You really don’t see the issue with us being at the point where each year we have to offload the only good player we have? Normally you sell your best but keep a good squad backbone. We don’t have a backbone so every year we just sell the players we rely on which means we will start from the beginning, every single year. This is not what every club does. It’s an Southampton FC/SR special that we are at this point.
We’ve not been in the same division back to back since SR took over, so that naturally affects player turnover. No one left when we got promoted, we spent money to keep the loanees on board, but when you’re relegated players want out and there is not much you can do about it. There is a high chance we’ll still be in the championship next season and I don’t see us losing any players we’d want to keep. Currently only Charles & Scienza have shown anything which would catch the eye of the PL or top European leagues, but I think we’d keep hold of them.
Charles will only have a year left on his contract so he'll definitely go if he doesn't sign a new one. Don't think it'll just be PL sides we'd have to worry about either as relegated sides would also be more attractive. I think we'd see a fair bit of turnover again tbh. Apart from anything else we'd have to cut costs due to decrease in parachute payments.
If we don’t go up I would expect a lot of turnover due to the parachute payments. I’d be surprised if we weren’t trying to sell: Charles THB Downes Archer Armstrong Fellows Azaz Bazunu Haven’t looked at contract situations but I think Aribo would be gone naturally anyway. Not sure on Fraser, McCarthy, Manning, Stewart but you can probably add them to the list as well, and the loanees in aswell. It could be pretty much a full reset depending on how risky we want to play it
Can't see us renewing Stewarts deal to be honest; he's out of contract at the end of the season. On the other hand, I can see him getting fit, scores 4 goals in 5 games or something towards the end of the season, and SR in their wisdom offer him a new 3-year contract. Bit like what we did with McCarthy after the play-offs
Some good posts on here, but little to do with the thread subject, and some being duplicated on the January Window thread. On X, Norwich, may be appointing Phillipe Clement, Swansea Vitor Matos? & Boro probably Hellberg?. Leaves plenty of options for us, but none seem to be actively chased by SR. The silence as usual, is deafening.
At this stage I will be surprised if we don’t appoint Eckert. If we had a preferred candidate they will surely have been appointed by now. A bit of a waste of the last international break. They must have been considering sacking Still for some time, so can only assume they sacked him with no replacement lined up. Unsure if that’s normal procedure or not.
If those appointments end up happening, interesting that the likes of Carrick Martin or O’Neil didn’t get any of the jobs
Hopefully they have been busy negotiating a release clause for a quality manager. Or maybe nobody is interested in the SR way. Zero media speculation. I guess the other clubs seeking a manager are more interesting than us.
We love it when things come out of nowhere last minute and surprise us, but at the same time we moan that there's not enough information about what's going on. Football clubs walk the trickiest of fine lines
You're telling me; I work in that industry and todays been carnage - all our e-commerce websites wiped out for a few hours and nothing we could've done
