saintwbu

A good character and nice bloke, a big part of that great away at Anfield in the cup. Sad to see him go but the right decision for both, hopefully he gets game time at Bournemouth. Cheers for always giving it everything for the club Jack.

3 at the back is fine as a formation option if you have the right players to play it. We currently don’t have a third CB capable of it, maybe we’re trying to sign one. Albeit I still don’t see it as ever being our best formation, it’s definitely one that could be used when necessary.

Wonder if PSV wanted him to go to Leeds if they were offering more, and maybe he didn’t want to so now he stays?

Sounds like Arsenal are going to activate the extension, presumably hoping for a good loan spell that’ll result in a move for a few million.

Would make sense - JWP, Lavia, Diallo, AMN is a pretty athletic and dynamic CM selection, who all bring something a bit different.

SuperSAINT today

What a night. Can’t remember seeing so many people off their seats for balls going out for goal kicks, or catches from a Saints keeper. The atmosphere in the last 20 minutes or so was one of the best i’ve heard. What a performance from every single player, and all the staff. Just fantastic, great to be there.

Didn’t some of our deals this summer have options to extend? Hopefully his was one.

He gets booed and told he’s getting sacked in the morning when we’re losing games so i’m not sure what he’d achieve by going to applaud those ‘fans’ after a defeat…

Yes. But people are trying to say he was fantastic for his entire time with us, which just wasn’t true.

Yeah to be fair it was more like a season and a half really. Post League Cup final under Puel and then all of Pellegrino’s reign.

West Ham made two pretty laughable efforts to sign Raphinha and Phillips on deadline day in January, Leeds’ two best players, having not signed anyone during that window. A number of Journalists, fans and think I even heard Simon Jordan discuss it, all saw it as West Ham’s board trying to signal to the fans that they were trying, with an approach that was so obviously never going to be accepted.

Does seem a pretty accepted theory that that’s what the West Ham owners do, in fairness, so don’t think it’s entirely fantasy that it does go on. But I agree it doesn’t seem to be the case with us.

Tadic was fantastic for us overall, but he was poor in the last two seasons for us (not the only one) but did basically keep us up almost on his own in the end so my memories of him will always be fond. I distinctly remember him rolling around asking for a foul (nothing in it) at home to Brighton whilst they were on the break down his side and rightly the whole stadium hammered him for it. When you listen to his interview after he left, it makes more sense, he obviously didn’t enjoy the physical side of the Premier League and had had enough of it. This was reflected by his last couple of seasons with us imo.

I thought that was a bit weird also

Me too, and i’ve no reason to think it, but it’s extremely quiet on his side and he can’t be happy with a total of about 4 minutes of football this season in a team that don’t have any strikers.

In what world? There is not a chance I would want 29 year old Mings to be playing and jeopardising Salisu’s game time. Mings is not good enough for Villa, and they’re not exactly ripping it up.

Was weird to justify our one not being given by focusing on one that was less of a handball that was given last week. They seemed to see it as some kind of confirmation that last week was a mistake, rather than our one being the mistake. The reality is our one would not have been overturned by VAR had it been given I don’t suspect, and typically we didn’t get it.

Not seen that rumour for about two months?

Agreed - he’s nowhere near as bad as some make out, he’s just not very exciting. He also moved the ball out to the right to KWP for Che’s second last week. He often knits a lot of our attacking play together which I think is why Ralph keeps him in the team, keeps the ball moving, doesn’t often lose possession.

He’s got that VVD energy, effortless. A few years younger than Virg was when he was here too. A real class above, and has settled Salisu down too.

Yep thought he was great, won a number of one on one battles, drove forward with the ball well, picked the right passes. Have always felt there’s something in there, and he’s always been a real hard worker. Hope when Perraud is fit he can become useful in the attacking roles again.

United have been poor for a couple of years but it’s not really been through lack of individual quality, it’s been cohesion. Today one piece of individual quality decided the game, as it often does in games against the top sides. We were better in most areas of the pitch, we just didn’t have a Bruno Fernandes who could pick out the perfect spot from the edge of the box. We know we are lacking potency in front of goal, clearly the club do too, so we just have to hope it’s going to be addressed in the next few days. Given the way our new signings have all looked so far, i’m excited to see who we might bring in.

Not a great signing for Everton and presumably reflects the fact they still can’t really spend much money, which is good for us.

Agreed - if we got another CB i’d want either an old head who can just plug gaps when needed, or a better version of Lyanco basically so that we could play 3 CB’s when needed without being shit. But obviously we need to shift at least one but probably two of our existing CB’s.