James Ward-Prowse

[Lighthouse]

Worth bringing back just for our trip to Molineux.

 

[sadoldgit]

2 hours ago, Charlie Wayman said:

If our aim is to build a side that can stay in and compete in the PL should we win promotion, then the last thing we need is to waste our very limited resources on bringing back a 32 yo Ward Prowse for largely sentimental reasons.

He has no future value to the club, will be over the hill soon if not already and lacks the athleticism that will be essential in midfield to compete at the higher level and even at thios level. It's all very well pointing to his considerable experience in the PL and free kick record but more recently he has failed to cut the mustard at WHU, Notts F or Burnley. Why do people on here expect anything to be different if he re-joined Saints? It won't.

We don't need a geriatric passenger who happens to take free kicks well, we have one of those already. Worse still he will be blocking the progress of youngsters like Akachukwu and our youngsters is where our future must lie.

Signing JWP will be a munumental folly that we must not commit or will come to regret.

Why do you think we are signing him for sentimental reasons? We are picking up a decent EPL player for peanuts. He is fit, experienced, has a good engine and will be a godsend to Larin. Good bit of business I think. As for next season, as said already, we need to get promoted first. All the forward planning in the world won’t mean a thing if we don’t go up.

[Patrick Bateman]

14 minutes ago, Osvaldorama said:

Tbf, for £800k and a reduced wages, if that’s true, it’s a no brainer.  
 

Hope he scores a free kick against West Ham now

Agreed - it's not a huge amount of cash for a very experienced pro.

[Chez]

1 hour ago, The Kraken said:

Hopefully so.  It was rumoured he was on £100K - £120K a week when signing for WH.  It's also rumoured that WH players have endured a 50% relegation clause, so current earnings £50K-£60K a week at a guess.  Which is too high, I'd say, even for 2 years. 

I have no evidence for this whatsoever, but it's not inconceivable that the £1M or so fee to WH could be going directly to JWP from them as a payment to consolidate the lesser wages he'll be earning here for his final year.  So bringing him 'down' to about £40K a week which supposedly some other of our players are on.  Dunno, just throwing it out there.

I was going to post the same thing. Although if the £1m was going from us to West Ham and then to him as a pay off, would it not have made more sense for West Ham to let him go for nothing and then the million is paid to him by Saints as a signing on bonus that covers that reduction in wage for the first year? If we are paying West Ham a £1m transfer fee AND him the same £50-60k a week wage, then I think we are overpaying. We should have loaned him for a year and squeezed West Ham to pay maybe £20k a week of the £50-60k wages. Perhaps that was never going to happen and we have got ourselves a quality player for next to nothing. Time will tell.

[revolution saint]

Think I mentioned when the idea of a JWP return was first brought up that I thought he'd be OK but fairly uninspiring and that still holds true but I'm trying to look on the positive aspects.  He'll run all day long, he'll be available most of the time, he'll be dangerous on set pieces, he's still probably more of a goal threat from open play than our other midfielders (unless you count Azaz which I'm not), he should be more than capable of handling the pace of the championship.  Then there's the intangibles - experience, good example to the rest of the side and he actually wants to be here. 
He's not the ball carrying dynamic midfielder I was hoping for but he still improves the squad and is relatively low risk (as much as any transfer can be low risk).

Was trying to think of how many of the squad would have played with him outside of that very short stint in the championship before he got sold.  I came up with Stephens, Bazunu, Larios, Edozie and Bree for half a season.  How mental is that?  Bazunu, Edozie and Larios are our joint second longest serving players.

[Midfield_General]

SLAPHAMPTON: 3-5-2

                   Rosler                  Boa Morte

Marsden               Smallbone              De Ridder

                   Romeu              Chaplow

 D. Armstrong         Thomas              Higginbotham

                              Caballero

Subs: Keller, Williams, Belmadi, Draper, Ings (despite pretending otherwise)

Way too many midfielders. That squad has got about as much balance as it has need for conditioner 

[Cascadia Saint]

West Ham basically loaned him for 3 years for 30 million on massively inflated wages and barely played him. Love it.

I'd be happy to have him back.

[Patrick Bateman]

1 minute ago, Midfield_General said:

SLAPHAMPTON: 3-5-2

                   Rosler                  Boa Morte

Marsden               Smallbone              De Ridder

                   Romeu              Chaplow

 D. Armstrong         Thomas              Higginbotham

                              Caballero

Subs: Keller, Williams, Belmadi, Draper, Ings (despite pretending otherwise)

Way too many midfielders. That squad has got about as much balance as it has need for conditioner 

The Ings one made me laugh out loud, brilliant

[Saint86]

Probably a degree of, "if I'm playing in the championship, then I'm doing it at saints" to the whole thing. Clearly been rumbling for a while given the early noises made by Blackmore at the start of the summer.

[Saint86]

3 minutes ago, Midfield_General said:

SLAPHAMPTON: 3-5-2

                   Rosler                  Boa Morte

Marsden               Smallbone              De Ridder

                   Romeu              Chaplow

 D. Armstrong         Thomas              Higginbotham

                              Caballero

Subs: Keller, Williams, Belmadi, Draper, Ings (despite pretending otherwise)

Way too many midfielders. That squad has got about as much balance as it has need for conditioner 

You'll be able to add scienza soon, maybe by the end of the season the rate his is thinning 😆

[Saint Scott]

 

[Turkish]

12 minutes ago, Midfield_General said:

SLAPHAMPTON: 3-5-2

                   Rosler                  Boa Morte

Marsden               Smallbone              De Ridder

                   Romeu              Chaplow

 D. Armstrong         Thomas              Higginbotham

                              Caballero

Subs: Keller, Williams, Belmadi, Draper, Ings (despite pretending otherwise)

Way too many midfielders. That squad has got about as much balance as it has need for conditioner 

David Armstrong at lB?Call yourself a fan 

Edited 54 minutes ago by Turkish

[hypochondriac]

14 minutes ago, Midfield_General said:

SLAPHAMPTON: 3-5-2

                   Rosler                  Boa Morte

Marsden               Smallbone              De Ridder

                   Romeu              Chaplow

 D. Armstrong         Thomas              Higginbotham

                              Caballero

Subs: Keller, Williams, Belmadi, Draper, Ings (despite pretending otherwise)

Way too many midfielders. That squad has got about as much balance as it has need for conditioner 

Kasey Keller was getting there as well.

[BarberSaint]

5 hours ago, Graffito said:

Agree re pace not being essential for a CM. The weakness I saw in his game is that he was slow on the turn and sometimes got caught square to his man so players went past him. Always thought that was something that could be addressed with coaching. Haven’t seen enough of him recently to know whether he’s improved it.

Well he's 31, hardly played and Jack Stephens' failures have been evident since he was about 18. 

 

I'd say he's worse than he was, he might have a couple of good-ish games in the beginning but after that it'll be the same old and his corners will still be shit.

[Midfield_General]

4 minutes ago, Turkish said:

David Armstrong at lB?Call yourself a fan 

Well now

"He was equally at home as a box-to-box midfielder with an eye for goal or, if needed, a steady left-back, a position he filled more as he turned 30"

Not just a left back, but a steady one. Not that the casual armchair fan would know that

https://www.saintsplayers.co.uk/player/dave-armstrong/ 

 

[Turkish]

15 minutes ago, Midfield_General said:

Well now

"He was equally at home as a box-to-box midfielder with an eye for goal or, if needed, a steady left-back, a position he filled more as he turned 30"

Not just a left back, but a steady one. Not that the casual armchair fan would know that

https://www.saintsplayers.co.uk/player/dave-armstrong/ 

 

To be fair football wasn’t invented until 1992 so you can’t expect anyone to know much about anyone before then

Edited 27 minutes ago by Turkish

[Gloucester Saint]

4 minutes ago, Midfield_General said:

Well now

"He was equally at home as a box-to-box midfielder with an eye for goal or, if needed, a steady left-back, a position he filled more as he turned 30"

Not just a left back, but a steady one. Not that the casual armchair fan would know that

https://www.saintsplayers.co.uk/player/dave-armstrong/ 

 

*he did fall out with Chris Nicholl for a time at being used at LB though..

[Midfield_General]

2 minutes ago, Gloucester Saint said:

*he did fall out with Chris Nicholl for a time at being used at LB though..

sssshhhhh don't tell him 

[Cuddles]

There's a side benefit for DHGate here too. All those those listings for "Ward-Prowse jersey" will be accurate again.

[Ralph Fastenbüttl]

Fuck me, you can count the number of human beings who have given more of themselves to the club than Prowsey on one hand, and you've still got folk on here moaning about the fact he comes from a Pompey-supporting family. Mental.

Is JWP the answer to all of our midfield problems? Nope. Can he replace Shea Charles? Definitely not? Is he the best midfielder in the whole wide world? Nah. He won't even be the best midfielder in the team.

Some things do give me pause, however. He may have been treated harshly at West Ham, but he also bombed spectacularly across two separate loans, so it's safe to say he hardly arrives in glittering form. I was never really convinced of him as captain, either, and I don't think he should get the armband now. He held that title through some of the worst performing spells our club has ever seen, and while I wouldn't blame him for any of that, he clearly wasn't the guy to drag a good performance out of team mates who were struggling for confidence.

But... there are definitely positives. He's cheaper for us than he would be for anyone else, and that West Ham bought him for 30m only to sell him back to us three years later for 800k is GOLDEN. He's in amazingly physical condition, he's full of energy and he will once again be the best free kick taker at the club (ahead of Manning for sure). He's always fit and available and, ultimately, he's definitely good enough to excel in the Championship.

[LGTL]

I wasn’t completely sold on this originally, but for £800k it’s a complete no brainer. 

If we were signing any other ex £30m player with the PL history he has, for £800k, this place would be doing somersaults. 

[Farmer Saint]

Great signing for that money. Genuinely. I think people forget how good he was for us.

[Wade Garrett]

He’s going to fucking rip the Championship up this season with Downes alongside him.

We’re going to fucking smash Millwall on Saturday.  Fucking flat cap wearing wankers.

[Saint NL]

1 hour ago, Lighthouse said:

Worth bringing back just for our trip to Molineux.

 

The red shorts. What were they thinking? Looks awful.

[AlexLaw76]

At least this will shift Leo off set pieces from that side of the pitch...

[TheAlehouseBrawlers]

1 hour ago, Osvaldorama said:

Hope he scores a free kick against West Ham now

🎶”Baldie, Baldie what’s the score,

Baldie, what’s the score …..”🎶