Ollie Watkins and Emmanuel Dennis were the only players outside the top 8 to reach 10 goals without the help of pens.
Keeping Caballero, Stephens and Long. Mccarthy contract extension also. And there were those who thought we'd splash the cash and have a clear out
I never expected a big clear out or expect us to spend millions as this was mentioned when we were taken over. Action has been taken however on the coaching side which needed a big overhaul. With the amount of ex goalkeepers as coaches I'm surprised we didn't get players sent off each week for hand ball.
Perhaps they are giving Long a new deal to learn from Ralph and become his replacement when he retires .
Would be a decent signing, certainly an improvement on what we have. He outscored any of our strikers last season and got more assists than anyone in our squad. All that in a terrible Watford side that we managed to out score by 9 goals... yes, they were even worse than us!
We’re…err…quite early on in the window, you know. And Caballero and Stephens makes sense (plus we’ve known about Stephens and McCarthy for a while). Long is the outlier here, but let’s wait and see what happens, eh?
We also kinda need to know terms here. Is Long in talks to return as a guy who we expect to play football, or is he in talks to return in basically a transitional role to the coaching staff where he also provides emergency cover, at a low cost (ie., the Olly Lancashire Special)? Caballero is a third keeper. It's hard to get upset with a third keeper, a thing we frequently didn't even have in the past. Stephens...well, I'd prefer that we moved on. I frankly don't see him improving into a real-by-god Premier League defender, and I'd be more interested in having Simeu backfill the role, given how well he did at Carlisle. But I'm also not going to get too fussed at this stage about having discussions about forming a committee to consider a proposal to think about asking whether Stephens might want a contract, either.
I mean, only people who weren’t paying attention. By all accounts the McCarthy and Stephens deals were pre-takeover. If Long is willing and the money is less of an issue now then I don’t see why not. He’ll be way down the order but I would also bet that he’s an absolute monster in training sessions. Klopp recently talked about how Milner is just such a killer on the training ground that he sets the tone for the whole team. If we’re keen to keep an experienced head in the squad who can also work with the U23s then he’s perfect. Willy is literally a body in a shirt. He’s third choice because we obviously don’t have anyone whose any good in the U23s.
I agree. It is frustrating how many people are ignoring that McCarthy and Stephens signed pre takeover when we clearly thought that we weren’t in a position to have to replace them. Or risk being held over a barrel by them later down the line (for example if McCarthy came back requesting close to double what he actually signed out for - something he was initially looking for) Also there are people who saw a rumour on a tweet a few weeks ago that mentioned a “no holds barred” approach to the summer transfer window and sunk their claws and teeth into that and clung on for dear life - treating it as gospel. Even though it is contrary to other messages including the word of the actual CEO post takeover Granted those above two points are far far more preferably on the other forum but some of the sentiments seems shared at times Just because there are new owners does not mean that we can turf out McCarthy and Stephens circa 6 months into new deals. Would it have been better if we had not given them contracts - probably yes. But it was a different time Similar to people trying to use losing Forster as a stick to beat the club with. When it came to offering a longer term deal to a goalkeeper he hadn’t played for ages and had also refused to move on. He was happy to bleed us dry (as is his right it was his contract). Why the sudden sentiment for a half decent half a season? People suggesting he fell out with Ralph - but he still stayed despite that. So that isn’t a valid complaint. Perhaps both him and McCarthy were offered 55k a week and he snubbed it because it represented a massive pay cut and McCarthy (eventually) agreed to it. I want to say that some saints fans (especially the more unhinged ones on Twitter) think this is like playing Football Manager. But even on Football Manager we wouldn’t be able to force out McCarthy and Stephens so soon into their new deals. They’d need an offer from elsewhere , where they would want to go and likely at least equal terms (or us making up the shortfall). Thinking it is like FIFA career mode is probably more like it
Here’s a hot take for everyone: Mo El is not actually that bad of a player. I just think he’s quite average at lots of things for a bottom half team. Flip a coin on that one. Not a great loss if he goes and we get some money, not an unreasonable squad player if he stays.
