saintwbu

Only ever seems to have any fitness issues when he’s either on duty with England, or been called up to the squad. Good lad.

We’ve missed a creative player ever since Tadic left, we’ve not had anybody to thread a pass through a tightly packed defence. It used to make my head fall off watching Gabbi make great runs for 90 minutes whilst the likes of Hojbjerg would see it and bottle the pass. Eze would’ve been lovely last summer, glides past players but also has an eye for a pass, £20 mil too, shame.

Yeah sorry that’s harsh on them I meant more that we haven’t had anyone that’s made everyone sit up and take note straight away (Shaw, Bale, Walcott, Ox etc). Agree that those you’ve listed have all looked like they could contribute something.

I was really disappointed he didn’t come on against Bournemouth, and thought it said a lot. Hopefully his chance hasn’t passed, we haven’t brought through anyone decent for a while so it would be a shame if we lose him without getting to see if he’s any good.

Obviously, hence why he plays for us. Do I think it’s a massive red flag to a team that spends 100’s of millions every year and has a squad full of players over 30mil that don’t play regularly? Probably not. City signing Ings for £30mil is basically the equivalent of Brighton signing Danny Welbeck on a free, you know he’s not going to be fit all the time but he’s probably worth having for when he can play.

His two biggest numbers being his only two seasons in the Premier League where he was regularly fit. Scoring 11 for Burnley when they got relegated, and 22 for a Saints team that without him probably would be too, is not bad going. He will score goals for every team in this league, if he can stay fit.

But on the flip side if you told City or (particularly) Spurs fans they could have a back up striker who outscored all their players in the league last season, i’m sure they’d be delighted. Both have struggled with finding a reliable alternative to their main striker for years, Ings would solve that problem.

The City thing makes perfect sense to me. A club of their size/quality should have 3 good forwards to choose from, in reality once Aguero goes they don’t have any. Jesus isn’t good enough to rely on, so Ings and Haaland (or Kane) together would be good business. Not many proven goal scorers would sign to be back up to Kane/Haaland, but Ings probably would.

I’d have John Lundstram to backup our CM’s too, gets up and down well, big and strong. Adds a bit of steel that we miss when Romeu is out.

Haha fair point

Or Like Saints in the League Cup final? Or numerous games this season where Man United have been piss poor and still managed to win/be given a penalty to win?

Not when you play Man United it’s not

At least against Leicester I reckon the best team on the day will go through

Best draw we could hope for imo - obviously realise both have beaten us 9-0, but Leicester definitely got the least squad strength out of the 3 teams left and United prone to being shit quite regularly.

Yeah Gallagher looks a really good player, assumed he’d get a chance at Chelsea after doing well (himself) for WBA. Didn’t realise they seem to be willing to let him go fairly cheap. Jayden Bogle at Sheffield United, wonder if we could get him in to be back up at full back, still only 20.

I just think there’s not much to be gained from getting rid at this stage. The season is over if we lose today, so may as well just stumble to the summer and let everyone reassess then personally.

Speaks 5 languages, lawyer, former player, been involved in the game in different forms throughout the world. He does seem like an interesting and (hopefully) capable man for the job. There’s a few names floated about that had they got it I think it would justifiably have raised eyebrows as to whether it was on merit or because of the general climate around race and football, this guy does not seem to raise that question imo. A progressive and promising step forward from Gordon Taylor.

I’d be delighted if we brought in Abraham if we had to lose Ings. Has a lot of attributes that would make him very useful for us.

Bednarek is horrible, post Christmas he’s been playing like Ollie Lancashire

Interesting how everyone goes blind when we aren’t winning the game. We played okay, as good if not better than them, their goal was a set piece not a case of carving us open. It was the same against Villa and Wolves, we were better, but we lost, so everyone said we were shit.

I was excited to see Jankewitz play 🤣 so no, albeit maybe after 80 seconds I was thinking we could’ve done with him on the bench 😅

I guess the consequence of having a midfielder who gave the ball to the opposition a lot, is that said midfielder has plenty of opportunities to win it back from them. There has been absolutely no point this season where I have watched us and thought ‘we really missed Hojbjerg today’.

Stephens gets abuse for everything he does wrong, and normally gets abuse for everything someone else does wrong too. An interesting thread would be ‘players who seem to be immune to criticism’, Hojbjerg and Bednarek definitely seemed to have magic powers to avoid criticism for anything they did/do wrong.

Came on to see if anyone was saying things like this. Just seen it come on SSN about ‘what next for VAR’ with a focus on a penalty that wasn’t given to the Champions elect in a game they went on to win 5-2. Where was this coverage when Matt Cash did his best David De Gea impression against us? Or when Dendoncker thought he was playing basketball. I don’t remember other Premier League managers getting questions in press conferences about those decisions.

Yep 6 goals and 4 assists not a bad return for a second striker to be fair, especially given that he hasn’t started every game, and doesn’t take penalties. He’s had 3 goals ruled out, 2 for incredibly marginal offsides. He clearly struggles with confidence, but if Ings was in his stride I think we’d all be saying Adams was having a decent season in that supporting role.