5/10 - It hasn't solved the problem of survival in the Premier, particularly the lack of a centre forward and there are still too many wage earners, not earning a wage.
So, thoughts now, 4 months in? Windows getting increasingly worse in hindsight. Looking back on it, and what the **** were we thinking ... The loan signings of Cornet and Lesley are just baffling. At least Lesley makes the matchday squad I suppose. The mysterious disappearance of Charlie Taylor, along with the sudden resurgence of Ryan Manning (who Taylor was bought in to replace) and Ryan Fraser A centre back injury still not opening the door for Wood or Edwards to even make the matchday squad. BBD. Say no more. Archer. Mixed bag so far. Fraser. Loved him last year but he's not been great at all. I'll give them Fernandes & Sugawara, mind, but again, another poor window from our SR overlords.
Yeah, these three are good. I'm very sure Archer will be good over the length of the contract and I don't hate that we picked him (and Edwards) up while we were in a position of strength to lure them here. Ignoring Flynn and THB, then the remaining new faces... Wood: Don't get it really Taylor: Why has he disappeared - seems he is being punished for the Leicester game? BBD: Feel a bit sorry for him, he was shoved wide left when we looked truly awful with a total vacuum up top and has then been largely left out Lallana: We look much better when he's in midfield (especially when it's him and Fernandes) but his body can't keep up with the workload, sadly Lesley: Looked great first couple of appearances, since then has looked far from great. Seems to have some concentration issues Cornet: Who?
No mate, BBD is up there in the top worst Saints players of all time. I genuinely don't see how he's a professional footballer.
Hmm, I dunno. He was pretty handy for Sheffield United when he was actually played within the width of the penalty area and allowed to go inside it and shoot. He's started what, two games? Maybe three, immediately after signing and in an unfamiliar formation for the squad. Still way too early for me. Feel for him a bit because RM just chucked him to the wolves - but will admit he looked very cumbersome and rough in his performances. But then so does Paul. BBD, to me, feels like another player where we've signed them, even though they don't fit our system, and then not played to their strengths.
Yes, particularly with hindsight we have got too many of our summer signings wrong AGAIN, but will caveat it with. We needed a massive overhaul. You can't force teams to buy your **** and we ended up stuck with quite a bit of it still (from our own previous **** transfer windows). As a newly promoted side, we needed both quantity and quality and you can't really do either effectively and keep to the absolute farce that is PSR. No team ever gets every transfer right. But to have a chance of staying up we probably needed 75% to turn out to be PL quality. The final point is one that I think most have agreed with. In order to play the way that RM wants to play, (and the only way RM has ever been successful), is that your players are better than the oppositions players. That's not going to happen for us in the PL in 100 transfer windows (which should ring alarm bells with the hierarchy but here we are), but there was no way we were going to scratch the surface of that with just 1... and particularly under the shackles of PSR. All I can say is thank **** for Tyler Dibling as we would just have zero excitement going forward without his emergence.
Think my OP summary was pretty spot on even with hindsight, still stand by we couldn’t have done much more in the window. Which shows how hard it is for a newly promoted side. Throw in Martin and it was the recipe for last season
I do think if we go up this season we'll be in a much better position to spend money and we'll have a better manager as well.
We need to keep building a more physical side. The Prem is now a league of absolute athletes and last season we looked liked couch potatoes.
It’s a bit early to definitely say that about the manager. We have fewer points in the championship than we did under Martin at this stage. Although as pointed out I think we then went 4 or 5 games without adding any more. So a bit early The whole season seems like it will come down to the question of whether Still is good enough or not
Yeah this is my opinion currently. Whilst we can point to “we had the same points as 10 games in” or whatever, but we also went 25 games unbeaten. Can’t expect to be doing that again either
To be honest, 25 unbeaten was a really odd run. Very few convincing wins. Easily one of the best squads in the division. I don’t think it will take much to get more points, without necessarily going so long unbeaten.
