mrfahaji

Chill out SKD! Things aren't so bad! Even if we don't beat WBA, as long as we beat Liverpool and Burnley we'll be fine. And if we don't win those, we have four winnable games against Stoke, Newcastle, Swansea and West Ham. And if after all those games we still haven't won, it's not a disaster if we beat Arsenal & Chelsea. And if that doesn't happen, winning the next 3 games of the season might yet be enough to secure survival. And if, after all that, we still haven't won a game, at least we can beat Man City on the last day and say that technically, as they are Champions, we are better than them and we can all go into the summer happy, safe in the knowledge we will win every game in the Championship. Give Pellegrino time, it will eventually click

Yep. Appalling that it's reached that stage, but it's the situation we're in.

I remember Slaven Bilic saying (as a pundit) during the Euros that this idea of "being in control" of a game is a myth if you're only 1 goal up, so needless to say you definitely can't be in control of it if you're not even winning. You could make a case that Brighton's aim was to stop us creating any chances regardless of how much possession that had to cede. On that basis, you could say that Brighton were in control as they achieved that with relative ease.

Me neither, my thoughts were "ok, 1-1 is still a terrible result".

McCarthy Cedric Yoshida Hoedt Bertrand Romeu Hojbjerg JWP Lemina* Tadic Carrillo* * Bring Lemina/Hojbjerg off for Boufal if we aren't offering enough in attack. Carrillo might have to come off if he's struggling/sh1t, Long might actually have more luck against their back line.

That's lucky, I thought we were poor and barely managed to create a decent chance all night, but Pellegrino's just been on to say that we controlled most of the game. Thank goodness for that.

you know what, if after relegation they came out and announced that, I'd end up having more respect for them than I do now.

If Reed meddles in team selection then it's to ensure we play players to keep their value up. He did probably did it with Rodriguez, Forster and I'm wondering if the same is true with Redmond. Just seems odd that Pellegrino persisted with the latter two for so long and now they don't get a look in... Reed shouldn't be meddling with the on-field stuff at all. He has proven he is terrible when it comes to that, so should stick to off the field matters. Unfortunately he doesn't appear to be much good at that either, given we can add Promes to the list of transfer debacles we've had. When Carvalhal joined Swansea (an appointment mocked by many on here), he spoke to all the staff - kitmen, cleaners, cooks etc - about their importance in keeping the morale up with a positive atmosphere at the training ground etc. Regardless of whether you think this is unnecessary, I doubt a manager at Saints would be able to do that, because it wouldn't be in their strict and narrow responsibilities.

This. So frustrating.

As much as a lot of your comments are to be taking with a pinch of salt and as a bit of a wind up, I pretty much agree with you on this one.

A draw at home to Brighton isn't good enough, especially given the other results. How many more times do we say "it'll be ok as long as we win the next one" - we never do! Pellegrino manages scared. He's been afraid to go for other teams since he arrived. It's why we don't look too bad against the better sides but don't look any better against the weaker ones. I only saw the second half. It wasn't terrible, but hardly good either. I really thought we would win today, despite our clueless manager. I had less optimism when I saw the line up but still hoped we'd have enough about us. Even at 0-1 I still thought we could. But that second half was limp, and tells me that we are going down. Also, on first impressions it doesn't look like £19m gets you much nowadays. At least Pellegrino has a friend now though.

I was in the 'in' camp for most of the season. However by the end of the campaign there were undoubtedly some issues, and my main concern was that he had "lost the dressing room". That was the tipping point for me, and I figured the board would have insight into that, so was happy to go with whatever they decided. I was moderately pleased when he left, as it suggested there was an underlying issue, and the obviously good replacement we had lined up would improve things, but also thought the way it dragged out for such a long time was as disgraceful as it was unprofessional. Clearly, now I wish we'd kept him instead of getting Pellegrino. But I think the real mistake was not finding someone with a better track record in the things that the Puel side was apparently lacking (attacking football, pressing being two that spring to mind). I'm not sure it's necessarily about being 'lucky', even if that comes into it. Selecting a manager isn't a random choice, but a product of planning and research.

Wondering how the board are going to spin the "Austin is the Promes replacement" announcement

The problem with this is that we have been dying a death by a thousand cuts under Pellegrino. We haven't had a good spell at any point this season, but equally we haven't had an obviously disastrous spell for a while either. Clearly not winning since November is disastrous, hence why we are 19th, but you can't look at two or three consecutive matches in isolation and deduce that they were deserving of a sacking. Can you sack someone for drawing at home to Huddersfield? What about losing at home to Crystal Palace? Not on their own, certainly not when we also took points off United and Arsenal and only lost narrowly to Chelsea & City in the same period. But over a whole season something has been wrong, we have a knack of drawing or narrowly losing against whomever we play. Maybe we'll draw tonight, then maybe we'll draw against West Brom. One respectable result, one disappointing but not disastrous result (in isolation). But we have to win one, and I'd say we need a point in the other. If you fail to beat Brighton, then you wait to see the WBA result... and if it's not a win, then it may well be too late for anyone to turn it round. (this isn't an attack on you btw, I realise you are just posting a theory rather than what you would do)

Exactly right. BUT at some point you do need to keep a group together to see a significant improvement in terms of results/position. Otherwise you are, at best, replacing like with like, and by getting a few signings wrong all the good work unravels. I realise that there are of course grey areas - if you sign two players for every one sold, you can in theory grow a better team if both those players end up being good or nearly as good as the one they replaced, and you also have a bit of wriggle room if one or two don't work out. In general I think this is what we've tried to do. But the ideal scenario is you sell and sign, sell and sign until you have a solid core group and then you say "right, now lets keep them together for a few years and really have a go at the top group". You could argue that is what we have done though - and look where it got us... Unfortunately I think we timed it wrong - tried to keep hold of the best players when we were sliding a bit rather than when we were already on the up.

Yeah, I want to say £1.2m & £2m respectively? (Hirst, btw)

Isn't there a massive flaw in that logic? Promes' contract is with Spartak, not with Southampton. So he is owed 15% of whatever money they receive. If they receive €30m, presumably they have to accept and pay the player out of those funds. I can't see how Promes can possibly have a contract where the buying club have to pay him 15% of the transfer fee, because that contract would be between him and all non-Spartak clubs. It's possible that his release clause is actually higher than €30m to allow for the 15% fee, but surely (?) there's no way Southampton would be obliged to make some sort of additional payment on top.

I'm not sure who this is aimed at. Surely no-one thinks otherwise?

Well there you go...

Pardew would probably think "finally, someone has realised my true divinity".

this assumes our manager knows anything about anything

We always say that at the time...!

Ideally we'd get Liverpool or Burnley, so that Pellegrino could use one of the games to assess what tactics are needed for the second match a week later. But they're both out, so looks like the Pelican will have to make do with WBA who we play 2 weeks before.

I wonder if the reason Redmond was continually picked is that the manager relied on him to carry out his instructions. In other words, keep possession at all costs, play cautiously, don't take risks. The fact that we've looked better recently without him in the side has probably forced Pellegrino into a rethink, either about the personnel but also (hopefully!) about the tactics.