Match Day Thread Saturday 22nd February 2025, St Mary's Stadium, Southampton v Brighton, 3pm

100% this. Last chance saloon for me.

 

I respect it. You’re mental, but I respect it

 

Because we're hurting. The fans are being served up a steaming pile of ****. Not only are they paying through the nose for it, but the club effectively doesn't seem to give a ****.

If the plan back in January was to totally write off the season and throw the towel in, then the club at the very very least needed to communicate that with the fans. What I truly believe they should have done in that instance is financially compensate those who are paying PL prices when the club has given up on the PL.

Whilst it may be in your personality to just shrug and move on, these results and stats are horrendous. This is the worst we've ever been. Not hyperbole, provable facts. We're Saints fans, we're not expecting much, but to be the worst team in PL history doesn't do an awful lot to instill confidence for next season regardless of some bloke we've never heard of coming in.

 

Cooper should be more than just a shout. He should be a very strong consideration.

 

Wilcox left us for Man Utd which is also a club in turmoil. He was a good appointment yet he soon saw through Sports Republic.

For me we are at the point where enough is enough. Never witnessed as season as a Saints fan where we have not competed since the first match of the season. We are achieving consistency in unwanted records.... max home defeats on a row, Premiership points tally , etc etc.

 

Masochism@SMS

 

Definitely mental. It's genuinely just another addiction

 

I get that.

 

How did he “see through Sports Republic”? Because he left for Man Utd? From a Championship team? You were expecting him to stay when they came in? Really??!

 

Lead by example then. Organise a protest.

Then what do you realistically propose? There's no point saying "SR need to go", because they are not going to sack themselves.

Also, at this point, it's not really SR anymore anyway. Dragan has seen to that.

You said in an earlier post that we've have been getting worse for 8 years. I totally agree. But if that's the case, how can you expect us to turn it around over night?

Got to be patient. But having said that I do get the frustration with manager appointments. So annoying. Mainly because I feel once we get this right, everything will start falling into place.

Pretty sure the Forest owners went through a whole bunch of managers in their early days. Now look at them.

 

Yeah that’s a great point. It was quite a shock two weeks into January to hear that Juric was going to have talks about transfers the week after. Bottom the table with 5 points, new manager brought in mid-December yet transfer talks don’t take place until 3 weeks into January.

A complete joke. Even despite our **** performances to completely give up in December is honestly pathetic and shows there are as many leaders behind the scenes as there were on the pitch. Zero. But don’t worry, we’ve got our fan zones, ****ty pub, insanely overpriced drinks with honestly gross discounts for ST holders and overpriced food stalls. It might have been fun if it was a good season, it’s honestly embarrassing to walk through rock bottom with no hope.

 

Sadly (or not, as the case may be) I don't get opportunities to get to SMS for football anymore.

 

I’m not proposing anything, my point is simply about how we should be beyond “let’s calm down, give it some time and give the new guy a chance to settle in” like we are not already in a really really really really bad way as a club.

To me it should be ‘okay, you’ve got your new director, you’ve known since December (and acted like since December) that we are relegated so you now have had 5/6 months to develop a plan and to put it in place in the summer’. So it’s not let’s calm down and wait and see, it’s more, you have this Summer and this Summer only and if we see the same **** of zero movement until the football has already started and we can’t decide which 3 average managers to choose and we end up with the same starting 11 then that’s it. You’re just clearly incapable of running a football club efficiently and it’s times for fans to start protesting.

I agree it would be dumb to change SR when they’ve put the foundations in place for change. Unfortunately they’ve put themselves in a position where they have zero excuses for sitting on their arses this summer. I genuinely expect the first few weeks after the season to finish to be non stop movement from our club. If it’s yet again more radio silence and no communication then they are not people I want in charge of my football club.

 

Whilst I agree with the overall point about decline etc. Juric was saying we needed to get rid of players first then see about incomings later in the window.

Unfortunately football clubs don’t operate in a sandbox and with appointments/signings there are so many moving parts that the whole “do it early ffs” cry every year from every fanbase never happens as too many things need to happen before anything can happen. It’s why so much gets done late on when time is running out.

If we want to appoint a manager currently in a job then we will almost certainly wait until July when we are not a PL club anymore so the compensation goes down. If we want to sign players who their current club actually want to keep then we need to negotiate a price or wait for selling club to find a replacement and be confident they can get them, nothing happens quickly.

If we are going for someone out of work then sure we can get them as soon as the season ends, just depends who we are targeting

 

Invest it

 

And you could get something worse. No perfect owner is going to pick us up and even if we were very fortunate they wouldn't be able to keep up this Team.

 

Always thought that.

 

Not sure juric will make it to the end of the season at this rate!

 

I would think that for someone in Wilcox's position, when Man Utd come calling you go. He probably would not have left under any other circumstances (very few at least). He wasn't exactly pushing for a move, he was only with us for 5 minutes!

 

The confidence evaporated once the second goal went in. From nearly being 1-1 to 2-0 knocked the Team's confidence. I know we are not great but we kept in the game until then despite losing Bednarek early on.

Downes must have really fallen out with Juric. Taking off Ugochukwu to replace with Smallbone left a massive hole which Brighton filly exploited.

Felt sorry for the folorn figure of KWP at the end - yet he still applauded the fans who stayed.