I will always remember that Villa, Wolves and ourselves all sacked our manager at the same time. Villa got Unai Emery, Wolves got Julen Lopetegui and we got... Nutty Nathan Jones
Absolutely The top of the PL is more a closed shop, entry by Oligarch only They don't really give a damn who the rest of the table are The bottom of the table would like it to be a closed shop but they don't have the power to make that happen
I went to the open training session with my kids yesterday. As I could make out, the only absentees were Lallana, Stewart, Sulemana and Mara. Bazunu obviously wasn't present either. Stephens didn't train but played the club captain card brilliantly by sticking around to sign and take pictures long after all the others had gone (considering it was carnage ~4000 people) - that was very well received. RM came back out to do some more signings as well but then took the mic to apologise that he couldn't do more as they had a team meeting at 4pm - again, very well received. The women's training was more interesting because they were out longer and did more, including mini-games. The men's was more gentle, evidently due to the game the night before. Some notes: RM is very involved in it all. He's still got it! Two teams of keep ball in an extremely small area. Smallbone and Sugawara both looked excellent in this. They did some work pushing balls out wide and crossing into the box. All the defenders were involved and switched between defensive roles and attacking roles. Larios was the left-wing crosser (he did ok), KWP the right-wing crosser (all his were excellent). Interestingly, Manning was the one spreading the ball out wide (sometimes RM). Make of that what you will! While this was going on, the rest paired up to pass to each other in various methods - focus on sharp control and delivery. Something that I think pros can't really get wrong but noticeable skills from Dibling and SAA partnership. Tall Paul's first touch is atrocious. BBD had some individual fitness work (sprints etc.) and then stayed longer to do some through-ball runs. RM would play into him around the D, BBD would play it back and then RM would play a through ball for BBD to pick up and then beat the keeper. 2 defenders either side of BBD during this drill. He's not fast but he seems strong and his finishing was pretty neat. This was all central and so I wonder if they intend to play him through the middle? McCarthy is clearly the strongest of the 3 keepers if the keeper drills are to be believed. One drill involved short, sharp passing in triangles around two dummies. They always made the straight and diagonal one-two passes but they didn't seem 'sharp' ... Worrying. Alcaraz wears particularly tight shorts. Think 80s length but more brief like in appearance. Whatever he's comfortable with I suppose! KWP gave Aribo and Edozie a lift home in his Lamborghini Urus. While they were coming out of the car park they were waving and being friendly with my two lads. They all looked happy enough.
It says in the Echo that before training session there was an autograph signing session and the man with the longest queue was Charley Alcaraz. There will be a lot of disappointed fans if he’s let go, if this is anything to go by.
Imagine being the player with no queue of autograph hunters. "Hey, everyone, it's me, don't you want to get me to sign anything? At all?"
The report also added that the queue for Charley stopped people from getting to Tall Paul, but maybe they were being polite.
Just noticed that today’s friendly is a 13.00 kick off. Hoping to avoid paying for it but will do if Saintsplayer doesn’t show it.
Rather worryingly, aside from BBD, that is full strength. Not really any better than our Championship side, minor improvement from Manning to Taylor but that's it. We need to seriously strengthen if we want to at least put up a fight.
Yep, agree. That team has less individual talent than our last PL squad in the ****show season. The lineup there gets relegated quite comfortably
That that is more or less our strongest lineup is scary. We really do need a very strong end to the transfer window.
