Surely ideally you would like to build a stable squad? And to do that you need conisitency, you can’t have consistency of you’re yo-yoing up and down the leagues. I’d much rather a crap start to the season next year that evolves over the year into a really solid finish ready for season 2 in the championship with new players and a solid system, than a team that is pretty much Russ 2.0 with a sloppy style of play, promoted because other teams are just poorer who is instantly promoted and battered every game because you fluked your way through a hefty chunk of the championship. And I do think we are unique in the ‘sell everyone’ point because we do not just sell everyone great, we sell anyone good. In a season where we are a starved goals with no attacking threat we offload one of our strikers in the middle of a relegation fight with Adam Armstrong, not to mention the other players Alcarez, Armstrong, Adams, Romeu and no doubt a few others over the last few years who would waltz back into this squad but also aren’t star players. Next season it is a real possibility that Tyler Dibling is off, he’s barely done a thing for 4 months and even then he’s been inconsistent but it seems possible he may be out the door and frankly he’s playing like someone whose on his way out, but my point is we genuinely might have a 19 year old academy player who has come up through our rankings force a move on before he has even shown any kind of consistent talent. If that isn’t the kind of player you can keep hold of then what the **** am I watching for? What are we building towards here? Surely that is a player you should be to convince to stay for at least another year, he won’t be starting for any top 6 club next year and has a chance to flourish in a league below but unfortunately he’s probably more than aware of our long history of letting players go because their agents say “pretty please”. Obviously it’s a lot of ifs and buts however that sale goes through it just further reinforces my feeling that we aren’t a football club, just a business.
He was with the 777 group for over 5 years. He was initially just involved at Genoa for a couple of seasons before they promoted him to look after the entire network of clubs for another 3 years. We really need to hope he is good because if not, we are ****ed.
In ideal world, yes you’d want to build a stable squad and come back up. Unfortunately building a stable squad in the Championship that can survive in the PL is basically impossible. The last team to come up and survive was Forest and they bought 46 new players when they got promoted. Fulham came up with them who had yo-yo’d a couple of times before getting it right. I can’t remember who the other team who came up with them was? Bournemouth? Those teams also benefitted from 2 teams that had been in the PL for years in us and Leicester having terrible seasons and helping them survive. Sure that could happen again, but it looks unlikely due to the difference in ability of an established PL squad and a promoted team, which is even greater than it was 3 years ago. As for your second point, I agree. There is no point in supporting Saints if you want to win anything major. It won’t happen. Best we can hope for is a cup win, and that is still very unlikely. We aren’t alone in that of course, it’s just the state of the sport being so uncompetitive at the top level.
Don't understand the argument that two seasons will make it easier than one. Might have been true going back a few years but don't believe it to be now. The gap in the championship is almost as big as the gap between the two leagues these days and in a second season you're automatically behind at least 3 clubs financially. I make us first or second favourites next season dependant on whether Ipswich keep McKenna or not. In a second season we'd be nowhere near that imo.
Yup. We went through the same discussion last season, the best time to get promoted is straight away. Don’t we only get 1 season of parachute payments this time?
Sense. And the whole "if we can't keep hold of Dibling" part - if he wants to go, there's little we can do other than slap a ridiculous price tag on his head. Welcome to modern football. Which is exactly what we've done. If we get offered half that, I'd let him go, because he's not worth that. I'm far more interested in whether we can somehow keep Fernandes than Dibling. You can accuse SR of a number of things, but letting players go silly cheap isn't really one of them.
To be honest I wasn’t really reading Deserena’s post as a pop at Saints specifically, more just a moan about modern football, and he’s not wrong.
Yeah, fair shout. I'm a number of pints in (I blame Lincs), so probably not taking it all in as well as I should.
I agree with Deserana in parts and Libby in parts. I agree we are **** and need to gut the club to rebuild. However…**** or bust again this season. If they mess it up and we don’t go straight back up again, we will be in massive trouble. Unfortunately the accountants have won and ruined football. The gap is too big now
Probably 2 seasons, look at Leeds this year. If we don’t go up next year you can be 99.9% sure the teams we will be competing with for promotion the following season will include at least 2 of the promoted teams this season, likely all 3, and that will be Burnley and Sheff Utd who I wouldn’t be too concerned about even after a year in the Champ Like last time we should have more to sell and generate funds than the other relegated teams which should help us build a good enough squad to go up first attempt. Ipswich will be the main threat as I can’t see many of their players leaving aside from Delap, and they signed some very good championship players. Far too early to really know. Who knows how many players we think would be good enough for a promotion push just want out. I’m thinking players like Armstrong, Downes, Diaz, Archer, THB, Onuachu.
****ing awful season start to finish & ST have to take a serious amount of blame. Yes, there are side issues but regardless they are the present guardians & tbh, they’ve been ****. PL was always going to be ultra difficult but we’ve continued to machine gun our feet from day one; and that’s the kicker for me. We NEVER gave us a chance. Record relegation & probable lowest points as well. ST, for decades & I’ve stopped going. So bad, such an embarrassment for me, such a shame. Hate it. All SR’s fault? No but they’re definitely culpable big time. They have a lot of work to do but tbh, I think the gulf has opened & they’ve missed their chance. Hope I’m wrong but I doubt whether we’ll be a proper PL side again (in my lifetime).
Would like a club statement this week now the inevitable is confirmed. Would be nice to get season ticket details too.
Season ticket details I’m very curious about. Especially if we don’t beat the record, getting relegated the fastest and with the lowest points tally it’s going to be a very very bitter pill to swallow if they plan on freezing the prices. I still remember the season ticket reveal for last year and they played the “we were generous last year and didn’t increase prices” No you ****s, you got relegated.
We were chatting about this in the pub yesterday. When I was feeling more charitable (pint no.5?) I thought that even if they weren't malevolent owners the job this summer is simply too big for them to get right. They need to pretty much revamp the entire squad, buy appropriate players and sell off the ****e, get a pragmatic manager in and also rebuild fan relations. That's way too much for one window. I don't think this will go as well as some fans are assuming
I think you are seriously underestimating our squad for Championship level. I do agree that if we do come straight back we will be ****ed again as building a squad for PL survival in one window is basically impossible. We only had one proven PL level player when we got promoted last time (KWP) before the window, and a couple with a fair few PL appearances but questionable about if they are good enough for the level (Bednarek and Stephens). If we come straight back it is likely we will have none in the proven category, and maybe none in the “played lots in the PL” category either.
