My criteria for success is having a team of players that give their all and appear bothered about the results. Too many Saints players don’t appear to be bothered about trying and aren’t annoyed by losing.
How we played last year is irrelevant if we are playing dogsh*t football now. This season has been the type of season a newly-promoted team has. Good early on and then just sink and sink and sink until we hang on basically because there were three sh*ttier teams. We all know what happens to that newly-promoted team in their second season. I basically go into most games now hoping for damage limitation. Please just don't get thrashed. We are atrocious defensively. Even with our worst managers I didn't have this level of anxiety. We were drab yes, but we weren't fragile like this current lot. Ralph has been doing some things right, no doubt, but he is also getting some things very, very wrong.
Nearly always has been, to be honest. Almost as long as I’ve supported them .... that’s well over 50 years
I'd add Djenepo into the good bid category, and would probably let Alex see his contract out too as we've bigger priorities than signing a GK this Summer. I'd also happily keep Jack as back up unless his reported 60 bags a week is true.
The Covid situation won't help. Can't see many teams spending loads due to being skint. The only way I can see a big overhaul is if we sell one of the bigger players for a decent fee, like Ings/Vestergaard/maybe JWP if anyone would want him. If we could get one of the big teams to spend large on any of them, because of Covid, we might be able to get 3 or 4 players with the money. I can't really see any other scenario where we can realistically do a large over haul without selling someone for (relatively) big money I've just had a look at relegation odds out of interest for next year and we are currently 4th favourites. Norwich, Watford and Burnley ahead of us
So who's fault is that? Who's responsibility is it to rectify those issues? I think most would be happy not to be the worst team in 2021 and not keep setting appalling defensive records. But hey, set up a nice strawman instead. No one is expecting us to win the league. No one is expecting to win in Europe. They're expecting not to get dicked 9-0 and set team records for most goals conceded.
Yeah it is way too early to really make any predictions about next year, but interesting that the only team currently in the PL who the bookies think will be worse than us is Burnley (who probably won't go down if Dyche is still there)
