly need to stop the rot. Heads have dropped and losing to the leagues bottom side would dent fragile confidence. While of course there will be more opportunities to get the last few results we need to completely ease any relegation mutterings this is clearly one of the better ones. Worth nothing Sheff Utd have injury worries of their own at the back and look blunt up top. I would hope if we hit 36/37 points soon tension would ease and we can start playing with more bravery. It would also be good to give Tella, Nlundulu and Jankewitz (possibly even get Ferry off the bench) a few run outs to get a view to their squad roles next year and hopefully have a small positive impact on their overall development.

Playing poorly and on current form should not be starting but then you could say the same for a fair few right now. Reality is we don’t have a plethora of choices in the squad to replace him with. For me the frustration is I genuinely believe he is better than he has shown this season. The worst thing is peak redmond (admittedly we’ve not seen him for a while!) is exactly the sort of player we could do with to give us something extra in the final third.

This. Everton shaded it, small margins prevented us getting a point or more. If we can dig out a result from somewhere we'll stop the rot.

I expect we could make a similar point about Reed. He would have seen a fair bit of game time this season but unfortunately several factors made we felt compelled to cash in. I may be misremembering but wasn’t there a lot of hype about Vokins? May have all been bluster but I seem to remember talk that he was seen to have a lot of potential and would kick on this season. Shame it’s not worked out thus far, hoping he gains some experience from his loan and can have a good preseason. If either him or Ferry could step up it would be a real bonus!

I’m not missing it, I just don’t agree. I think it’s speculative to suggest we’d have faired any better than we did with a Noble type player. The Leicester game was a shocker, we capitulated spectacularly, it happens. The 9 is the bit that stands out but you’ll find plenty of examples of teams in bad shape collapsing. But it led to Ralph and the players turning around and going back to a style of play thats had us playing above our level for the most part, does the form in 2020 not speak to positive characteristics within the squad? The Utd game was what it was. Down to ten in minutes, injury ravaged against a superior side at their best with a twelfth man on their side. What outcome did anybody expect? If we only lost 5-1 would we not be having a collective meltdown? Without Mike Dean/VAR the game would have never finished 9-0. Can we honestly blame the players for having their heads drop during that fiasco? Broader perspective where should we be as a club with the financial mess we are in and the squad we have? The fact relegation is almost unthinkable this season and we’re still going in the cup is really good going in my eyes. Surely the players get credit for this as must as they deserve criticism for the poor form?

I’m not missing the point at all. If we had Noble instead of JWP we would have far fewer points and two drubbings would be the least our worries. I don’t agree with the assumption that because JWP doesn’t yell he’s not demonstrating leadership. If that was all it took to achieve results on a football pitch Roy Keane would be berating Sunderland to a league and cup double from the sidelines rather than becoming a parody of himself on social media. Our recent run aside we’ve had some top quality results and performances this season. Even taking into account our current run we’re still overachieving.

If we had Noble in our side instead of JWP we would be in, or very close to, the relegation zone.

He’s not a shouter but I rate Prowsey as a captain. He directs play on the pitch, he’s brave receiving possession in tight positions, he’s won us games almost single handedly with his dead ball prowess, he has a top example of player development at the club (making the shirt his own despite some set backs), he doesn’t stop grafting despite a superhuman run of games and he’s added a bit of b*stard into his game (see Wilf Zaha or a prime example of him doing this). We don’t have many ‘shouters’ and leadership is not ‘innate’. As players grow in a squad they develop into leaders. I get the frustration that there doesn’t always seem to be that drive when things go wrong, as they have lately, but I don’t attribute our poor recent form to lack of leadership on the pitch or ‘drive’ for the players to keep pushing. Can we honestly blame the players for heads dropping lately? If we take the Wolves game we are playing really good football and barely giving them a look in for almost an hour. Again we’re done by a decision that at best is inconsistent, if not down right b*llocks, and it must be hard not to think ‘here we go again!’ - we are feel it and I suspect the players are not immune.

It’s easy to do ‘ifs’ and ‘maybes’ but I think some genuinely baffling refereeing aside we would be on 33/35 points and the faint murmurings of crisis on the horizon wouldn’t be surfacing. The football we have played under Ralph has been some of the best I have seen in years and it’s with a side with nowhere near the talent Koeman had. He’s had the team look much more than the sum of its parts and I go into every game genuinely believing we could get a result. it’s fair to say his game management can be criticised but, in mitigation, the squad has its limits. I would love to see what Ralph could achieve with a little backing. As others have said, who would be doing better with this squad that would realistically come to us? It’s the same as when many slag Redmond for being inconsistent. If he wasn’t so inconsistent I feel confident to say he would be playing for a bigger club, much the same goes for Ralph, if he was the finished article he wouldn’t be with us. He’s developed in his time with us and the players have too, my guess is this will continue to happy particularly as Ralph presents as reflective and self aware (comparative to say a Steve Bruce type manager).

It’s odd, but understandable, that Gunn has fallen so far he’s not even in the discussion. lots of talk about replacing next season but with all three on our books there is no chance we are adding a fourth without any movement. FWIW I don’t think there is much between Macca and Forster ability wise (confidence is key) and Forster should get a chance to claim the shirt if he performs well in the Wolves games. Macca hasn’t been great but his drop in form has largely coincided with the drop in form throughout the side. At the start of the season he was pulling off some top drawer saves and was an outside shout for the England squad.

If Edouard would see us as a good step to prove himself against better opposition to secure a ‘big’ move he could be worth a look to replace Ings, he’s not been at it this year but I would still be surprised if his next move isn’t to a side regularly in Europe and in a decent league. If there is a deal to be had then Ely must be worth a few quid to Celtic, he’s been one of their most consistent players this year. You would hope that might bring our outlay down while taking Ely off the wage bill (hopefully!). I’ve only seen glimpses of Kent but he has something about him. Rangers have been very open that they will need to sell players so a decent offer would likely be considered. From you’re write up he certainly sounds like he would be a good addition. Again though I circle back, in both cases it’s a shame we’re not managing to identify these players one step earlier - appreciate it’s not ever that simple but it’s the same broad argument about the Da Grosa takeover. We need to find a way to compete and find/create better value than our rivals who are better resourced in many ways.

I understand he can’t but I suppose my point is this essentially makes him a ‘poor’ owner. He can’t access any capital, we may as well have a fan ownership model in that case (though that comes with it’s own problems) imagine the saints web mob having to agree on actual decisions about the club! if we have nobody who can invest in the club or develop the club in some other way I really question what value they bring? I’m not naively optimistic and appreciate we’re a business but if we don’t have any hope for anything better than the current state of affairs it’s bloody depressing! 😕

We seem to have a really really low bar. He wouldn’t even have to spend to be considered remotely decent ... he could have loaned the club money at a small interest rate instead of saddling us with debts with staggering interest rates. He would have made money and it would have been healthier for the club. Apart from putting Semmens in charge and letting him get on with it what has he actually contributed? He has no interest in our club at all beyond trying to make a few quid but it rather looks like he might end up coming out even at best. Da Grosa might not be any better but I don’t think there is anything wrong with holding Gao to a reasonable standard just because ‘it could be worse’

Agreed there is still value but £10-15 mil is about our upper limit these days. Tavernier is a top quality player though I feel that KWP has been one of our stand out performers and I couldn’t see Tavernier coming here to be a back up. Edouard is a shout but I could see him leapfrog our level rather than have to go down the VVD / wanayama route.

Easier said than done but these are the sort of players we need to be getting our hands on earlier. Watkins was really highly regarded at Exeter. We were credited with an interest at the time. With impacts of Brexit these are the types of players I would hope we could take a chance on. Of course this presumes we have the financial scope to actually takes chances on players who might not be ‘first team ready’. Turnbull now at Celtic is another we were linked with, the going rate was less than £3mil ... took a while to get going but now one of the new bright spots for Celtic in a woeful season. He might not have enough to step up to the Prem but I would suggest he would have been worth the gamble. Now any move for him would need a figure in excess of £10mil ... I don’t think we have the flexibility for a lot of these ‘gambles’ but looking at the lack of any real options from the bench recently it’s a shame we couldn’t have one or two exciting prospects particularly with the academy having a relative dry spell.

Agreed. Not saying he played well, been nowhere near his best this season, but we played poorly as a team with little exception. The most frustrating thing for me is the Villa game. We deserved to win that one. If we had, even with the 9-0, people wouldn't be having quite the same sense of crisis and panic.

Lot's of things to pull apart today but when we were struggling to break Newcastle down I had a look at the bench and couldn't see anybody on there that I thought could spark something for us. Diallo or Armstrong might have been a nice option as somebody to play around the corner in those right spaces. It was also noticeable how much we miss KWP. Bertrand just isn't offering the threat he used to and with Stephens having to cover at RB we lacked any real threat from out wide. Redmond gets a lot of hate and some of it is frankly OTT but he looks to have lost the confidence to drive at the opposition. To say he's 'non league' standard is clearly b*llocks but we need much more from him if he wants to be a feature in the side. Minamino looked good, well taken goal, but tired as the second half went on. If Tella isn't going to get on at that point it's hard to see him ever having an impact on the first XI. Stephens positionally was poor. He's not a rb. He can cover but up against Saint Maximan he was bound to be taken apart. Bednarek is having a week from hell. McCarthy's place must be under threat. Ings is not looking sharp, we're talking such fine margins but things that would come off for him last season are just not quite happening. Can we have a few weeks off to regroup? Is there an international slot coming up soon?

Honestly that c*nt is part of the reason I stopped watching! I've seen us get tanked before but can't stand listening to him wanking off over Utd. Worse that Neville or Carragher by a mile.

To be fair I was underwhelmed when we signed Bertrand and KWP but both have proved to be astute signings (okay maybe a little early for KWP but v positive early signs). We may struggle to find somebody who will provide the consistency Bertrand has over his time with us but I'd have faith in our current set up to identify a decent replacement. Since Ralph and the shuffling of the deck higher up our transfer business has become more hit then miss. We do seem to be sniffing around Williams and Vokins has looked okay (albeit a bit raw) in his cameos.

Probably can't grumble about a point, when they scored I did fear they would kick on and find another ... Diallo's little turn to get away from his man was decent, shame the final ball wasn't quite there as it would have felt wonderful to pinch all 3 points!