There was a lengthy piece on the Media Programme on Radio 4 last Friday about "The Athletic." It is a subscription online media outlet that has effectively replaced local sports media in both the US and Canada. It is trying to make inroads in the UK by concentrating on football where a number of high profile sports journalists from the national and local press have been poached to cover football in detail locally. I thought that it was quite interesting to see that they believed this business model would work. It has been successful in America but football coverage in the UK is already so concentrated that it is difficult to imagine something coming in from the States with a name which has no relationship to football taking over from the established outlets. It will be interesting to see how their coverage differs from the Echo's or anywhere else. Most of the articles covering Saints are pretty generic and either cover the same stories or are unreliable. I cannot see what The Athletic can offer with regard to journalism which does not already exist free of charge. What I think is worthy of attention is that the Echo site is full of pop ups and advertising which makes the sports coverage quite clumsy. A few years ago the Echo effectively ditched coverage of local football which was one of the things it did really well with reporter Wendy Gee getting a lot of respect from the non-league community. It did not help that the Sports Echo ceased publication as well because I thought that covered local issues really well. It will be interesting to see in the Athletic can fill this niche albeit I am surprised that people would want to spend the sums of money for the privilege. I cam not convinced that it will be a success. If the Echo can get it's website in order, surely they would be far better at this job? People who come from the locality will have a better understanding of the local scene - even if I believe Wendy Gee is actually a Chelsea fan!
So are The Athletic here to cover all local football, or is the journalist moving here just to be an ITK/expert on Saints? I personally wouldn’t pay a subscription for news, particularly with most of it/the headlines eventually put on Twitter or reported by someone else. However if it does go well for them it might spell trouble for the Echo.
Nothing should trouble the Echo more than the fact that their general standard of journalism is ****ing appalling.
If he's struggling with Mental Health, then its all credit to the club for supporting him through it. Male mental health is still a taboo subject, and can affect anyone regardless of income. Let's hope Frazer gets through it and moves on.
Window closes 02 September in Scotland. Can`t see Celtic or Rangers being interested, even if they could afford him. Way out of every other clubs budget.
I predict 2 outs before the English deadline (Lemina and Austin, both probably on loan). Think we might move Cedric and Carrillo on before the European deadline as well, probably on loan. And 1 loanee coming in. My understanding is we have money for transfer fees, we just don't want to increase the wage bill. So getting rid of players (even on loan) reduces the wage bill, if only temporarily, so we can then allocate that to someone else. Loaning out the deadwood players (Austin, Carrillo, Forster, Stephens) reduces the wage bill for this season, but also means when they return next year they have one less year on their deal, hopefully meaning they are more up for a move. And hey they might even have a great season out on loan and generate some interest in them.
having scrolled through the last few pages in this thread I am thinking this is the most boring transfer window ever but it might just be 'in living memory'.
Happy for Lemina to leave but a bit of a down grade if we are looking to recruit this guy as a replacement. Maybe a Knee jerk reaction after a quick google search but Reed can do just a s good a job from what i saw. I'd rather not panic by and stick with what we have.
Besiktas have an ‘agreement’ with Mohamed Elyounoussi, according to Turkish news outlet Ajansspor.......looks like definitely going albeit only on loan.
