Prompted to create this with ten games to go at the business end of the season this in the BBC gossip column. "Manchester United are interested in appointing Southampton director of football Jason Wilcox as technical director. (Telegraph - subscription)". Our strategy will, of course, depend on achieving promotion or another season in the championship. Keeping our successful loanees along with our best players KWP etc should be the priority.
Pretty impossible to say anything on this until we know what league we’ll be in. It’ll be dramatically different depending which it is.
If we go up, we will need major reinvestment. Four to five quality signings rather than a scattergun approach. We will need a dominant, imposing DM as a bare minimum. A much better striker. A left back. Hate to say it but potentially a top goalkeeper. If we stay down, genuinely want us to focus more on the outstanding talent we have in the youth set up. I will be miffed if we loan more wingers and even more miffed if Meghoma doesn’t transition to first choice LB.
Yeah no idea what the side will look like until we know what league we are going to be in. Stay in the Championship then probably only 2 or 3 of our starting 11 will be here next year Get promoted and more will be here, but hopefully in squad roles rather than first teamers
Southampton will try to sign Argentine attacker Matias Soule from Juventus if they are promoted to the Premier League, while Crystal Palace, Newcastle United and Aston Villa are also interested in the 20-year-old. (Calciomercato - in Italian)
One of whom we ate obligated to buy if we go up though (THB) and I also think we sign Downes if we go up.
The same goes for most Championship clubs. Hull will lose Carvalho, Morton, Zaroury, Delap, Giles, Twine. They're all first teamers. I'm pretty sure we'll sign Fraser and wouldn't be surprised if we get Downes too. He's surplus at West Ham and I can't think of another Prem club that would shell out 12-15m on him. THB is an interesting one. Only has a year left on his contract. Long shot though.
Sure, but I'm not going to consider who we sign if we go up, until we actually get promoted. The chances are we will still be in this division.
I'd say the odds are 50-50 TBH, or even 55-45 in favour of promotion. At least play offs are pretty much a certainty now and automatic promotion isn't far from our grasp either.
If we get to the final, and it's against Ipswich, I'd say 50/50. Against any other team maybe 60/40 in our favour. But we've got the semis to get through first. Will be difficult whoever we go up against, and we don't know what injuries we might have. If we lose Downes, we're in trouble. Autos I'd say are very tough now. Margin for error is so small and our fixtures are more difficult than the others'.
In the semis, I fancy us against anyone over 2 legs. Yep even Leeds. We will definitely screw up (draw or maybe lose) one leg, but this team has it in them to beat anyone in this league over two legs IMO. The one off final is a different matter.....
The probability is that if we finish 3rd or 4th, we would face 4th or 3rd in the final. So that would be either Ipswich or Leeds if things stand as they are, as I don’t think anyone would expect Leicester to **** things up badly enough to slip out of the auto spots. The good news is that we probably wouldn’t need to play both Leeds and Ipswich in the playoffs, just one of them in the final. Out of the two I think I would rather play Leeds in a one off game.
I’d much rather face Ipswich in the final than Leeds personally. Leeds have more quality throughout the team. Ipswich have a lot of running and that’s about it. We could do either on our day though. Problem is, both of them can also beat us. Genuine lottery
It’s a tough call but I wouldn’t feel happy at us defending any kind of lead against Ipswich, or us doing a Cardiff and coming from behind against them. Mind you, you could say the same for Leeds!
It all comes down to who we have fit, rested, and available. If we lose further ground in the next few gameweeks, then it's time to start resting players. Do yellow cards cards carry over into the playoffs? @tomw24
My reasoning is that if we play as well as we can, we will beat Ipswich as we simply have better players than them. However we could still play at our best and lose to Leeds.
