Yeah saying 'we tried' means absolutely nothing if we fail. Ultimately a failure is a failure, and should we do so again in January then the new owners stand to lose a lot of money and will take stick from the supporters.
Unfortunately mate I don't think the owners give 2 ****s about the opinions of fans. The decisions made ref the Itchen stand, appointing NJ, signing a bunch of kids in the summer and no striker means we're an after thought on a good day. Come winter next year when all that lovely PL money has dried up and we're getting 17k in attendance on a freezing cold Wed night game they might consider us useful again. Besides our fans will do **** all as usual
Deck the halls with boughs of holly Fa la la la la, la la la la 'Tis the season to be jolly Happy Christmas Lincoln
I would not be as negative as Lincoln but I still think that SR might have the right intentions but remain to be convinced they will have the expected results. The good thing is that we have Livramento back. My problem is that the team under Ralph was good enough to hold itself in the PL but something has gone wrong and the team was not clicking. I have not found the appointment of Nathan Jones to be uninspiring. I am hoping that I will be proved wrong. The team is decent enough but the lack of a decent goalscorer is the difference between mid-table and relegation for me. In August I was positive that this would be the year it would workout for Ralph. It did not expect it to go as badly as has happened.
Pretty much nail on the head. They have all right intentions, but it is a gamble whether it will work. IMO a calculated gamble, but not guaranteed. I don’t buy this BS that they want us to do bad, hate the fans and want us to go down. The bottom line is they spent the money to buy us and they want to make money not lose it. Southampton FC success achieves that.
It is nonsense that the new owners do not want success. My issue is that are they able to deliver what they hope to achieve. I think there may be alot to be said about buying younger players who have future potential but this year the likes of Larios, Aribo, Edozie, Maitland-Niles and Mara look like fringe players at best. Not convinced by Larios, Edozie or Mara are really going to add much to the first team squad and certainly not playing at like the on loan Tella is at Burnley. I am not seeing anything from them that is better than what we had in the academy but I am not seeing what they do in training. I cannot really see them featuring much in a relegation campaign and would expect them to be moved on if we did go down. We really need the more experienced players to step up as the likes of JWP have been extremely poor this season. As opposed to getting a new striker, I am wondering whether the squad needs to be trimmed back beforehand. There seem to be too many players there who are unlikely to get a game due to the lack of experience necessary. We are beginning to see just how much a loss Romeu is. I would be happier to get rid of the fringe players and maybe cash in on JWP to get a Romeu-type replacement and someone who can score goals - something Adam Armstrong looks incapable of doing at this level. I would prefer to take Tella back and tell him a first team place is his if he can bang in a few goals in his first games back.
Those 3 were all purchased to make an impact in the future, I don't think Ralph/board wanted or expected them to need to step up this season. Whether we stay up or not, it would be mad to offload them as we bought them to develop them over a few seasons. Plus, Tella never cut it in the premier league so maybe Edozie, Mara & Larios would rinse the Championship too. Plus I would add the caveat to that, that Edozie has looked very good in the few minutes he has played. He has certainly offered more than Walcott & Djenepo going forwards. I think Edozie is going to have a big future, he just needs to mature a little and perhaps bulk up a little as he is very lightweight.
It is clearly the plan to play these players and would’ve been a big part of why they joined. There is no way they were bought “for the future” with no chance of playing pretty regularly immediately as they would’ve been better off at their respective teams u21s than ours. As thereisonlyoneno7 said, there is no way the owners want us to fail, they may have completed overestimated how good the players we bought are at this current moment in time or completely underestimated how utterly **** the majority of the squad they inherited are at this level or most likely a bit of both. What ever the reasons they need to address it in January by, most likely, signing some experience who are more proven at a higher level and can hopefully hit the ground running. If we go down we will lose Lavia, Livramento, ABK from the youth experiment and some of the more experienced players as well. Trying the youth strategy won’t work in the Championship as these players weren’t cheap. We wouldn’t be able to afford spending £10m+ on highly touted players if they even wanted to come in the first place
Completely disagree with you there. Firstly, none of them have played regularly at all - between them they have just 6 starts in all comps. It's not like we started them and then they were dropped due to poor performance. That is a clear indication that we knew they would be squad players that would get the odd sub appearance and cup start when we signed them. Secondly, no way would they be better off in City's academy than around our senior squad. Not only will they get a few chances from the bench/rotation at Saints, but we will look to move them into starting for the 1st team over the coming years, whereas City would just keep loaning them out.
Well if they were signed as just players who were going to play the odd game then SR overestimated our squad hugely. They spent a fair amount of money and anyone who had watched us regularly for the last couple of years would’ve known we were one of the poorer sides in the league. Choosing to sign players who weren’t going to improve the first team immediately was a huge over sight and unbelievably stupid from people who supposedly know what they are doing. Also the whole City thing is dependant on your view. Pretty sure they were saying Larios and Edozie were training regularly with the first team. I’d say they’d learn way more doing that than sitting on the bench and training with our players.
Now that I agree with. Signing players for the future is brilliant but only if either the first team is currently strong (it isn't) or we also purchased players ready for the first team (a couple but not enough). What is more annoying is that it wasn't a case of us spend £25m on Edozie, Larios & Mara but forgo a striker. If we had spent some of the £30m-£35m we offered for Gakpo on a quality striker I'm convinced we would be mid-table.
Yeah I think we are pretty aligned in our view point. I just think that the club saw players like Mara, Larios and Edozie as good enough to contribute immediately in quite big roles. Obviously Ralph disagreed based on the game time they got. As I’ve said before there had to be an inbetween between Gakpo/Ramos and better than what we have. Hopefully we find that guy in January. All signings are a risk but to only sign 1 striker (a very young and inexperienced one as well) looks like being a huge mistake
To answer you point in bold I agree - I think SR thought they were good enough and Ralph didn't. Be interesting now to see if they get a run of games now SR have chosen the manager.
100% it shouldn't have come down to Ramos/Gakpo or no one. I understand waiting for the right player but there should have been a cut off point. January will define our season - partly due to the transfer window but also the run of must win games we have.
Of course they don't want us to go down! They've bought the club and want a return on their money. They are more than prepared though to go all in on their gamble that buying unproven kids and an unproven manager will keep us up and they'll be able to sell them on to a bigger club for £££s The fans? Meh, don't really give a **** about us (for now) The club is their play thing and they'll do as they please. I'd like to think they have a plan for the champ next season, no ****ing idea what it is mind
There are in-betweens. But people act like the in-betweens aren't also serious performance risks. Our squad is filled with in-betweens who didn't really come good (and a couple that did): Moi, the Armstrongs, Djenepo and Che? That's a £75m attacking quintet if Footballmarkt is to be believed. An in-between striker might've improved us, or they might've been just another £15m signing that we'd be looking to replace from the day after they sign the contract.
Well yes, as I said all signings are a risk. But if the argument that we didn’t sign anyone is because they might be a flop than that is pretty damning of our scouting system. Everyone with any knowledge of Saints knew we needed more goals in the team, we didn’t succeed in addressing that with just a 19 (?) year old and Aribo, which I’m sure shocked nobody.
