What would be your reaction if...

I am pleased I made you smile. That is something the Saints aren't doing at the moment.

 

Just another thought NZ, what does a non-messy transition season look like? In my mind I have an image of us finishing mid table (anywhere from 10-15th), maybe or maybe not a half decent cup run, perhaps getting a few players signed up on to longer deals and then assessing what we need to push on again the following season... if it's transition that by definition suggests it won't all be good, so there will always be some mess.

Nothing in life is smooth, even in a record breaking season - ask Ronald Koeman.

 

So you've been a miserable git since 1976 then?

 

I'm referring more to rumorsof discord in the club and dressing room meetings. Fonte unhappy and the apparent obliteration of confidence on the pitch. Things are not great on pitch so off pitch rumors start to sound realistic.

Since you asked, A smooth transition is what happens at Chelsea. New manager, couple of new players, oh look we're top of the table not fourth from bottom. Not an equivalent situation but.. actually it is, more or less.

 

Not picking a fight, it's a thread, not a debate between you and I. Totally agree with you that we should hope for the best but the obvious is what it is.

I posted in another thread that if the board sign a player or two in January after giving Puel and the players a fair crack of the whip then I would judge that to be astute management.

It's turning into a messy season all around. Defeatism is the natural position if you can't score and can't keep clean sheets. Doesn't mean it can't change again though. Puel has done pretty well till now. Actually done very well.

 

I think if your vision comes to pass it'll be a good season. The only way i might differ differ is that there is only one player I would offer a longer contract to and that's Romeu. The rest need to play for their place.

 

Hard to pick fault with this at the moment. Maybe things wil change. Puel has to do something, saying the wrong things at the moment and not changing the style/tactics.

 

Didn't go so smoothly for Chelsea last season though, did it? Their fans, to their credit, seemed pretty sanguine about it.

 

There wasn't a transition entering last year; they had much the same team as the year previous, but the players grew to loathe the manager, so they fired him, saw out the season and then spent 100m shoring up their primary weaknesses under a new world class manager. I mean, I'm not against that plan.

 

What was last season for Chelsea then, a pre-transition, transition season ???? And... if I read that correctly, are you saying you expected this transition season (your expectation you mentioned earlier) to take us to the top of the table? ( I know you didn't mean we'd go top, but that is the comparison you've just made)

 

Yep he has. Since he was 80

 

I am not sure if you have missed my point, or I have missed your point, in all honesty here. Let's take a check here:

• You said you expected a transition season.

• I described one (tongue in cheek that it actually described what has happened already), so my "vision" is here right now... assuming we don't go down or hang on by the skin of our teeth on the last day. You mention Romeu, what about all those we signed up in the summer (VVD, etc, etc) which is part of this season and I include those in my comment/vision.

What I am saying is that you expected a transition season and it looks very much to me like you were right. This is panning out to be a transition season (whatever one of those really is). Teams are either successful, progress upwards, get relegated ... or are "in transition"

PS. I am not having a dig at you here, just following out the conversation.

 

Oh from much, much earlier than that. You'll learn. Your innocent, youthful optimism will be eroded away in no time.

 

Thanks Godders. I'm 55 by the way, and have had my share of hard knocks, but the only thing that's eroded so far is my teeth, and I'm saving up to replace those.

 

Couple of new players... £85m net spend.... Signed arguably the best player in the league... Conte has them playing exactly the way he wants them to.

You make it sound like it's an easy thing to do.

 

I don't understand the decision though, even if I take a step back. I don't think the number of strikers were ok last season. We were massively relying on Pelle, when he went through a goal drought, we wern't scoring. Then he got injured, Shane long came in and had the purple patch of his career to save the day.

We brought Austin in but then lost Pelle. So still one body short, except Austin is known to have problems with injuries. Long has reverted back to his normal scoring rate, which you would have to expect, except maybe hes scoring even less than normal.

If they were expecting JRod to come back and start scoring regularly then that is a big gamble. If they were expecting Austin to last the season without getting injured thats a gamble (plus you shouldnt be relying on one player to get all your goals anyway, especially with the number of games we were expecting this season). If they were expecting Long to continue his goal scoring form of the second half of last season thats a gamble.

They brought in Redmond (who I saw as a decent impact sub option) but he's never been a regular goalscorer, he gets a few, but not enough to be one of your main goalscorers. They brought in Boufal who was injured when we bought him, and he is more of a creative flair player that will score some goals out of nothing but again, not a regular scorer. And as we know, we have very few goals from elsewhere in the team/squad. That was the same last season. Tadic will get you a few, Davis will get you a few, a CB will get you a few. But that's not enough.

It seems obvious to me now looking back that we were short, it seemed obvious to me at the time. So I don't understand the decisions the board made.

 

We also lose Sophie for a month or so for the African cup. The team went through the same poor run last year, but were playing good football. This year we play well for maybe 1/4 of a game, but create next to nothing. I can not blame long or JRod as they are not getting the type of service that they both need. As soon as the other team scores you can see the players deflate, as they know without goals they have a 0 chance of getting back into the game. I am not blaming the coaches or Les, a team can only lose its best players for so long before it hits the wall, we have hit that wall

 

Fair enough. I understand why they did it, just didn't agree with it. You have gone into lots of detail there and when you do that, you start to see reasons why not. Jay Rod was a gamble yes, but if he looked fine in the pre-season training, then they may have been happy to go with that. Austin played 30+ games for QPR, why not again? Redmond was an exciting England U21 prospect they think they can coach to great things. I understand what they saw. They counted the numbers and all felt good. The sun was shining. Sadly not worked out though. Jay has scored well in the PL. Austin got 18 in his previous full season. There is always ifs and buts, however looking at it on paper, I can see why they thought it would be ok.

I understand it (again, not agree with it) and I can see that they thought we had one more attacking option than the previous year.

 

If you look back a year, there were a lot of people saying we were playing poorly in that run.

On your last point, I agree, we now have to dust ourselves down and take the actions to build again.

 

I wonder how Man United fans feel. They have had three seasons of under achieving and possibly a fourth.