Daft Kerplunk

Football people once called it chances created.

Other than the win, and the way we played, the biggest and most significant thing for me was the way the players were with him after the game. It absolutely looks like he has them on his side and that is no bad thing at all. If they’re all together fighting and believing in each other, that’s powerful.

Was about to say we are playing well. COYR!

The cheap suitcase won’t last. The preened and soft academy raised lads will have him on Louis Vuitton gear and tacky Dubai holidays before you know it. Even the kit man carries a posing wash bag when on away trips 🤣

Reminds me of older folk saying World Cup Willie when you took a shot from outside the are. Willie? Exsqueeze me?

Whatever it is, I just want it to be brave 🤣

Bobby Moore was a 6 so how far back are we going? 4-4-2, jumpers for goalposts, happy days 😊

Is he a centre back? 6, one for the old school there when 6 played alongside 5, with 4 and 8 in front.

Nope. For the record, I want Jones to succeed as he’s our manager so no bias at all. I was actually at the match and could see a change in the players approach. If it was down to the players, or Jones, at least after the break, then it was better and hopefully that’s a sign of improvement. 👍🏼

To me, the players looked like they changed the style of football they were playing after the fans chants of ‘Nathan Jones, your football is shit’. Definitely less aimless balls pumped forward. Maybe there were strong words at halftime from the players. It’s rubbish for them to hear chants like that when it’s what they’ve been asked to do. As it’s unlikely the board will get rid of Jones, hopefully he will be a quick learner and realise the players we have aren’t suitable for long ball football (clearly we fans hate it because aimless long ball football bypassing the midfield is totally shit) and adapt. There were signs today of some fight in the players and JWP in particular was more vocal than I’ve ever seen him. Maybe we will be able to drop the chants about an opposition being shit because we are beating them soon.

Good player, doesn’t fit Toby Steele’s recent comments, and our general approach to buying players recently given his age, but perhaps finally, the penny has dropped that having a decent football team is deemed important.

Imagine going to Everton, one of our genuine bogey teams away from home, needing a win to not set yet another of the Premier League’s shittest team records.

Typos 🤦🏻‍♂️

True, but football is not in any way a normal business. Thinking this way is why the current board largely fails. They are offering a substandard product/service and in a normal business, they’d be screwed because the customers would just not buy it as they’d have other options. If Tesco was continually shit to you, you’d simply go to Sainsbury’s. Tesco would have to win you back. But football fans are not just customers, they are loyal beyond explanation and are mostly treated like simple folk who couldn’t possibly understand anything. The emotional attachment is why there are sites like this one we are all on. Because we care deeply about ‘our’ football club. This loyalty of fans means that the club needs us as key stakeholders. It is emotionally ours and any club who forgets this important factor doesn’t understand the football business, and definitely doesn’t deserve to be custodians of a civic institution. I know they are a business owned by people but it’s way more complicated than that. Ultimately, we have a current board who have lost their way, they have forgotten, if they ever knew in the first place, what running a football club is all about. People have finally started seeing through the relaxed corporate style of Martin Semmens who is only here for himself, and has overseen dreadful decisions. He needs to return to the ultra bullshitting world of marketing and PR he came from. Sport Republic are proving themselves to be very poor too. But this is likely because they believed the Saints board had a great plan and we’re happy to let them get on with things. But anyway, yes the club is theirs, but everyone knows deep down that it’s ours. Without us, they’re is nothing.

Simply awful, years of piss poor decision making. That was dreadful from the players who looked very bad, Jones on that display is out of his depth but it’s been coming for years. Reading the guff from Semmens and Steele is just nonsense. We are losing, if not lost already, hope. Time for the board to be sacked by Sport Republic or do the honourable thing and resign because they’ve lost it. Go now.

Only if there aren’t other more pressing items to discuss, like whether the cutlery used by the board on matchdays is good enough anymore, or it’ll have to wait until the next board meeting.

Lemina and Hoedt weren’t sold because the board believed they were worth more, then they got fuck all for them. The spreadsheet failed.

The words from Toby Steele suggests that the club may have got lost in the weeds, whilst arrogantly thinking it has cracked football. Nothing they are doing is revolutionary, people have been assessing players as to whether they will be good players or not for decades. They are just using computer spreadsheets instead of notebooks and knowledge. Data shouldn’t drive decisions, it should be one tool, but the technocratic style approach of Saints suggests it is the dominant factor. Perhaps this is why the academy is failing to produce Premier League standard players, or maybe it is a reliance on data that means they don’t value expert opinions, hence why there are no ex-pros involved in the academy and certainly no one who played at a high level. As for not signing players who’ve played 100+ games or it’s their second move, using this logic this board wouldn’t sign Alan Ball to help Steve Williams develop, or Jimmy Case to help Shearer, Le Tit etc. or Kevin Richardson to help Matt Oakley and so on. It also looks like the current board did have more of an impact on who they got as owners to let them continue with their marvellous model that’s more worried about amortisation of playing assets than whether the team’s playing assets are good enough for the Premier League. They don’t need to be mutually exclusive, or have a mix that achieves both goals.

The Kingsland won’t really see it, it’ll be side on view for the Chapel and Northam. So this is primarily for the entertainment of the players when they come out of the tunnel, the board who can all smile and congratulate themselves at the spectacle, the families of the board and other club directors, and hospitality seated customers, and sponsors. Solid work Saints, spending money wisely as always.

Remember the scarfs. That was a funny one as they flew from the stands to the pitch. One of the commercial leader’s bright ideas as he knows fuck all about football. I think our board should stick to a manufactured noddy culture they’d prefer to be involved in if the money was there for them, like rugby or cricket.

Massive match. I feel sorry for Nathan Jones. Signs today/yesterday that he is probably a decent manager but he’s joined a club that’s absolutely messed it up royally for too long. I hope Nathan keeps us up as he seems like a decent human being, but that Sports Republic then get rid of the current board and replace with people from at least a sport background, preferably football, fully review all of the departments and make cuts where nothing really happens, get rid of all those who block progress, make the club lean and focussed on being more ambitious and less satisfied with its averageness.

3-4-3 then by the look of it, with the wing backs playing a flexible role

Surely it’ll be a 5-4-1 with that selection. Lyanco as a DM seems crazy as for that position, disciplined play is absolutely vital. Maybe he can become a new player reimagined over Christmas but surely caJones will go for a standard set-up.

Semmens is a director of both SFC and St Mary's Football Group Limited, the company that is the holding company for the football club. I’d suggest he has ‘skin in the game’ because his position depends on it (even if as a simple employee, which he isn’t because he’s a director of two SFC entities with the responsibilities that the title carries, particularly of a business in a reasonably regulated industry), and he’s clearly an important person in the way the football club runs. Someone previously associated with the club, and a very close associate of Martin told me that he’d been the one who bought Gao to the table and was the driving force behind that takeover. Perhaps you know more about that as it’s interesting that you are continuing to try to deflect any criticism from him when he’s a thread that connects the early days of the Kat era to where we are now 🤔 Anyway, we are where we are, and unless things improve,

You’ve answered it for me. Those moments were part of what promised so much about a more positive future. Today, we are bottom of the premier league, and this calendar year has been a horror show. A well run club would’ve built on those positives you very helpfully mention, and sustained it, but we are now facing likely relegation. I know you see no wrong with club but even you must be gutted that we are now where are.