Has Brazilian Juan been involved with the U21s at all does anyone know? Seems to be the Ehibhatiomhan show for them in pre-season, which is exciting, just wondering where Juan is as he was training with the first team squad in the early part of pre-season. Assume he goes back to Turkey. Anyone else looked good for u21s in pre-season?
Kicking off against Espanyol in 1hr Saints: Ramsdale; Edwards, Stephens, Quarshie, Welington; Charles, Fernandes; Armstrong, Fraser, Brereton-Diaz; Archer Bench: Bazunu, Sugawara, Bree, Kayi Sanda, Manning, Smallbone, Aribo, Sesay, Robinson, Stewart, Downs
I'm thinking the same thing. Whilst there will of course be personnel change due to new signings and those missing due to injuries/fitness, it's worrying that Fraser & BBD are our best options. The Edwards at right back thing is strange too.
Anyone know if this is being streamed anywhere other than the official site? Also, I’d imagine this is the current strongest team, but we are obviously missing Downes and Dibling through injury and they will slot straight in, as well as Downs when he gets up to speed.
I read somewhere that it is on Spanish tv for free so there may well be a stream somewhere when it kicks off. Not sure exactly where mind you
Our squad is far too big isn't it! I know we already knew this but its hindering game time now for sure. Hope we can shift a couple and shuffle the pack a little in the next couple of weeks.
I reckon Still wants to see what Fraser/BBD offer, since neither of them played much last season. He also mentioned in one interview that certain players link up better with others, so maybe the repeated line-up is his way of exploring that.
I don't care about pre-season performances or results. And I acknowledge that players will be at different stages of their pre-season, and may need their minutes managed etc. But I'm not a fan of how much Fraser is featuring, and it's concerning to see Edwards getting shunted out to RB with Stephens starting at CB. It hardly suggests that Edwards is ahead of Stephens in the pecking order (as so many Saints fan assume).
Stephens and Quarshie is clearly where his head is at for the opening game, so he's giving that partnership as much time as possible to gel, which makes sense. He also needs to get Edwards up to speed on minutes, so it's either disrupt those two or just play him RB to get some match fitness back into him. If Quarshie has a wobbly start, he'll get pulled and Edwards will start playing alongside Stephens in the competitive games, I'm sure Re: Fraser - I don't really understand why everyone seems to have such a downer on him. Is it just because he didn't play last season? He was pretty good in the Championship for us prior, so not playing for us when we spent a lot of the season playing a 3-5-2 formation that didn't have space for him anyway isn't much of a black mark for me
I'm probably in the minority in that I wasn't a fan of us bringing Fraser in for our previous Championship campaign. Let alone now when he's two years older. I accept that he ended up having a really good two month-ish spell around October/November, including those away winners against Hull and Millwall. But he did very little in the second half of that season. Our squad is way too big, and he's an obvious candidate for me as someone we can cut. We can't keep them all.
