sadoldgit

I read plenty of posts saying that they trusted Selles’ team selection before the game. Just because we beat a below par Chelsea side with a particular set of players doesn’t mean a different selection wouldn’t have. He said himself not to read too much in his first team selection. I assumed that he was being conservative in his selection because it was Chelsea and he was using experienced players. I had expected a bolder line up against Leeds who are a very poor side, irrespective of what happened in the Chelsea game. The love-in over Selles this week has been bizarre to say the least, but we are back to reality again. I hope that he is successful with us but he won’t be if he doesn’t grow a pair. I’m sure, if we are going to get relegated, that we would all prefer to go down in a blaze of glory - out with a bang rather than a whimper. His team selection against Leeds said whimper. Ralph used to talk a lot about being brave. Today’s team selection was anything but.

Jones picks Ely and Bednarek and he is a clown who doesn’t know what he is doing. Selles picks them two matches running and that is ok. Go figure. I guess wearing a smart suit with a turtle neck and not being Nathan Jones makes a whole load of difference. Just as he wasn’t the worst manager in the world after the Sheffield Wednesday match he isn’t the best after the Chelsea game. Fair play to him though, he has stepped up to the plate and here’s wishing him all the best in his career as manager of Southampton FC. May it be a long and successful one!

Anyone that can name Janny B and Moi in the starting line up and bring on Walcott with a significant period of the match still to be played and not get strung up by a baying mob after the game deserves the job full time!

When I say that he has not been tarred so far that assumption has been made on the basis that he is still in the job. No idea what input he has had on both managers so far and I don’t think it is fair to judge him on the Sheffield Wednesday game. He says he wants the job full time. Time for him to step up to the plate and deliver. He will need more than one game against Chelsea to prove he is the man though, and we really do not have time to mess around anymore if the intention is to give avoiding relegation 100% effort.

Around the time Ralph had talked about retiring at the end of his contract, Semmens made a comment about looking to bring someone in to the coaching team to be groomed to eventually take over. I have always assumed that Selles was that person. The fact that Ralph departed earlier than expected must have thrown a spanner in the works if that was the case. The fact that Jones was appointed instead of Selles would indicate that they didn’t think he was ready to step up just yet. Would another year/year and a half tutelage under a more senior manager much a huge difference in his ability to lead us? Who knows. Given the lack or poor quality of choices at the moment, perhaps they will give him his chance earlier than planned. Pure conjecture on my part of course but given that he has, so far, not been tarred with the same brush as two failed regimes, perhaps there is something in it? It could also explain why the Board wasn’t over keen on offering JM a 3.5 year contract if they were looking to promote Selles in a year or two.

Good to read a sensible, well balanced post amongst the usual toxic mob mentality ravings at last. You are right of course. The problems are bigger than just one person and have been for some time, but there is a need to find a scapegoat when things go badly and our current manager fits the bill perfectly. Funny how few people were bothered about narcissism when we had a Prime Minister with a Narcissistic Personality Disorder, in fact I suspect many people who are slagging Jones off now for it voted for Johnson. It didn’t seem to bother United and Chelsea fans either when Ferguson and Mourinho were filling their trophy cabinets. If Jones does manage to turn things round and make us a relatively successful club again, will it still be an issue or will it be - he may be a narcissist, but he is OUR narcissist? Just a few days ago our owners were crap and didn’t know what they were doing because they hadn’t bought a no 9 on the first day of the transfer window. They bought a no 9 so that was shut down. Now they are crap and don’t know what they are doing because they haven’t sacked (yet) a manager they have only just employed and who clearly needed a proficient no 9. The previous manager didn’t have all of the tools he needed to do his job better ( a proficient no 9), many of the fans wanted him out and got their way last November. It doesn’t seem unreasonable, now the replacement manager has, apparently, been provided with a decent goal scorer, to give him some time to see what he can do. But apparently that is the reasoning of an egotist who doesn’t know what he is doing? If Boards running football clubs listened to their fans all the time we would have managers sacked every week. It is their money. It is their club. It is their responsibility to make the calls. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. For most clubs, most of the time it doesn’t work well enough to win something. As fans we sign up for the ride, for better or worse. It gives us the right to moan when things aren’t going well, but it doesn’t give us the right to make decisions about how the club is run. The growing toxicity does nothing to help the club. Hoping the club loses on Saturday does nothing to help the club. Losing matches has got us where we are today, why on earth would you actively want to lose more? Surely the best chance we have of staying up is getting behind the club and everyone pulling together? If we do go down, the best chance of a swift return is the same. It is quite scary how quickly this has become personal. Many had decided he wasn’t right for the job before he had walked through the door. The “chippy little Welsh twat” had barely got his feet under the table before the haters started. Maybe it was the wrong decision to hire him and maybe he should have been sacked earlier this week, but those are not our decisions to make and, to me anyway, do not effect my wish to see the team do well and win a football match no matter who the owners are, who the manager is and what players are on the pitch. We are the closest to WW3 than we have been for decades. The country is currently going to the dogs. The future looks bleak for our children, yet we have posters who spend their days on a football thread telling us how much they hate a person most have never even met for not doing his job particularly well at the moment. I am sure the people buried under rubble in Turkey and Syria aren’t too fussed about where their teams are currently in their leagues.

Given that the country has been systematically run into the ground for over a decade and is run by incompetents far greater than Nathan Jones and the most reaction you are likely to get here is a keyboard meltdown when they decide that they don’t like the manager of our football club, I am not sure what you are expecting? If they aren’t taking to the streets over the corrupt and inept way they are governed, they are hardly likely to leave their cozy lounges when they can moan all day behind their keyboards. God knows, if keyboard warriors actually made any difference we would be top of the league by now!

Did he actually “bad mouth” him or did he defend his decision for taking him off by saying that he wasn’t running the game? No fan of Jones but it seems like some things are being blown out of all proportion as part of the witch hunt.

No one seems to know. According to someone on another site Jones wasn’t even there on Sunday so it is not clear, if there was a fight, that he was even involved. Also, if there was a fight you would expect the club to already have investigated the situation. It all seems to have gone very quiet so either there is a cover up going on or it wasn’t that serious. My money is on the latter.

I like the Detectorists, Motherland, Fleabag, The Great, This Flag Means Death, Ghosts, Cunk and Have I Got News still delivers as do some of the stand ups at the Apollo, but the golden age of comedy has passed along with music. Political satire does not work so well when the material you are trying to parody goes beyond your ability to send it up. Brandon Flowers asked the question a few years ago, have all the best songs been written? You could ask the same question of the best gags. I don’t know what the BBC thought they were doing with Mrs Brown’s Boys? Perhaps they thought there was still an appetite for the laziest type of 70’s humour but that backfired big time (although I assume that it still managed to find an audience as he still has a job). As a country we have had the stuffing kicked out of us over the last decade plus. Austerity, Brexit, Covid, Government scandals, a major war in Europe…just constantly one thing after another. Whether the lack of quality creativity in depth in certain fields is just a phase we are going through or whether we are just becoming mediocre at certain things, who knows, but it’s hard to think of people in 50 years time getting all nostalgic over the likes of Harry Styles, Little Mix, Ed Sheeran, Brendan O’Carroll, Michael McIntyre etc.

Good to hear Whitey! The scariest things about aging is the older you get the faster time passes. When I was a kid the 6 week summer holidays seemed to last for ages. Now the years pass in the twinkling of an eye it seems.

Absolutely! I wouldn’t change when I was born, well maybe I would like to have been born a year or two earlier so that could have gone to gigs in the late 60’s rather than 1970 when I went to my first rock concert. Keith Richards said the longer he lives, the longer he wants to live. Even Pete Townsend, who hoped to die before he got old, is still making music and touring. I had to laugh at the current bunch in The Apprentice last week who didn’t know what a 45 was when sent to buy a record. They may have amazing technology at their fingertips, but boy have they missed out on a golden age of musical culture. The problem isn’t so much aging, it is the baggage that comes with it. I was lucky enough to have 20/20 vision for many years, but even with glasses my vision isn’t good now. My heart doesn’t work properly and I am on the waiting list to have some kind of procedure soon. Feeling tired all of the time is not great. Still, you never know when the lights are going out for the final time, so all we can do is make the most of whatever time we have left no matter what condition we are in. I shall be 69 on Sunday, only one more trip round the sun until I hit my seventh decade!

Getting up in the middle of the night to pee. Spending so much time with your GP that you are in first name terms with them. Watching your pension be worth less in real terms every year. Your kids counting down the days until you die do they can get their hands on their inheritance. Deep vein thrombosis. Losing your hair. Daily aches in places you never knew existed. Even less chance of shagging Scarlett Johansen than you had when you were younger and more virile. Reminiscing about things like black and white tv and people looking at you as if you are mad. Many of your old friends and heroes are pushing up daisies. Finding it hard to drive at night. Getting tailgated because you are driving exactly on the allowed speed limit. Remembering to order and pick up your meds every 4 weeks. People offering you their chair. No longer being bothered about getting hammered and celebrating the New Year. Looking forward to the next birthday with dread rather than excitement. Memory loss. Height loss. Weight gain. Growing hair out of orifices that didn’t used to have hair in them. Planning your evening viewing around gardening, home renovation, documentaries rather than vacuous trash where fit girls get their kit off. Reading Hilary Mantel instead of 50 Shades of Grey. Buying a dog because that will help you get out for a walk. One pint of Guinness instead of a skinful of lager and Jagerbombs. Joining your wife on her diet. Not deleting the unsolicited ads on your phone for Viagra. Walking through the local graveyard and personally knowing several of the inhabitants. Buying a car on its affordability rating and ease of access rather than its horsepower and pulling power. Giving up buying Levi’s 501’s and buying cheap supermarket jeans. Consider buying beige trousers with elasticated waistbands. Tear ducts that leak at the merest hint of a cold breeze and make it look like you are crying. Having a nervous system so sensitive that the slightest unexpected loud noise gives you palpitations. Suggesting to your wife that she buys thermal tights rather than fishnet stockings… You probably get the picture.

Ironic?

“Have we signed anyone yet?” ”No”. ”Boo. Moan. Whinge.” Have we signed anyone yet?” ”Yes” ”Who is it?” ”Insert name here”. ”Boo. Moan. Whinge”.

I left the Criminal Justice System several years ago and the wheels were already coming off big time thanks to the government’s austerity measures. Each year we had to shed more staff on the higher end of the pay scales preferably, which meant losing experience, and close more buildings as they were the only two areas in which we could cut real costs. We could see the court systems, police and probation going through the same processes. Little wonder that the system is currently barely fit for purpose. Prior to this period the worse I have seen this country was during the 3 day weeks back in 1973. It was grim but at least a pint was affordable back then. This country has become a god awful mess over the last 13 years. You can’t drive down any local roads without running into potholes which are growing in numbers every week due to the crumbling roads. We can’t be far from a general strike as more and more of the essential workers vote to down tools. The world is changing rapidly whilst we seem to be stuck in the past - the recent collapse of the plans to build a battery factory evidence that we are not gearing up for the future. The service industries that took the place of manufacturing in the UK are no longer as strong as they were. Thatcherism has finally caught up with us and the self serving selfishness that it bred has manifested itself in the morally bankrupt cabinets that we have suffered under over the last few years. If you have children there is very little to be positive about. It is going to take years for the UK to recover from the seemingly endless period of Tory misrule and Brexit. Hopefully the country will finally come to its senses and vote this inept bunch of crooks out but even then it will take an age to get things back on an even keel. We can start by having grown up conversations about the possibility of rejoining the single market (a recent poll shows that 58% of the population think we should be part of the EU). We also need to have a grown up view on immigration rather than just pander to the far right and assume that we don’t need their labour. It seems to me that the only people who don’t have a problem with the way this country is heading are the selfish ones who are still able to keep their heads above water and don’t give a stuff about anyone else. Unfortunately for them, it will catch up with them soon enough.

The money was agreed but the player took advice and decided his WC chances would be better if he stayed where he was for the time being. Yet another non stick used to beat the club with.

While people were getting all excited about punk and how not being able to play your instrument was cool, a band appeared in NYC during this new wave called Television and proved that being able to play your instruments well was no hinderance to being “cool”. Marquee Moon and Adventure still stand out as amazing albums all these years later and the twin guitar work from Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd remains peerless. RIP.

Finally, the right decision! But if he had any shred of decency he would have resigned. Yet another legacy of the Johnson era. Sadly we still have to wait a while before we can vote out this corrupt, self serving bunch of miscreants.

These threads used to be places to avoid when we lost. Now it seems best avoided even when we win. A bit part team low on confidence avoid a potential banana skin and are in the hat again in the FA Cup but reading hear you would think we had lost. From now until the end of the season I will take any kind of win we can get, stuff the standard of football. The same happened under Puel. Moan moan moan yet we finished eight and played brilliantly against United in a cup final. Time to drop the self entitlement. Every year it gets harder for teams of our size to compete in the EPL. This year’s relegation battle is affecting teams up to just below that half way mark. Teams as big as Everton and West Ham are in the mix. We ought to be grateful for any wins we can grind out, not moaning because we aren’t playing like world champions.

Classic Delldays/Batman post. You have to admire his staying power and consistency. I guess that means that Duckie will be returning to his job as Nigel Farage’s personal fluffer.

I’m not so sure. There are parachute payments and I’m sure the players contracts have relegation clauses in them. He is a Saints man through and through. Yes, he might leave, but it wouldn’t surprise me to see him stay and try and get us back up.

Why will we struggle? We have two proven goalscorers from the Championship and Mara looks like he could do well there too. We also have a very experienced manager from that division. I think we would be very competitive there, but that is our problem, we are currently more of a decent Championship team that an EPL team.

Not seen a game since Lincoln thanks to streaming issues so was delighted to find a stream that worked so I could see the match last night. Very poor first half but we looked a lot better when Armstrong came on. So many passes went astray or out of play. Better second half but Newcastle missed a raft of sitters and always looked dangerous as DCC was having a mare and was left exposed to often. Charley looks quality and Mara looks like he will decent but could probably do with more game time in the B team before he is ready to start. I know many people were fed up with Ralph rotating the ball around the back 4 but it denies the other team possession and we gave Newcastle the ball so often with aimless punts up field that I was praying for a bit of keep ball to give the defence a break. Couldn’t believe the handball decision against us. Once upon a time it had to be deliberate, which this wasn’t, but there we go. On the plus side we did show that we can break through their defence so if we can keep a clean sheet up there (🤪) and someone finds their shooting boots, who knows?

I think he said that if we couldn’t find better players he would be happy to work with what he has got. Fair point. We really don’t want it need another Carrillo do we?