Match Day Thread Southampton vs Aston Villa 3pm, Saturday 21st January

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Yeah, after years of avoiding relegation, Sunderland eventually went down and regrouped...in league one.

Yeah I tried to stay clear of that one as it's so obvious but the similarities between the two are huge.
 
I can't see SR sticking with Saints if we go down. It will impact on their model of club ownership and with things supposedly not looking good with their Turkish club where the fans are equally disgruntled, I do not see their future being too rosy either.

It is strange why fans believe foriegn ownership of clubs is necessarily a good thing. Given the scale of Danish and Eastern European football, why do fans feel that Danes / Serbs running Saints should have such a good understanding of how things should be done? Not sure why everyone seemed to think that SR would move the club on from Gao's rather stagnant involvement ? In my opinion, there is the same kind of misguided logic with SR's descision making that marred the final years of Rupert Lowe's ownership. I am now saying that everything that SR do has been a mistake, just that when they do make errors of judgement they are catastrophic. The constant changing of personnel behind the scenes is suggestive to me that not everyone is buying in to what they are going. I would not be surprised if there was another volte face and Nathan Jones gets bombed out at the end of the season as the "data" does not support his continued tenure.
 
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I can't see SR giving up if we go down tbh and don't see what these comments are based on. They must have known that there was a decent chance of it when they took over and the possibility will have been accounted for.

You don't start a new business model and give up after 18 months because you hit a bump in the road. Unless they grossly underestimated and want out but I don't see it. Plus that assumes there's a buyer ready to go...

SR are here to stay for 4/5 years minimum imo regardless of what happens this season. Whether that's a good thing though is open to debate/preference of course.
 
Yeah I tried to stay clear of that one as it's so obvious but the similarities between the two are huge.

I wouldn't have been confident with a go-down-and-rebuild at all under Gao. But the things that SR are saying, and the money they are investing, makes me believe we are in good hands, come what may.
 
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I wouldn't have been confident with a go-down-and-rebuild at all under Gao. But the things that SR are saying, and the money they are investing, makes me believe we are in good hands, come what may.

Fair enough, in that respect at least I agree with you then.

I just don't see how the 13th or so biggest wage bill in country will benefit from losing money.
 
Have to say, and I say this as someone who wants us to go down, I think the 'go down and regroup' argument is a poor one with no real basis in reality.

Can't see how you could ever say a struggling club with £100m+ of debt would find a rebuild easier in a situation where they've lost guaranteed access to tens of millions of pounds.

For every Burnley there's a Stoke etc

I'm generally of the opinion that relegated teams ought to sell everything that moves. You don't want to get stuck with a bunch of players on high wages, many of whom really aren't happy about being in the Championship. Cash in all of the chips you accumulated in the PL, buy some Championship experience, play your youth, and rebuild. If you go straight up, great. If you don't, you aren't going to end in financial difficulty, or with the internal rot that really screwed Sunderland.
 
I'm generally of the opinion that relegated teams ought to sell everything that moves. You don't want to get stuck with a bunch of players on high wages, many of whom really aren't happy about being in the Championship. Cash in all of the chips you accumulated in the PL, buy some Championship experience, play your youth, and rebuild. If you go straight up, great. If you don't, you aren't going to end in financial difficulty, or with the internal rot that really screwed Sunderland.

Yeah agreed. That's if you can sell them of course! Think they were stuck with Rodwell on 50k+ for another 3 years after they went down.

You also end up getting lower fees for this exact reason (clubs know you need to sell). No way will we get 50 mil plus for Prowsey as a championship club for example.
 
I can't see SR sticking with Saints if we go down. It will impact on their model of club ownership and with things supposedly not looking good with their Turkish club where the fans are equally disgruntled, I do not see their future being too rosy either.

It is strange why fans believe foriegn ownership of clubs is necessarily a good thing. Given the scale of Danish and Eastern European football, why do fans feel that Danes / Serbs running Saints should have such a good understanding of how things should be done? Not sure why everyone seemed to think that SR would move the club on from Gao's rather stagnant involvement ? In my opinion, there is the same kind of misguided logic with SR's descision making that marred the final years of Rupert Lowe's ownership. I am now saying that everything that SR do has been a mistake, just that when they do make errors of judgement they are catastrophic. The constant changing of personnel behind the scenes is suggestive to me that not everyone is buying in to what they are going. I would not be surprised if there was another volte face and Nathan Jones gets bombed out at the end of the season as the "data" does not support his continued tenure.

They’ve already said that they have factored in what going down would mean, and your Danish/Serbian reference is bizarre. There’s no great history of football in Abu Dhabi, but it hasn’t done City any harm. And the referenced Dane has significant success in English football at Brentford…
 
Yeah agreed. That's if you can sell them of course! Think they were stuck with Rodwell on 50k+ for another 3 years after they went down.

You also end up getting lower fees for this exact reason (clubs know you need to sell). No way will we her 50 mil plus for Prowsey as a championship club for example.

Definitely. There are some players that would be difficult to shift, but I'm fairly confident that most of our high-wage players would find homes. Might not get as much individually as we'd like, but JWP, KWP, Salisu, Che, ABK, Lavia, Livramento (if healthy) and DCC would all be relatively easy to shift, I'd imagine.
 
Definitely. There are some players that would be difficult to shift, but I'm fairly confident that most of our high-wage players would find homes. Might not get as much individually as we'd like, but JWP, KWP, Salisu, Che, ABK, Lavia, Livramento (if healthy) and DCC would all be relatively easy to shift, I'd imagine.

Yeah you would hope so. You would also hope that we've been sensible in terms of relegation clauses...
 
They’ve already said that they have factored in what going down would mean, and your Danish/Serbian reference is bizarre. There’s no great history of football in Abu Dhabi, but it hasn’t done City any harm. And the referenced Dane has significant success in English football at Brentford…

And the Danish side owned and operated by the same people has had some success in Europe. They knocked us out of Europey, as an example...
 
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Definitely. There are some players that would be difficult to shift, but I'm fairly confident that most of our high-wage players would find homes. Might not get as much individually as we'd like, but JWP, KWP, Salisu, Che, ABK, Lavia, Livramento (if healthy) and DCC would all be relatively easy to shift, I'd imagine.

Almost like the beginnings of a good team there…
 
I don't know what is worse, watching us play football or reading the posts on here.

Take a look at the table we are not out of the running to stay up and we have owners with money trying to get the players we need.

We have to tough this out and not throw in the towel.

There is still a long way to go we must not be written of yet.
 
I don't know what is worse, watching us play football or reading the posts on here.

Take a look at the table we are not out of the running to stay up and we have owners with money trying to get the players we need.

We have to tough this out and not throw in the towel.

There is still a long way to go we must not be written off yet.
Very true. We’re not cut adrift at all. But some teams are pulling away (forest are out of sight atm, Leeds and wet spam picked up points). We’re still in it but the clock is ticking.
 
Did anyone else think Adams looked a bit unfit yesterday? Seems to be carrying a bit more timber than he used to.
 
Did anyone else think Adams looked a bit unfit yesterday? Seems to be carrying a bit more timber than he used to.

i think he has been the problem for the past year. i think he wanted away from Ralph in the summer, i think he didnt want to work so hard, i think he is lost up front without a good striker to play assistant to and i think his head is gone. Im fed up listening to managers try and make him sound and feel good. id be fine if we sold him because we are not going to win games with him up front. We will do better if we get rid and play adarma up front and by better i mean a couple of points.
 
There’s 3pts separating the bottom 7. It’s half way thro the season. There’s loads of opportunities to get out of this but I think it rests upon getting a forward who can support Adams. Without I think we’re stuffed.
Agree mostly but if we could get the ball to the current forwards more often and they take up better scoring positions etc I think we'd still be ok. But I get your point.
 
i think he has been the problem for the past year. i think he wanted away from Ralph in the summer, i think he didnt want to work so hard, i think he is lost up front without a good striker to play assistant to and i think his head is gone. Im fed up listening to managers try and make him sound and feel good. id be fine if we sold him because we are not going to win games with him up front. We will do better if we get rid and play adarma up front and by better i mean a couple of points.

Yeah should’ve sold him in the summer and signed someone else. Don’t understand the “imagine where we’d be if we sold Adams” argument, we are bottom anyway so at worst we would be cut adrift at the bottom and definitely going down, instead of 90% going down