Daft Kerplunk

If we stay up, that’ll be a perfect season 👍🏼

With safe standing likely to be permitted, could this be Saints’ chance to use the Chapel stand to create a meaningful end in the stadium for fans to be together and stand, and hopefully sing? Certainly if I was at the club, I’d put safe standing across the Chapel end regardless as watching football standing up is more fun, and helps generate better atmospheres than people sitting down.

Has to be a pen

So the player might want to leave, or there might be interest but Ralph doesn’t want the player sold. I know Ralph’s English can get tied up a little so hopefully this is one of those moments, and not a guarded and nuanced answer.

Looking forward to seeing him play and hoping the club have found a gem

Decent result

Ralph is the bestest ever so don’t worry 😉

No Armstrong or KWP. Persisting with Djneppo and Walcott. Questionable.

I think there is going to be disappointment at this very likely reality

Club stooge dampening expectations info 😎

Too easy!

Leadership and team spirit are as low as I’ve seen for some time with this team and it is an issue. Better coaching and leadership off the pitch would help; demands in training and match day performance need to be far higher. No player should feel satisfied with themselves if they’ve not played at their best. It seems to easy in the camp to get away with lacklustre matches.

All sensible. You mention coaching which is, from what I understand and observe, a huge weakness. Ralph may well be so stubborn and high on himself that he can’t work with excellent subordinates but bringing in a genuinely highly regarded coach would help him no end. Someone else who could influence his thinking during matches would be good too; there are far too many examples when his reading of the game has been way off and he clearly doesn’t have strength on the bench in that area to support him.

See Fraser Forster for when this can fall down. However, if we can better at coaching players and keeping a smaller more competitive squad, longer contracts can work. That said, long contracts screwed is with the likes of Hoedt. Ultimately comes to quality of recruitment, coaching and generating great teams.

Salisu is the ready-made replacement for Vestergaard (not in style but position) and I have my doubts we’d be looking for another centre back when we’ve also signed a young lad. We might get a few more in on loans or free transfers though. A mix of Ings and Vestergaard’s transfers will go towards balancing the books.

Anything like this will be very well managed by someone who ran a marketing agency used to controlling public messages (Semmens) and that’s all good when things are going well. With the well-timed signings accounted today, a fans meeting should have always been good with any fan feelings tempered by a little more positivity.

Good move for the player and club. With the likes of Chelsea taking too many players at a young age, this will become more common. It’s weird when it’s two clubs in the same division still but increasingly normal. If he bags goals for us and puts pressure on others to perform, it’s a win.

Decent and I reckon the youth might be into this as a fashion item as well as a great message of support for a section of the human race who still gets unnecessary abuse. Like racism, if you don’t have a problem with it, you have nothing to worry about or fear from it.

If he scores the goals, couldn’t care less whether it’s with add ons or exchanges. Ings could create goals from nothing which was why he was so important to a team that couldn’t create so let’s hope either this fella can do that, or that we still have more to come.

I’d take 17th if offered it today

Not a worry about them being fans, just making the point that Danny Ings didn’t need to be a Saints fan and that he might have moved on because he didn’t like who he worked for, not the organisation. But I am not one of those people who automatically dislikes anyone who moves on from Saints, or chooses not to come here. This Ings transfer is a great deal for SFC from a financial point of view and footballers are nothing more than pawns in this particular corporate game.

When it says ‘hates Saints’ I know some people who have worked for Saints and they very much totally dislike the people who run the club. They are Saints fans but they’ll tell you there are some absolute cnuts who are definitely NOT Saints fans running the place. Ralph clearly falls out with people as well so it’s hardly unlikely that he and Ings would have come to blows. Ings has been brilliant for us. He, like Bertrand, have opted to leave for better clubs. The money is no doubt brilliant but don’t we all want to enjoy where work, and respect who we work for?

Dual announcement when Vestergaard leaves? Or just that a load of people need to sign it off, or how do you cover that Martin Semmens had previously said Ings would stay, or how do you take a sly dig at a player that has pretty much kept us up the last two years?

Anyone thinking we are going to spend all £30m on players is surely deluded. There’s the money to Liverpool for their % and then we’re in bad shape financially. Once we sell Vestergaard we might see some money spent on players but my guess would be £60m in (including the low level sales) and £25m out, perhaps with some loans. Someone mentioned Long’s reaction amongst the players. What sort of reaction was that as although people seem to discount player reactions or emotions, they are important for team spirit and overall feeling of being in a club doing well, or one that is on the ropes.

No Ings over the last two years and we’d have been relegated so thank you Danny for your service. If we had been more ambitious and able to improve, I imagine he’d have stayed but we aren’t that club anymore. Villa are on the up. Great that he has performed for us too as this has helped towards the desperate finances of the club. Finances should be reasonably secure once Vestergaard has gone and there might be some spare change to buy a cheap player or two.