Well done sanmarco for putting it all in to a real world perspective.

One last thought. The skill of a manager is to take what you’ve got and mould it together as a team. The more cohesive a unit you get the more the whole sums up to greater than the sum of the parts. Anybody who thinks that hassenloadofcr*p has got that skill is not if this earth
HE MUST BE SACKED AND ASAP IF WE ARE TO HAVE ANY CHANCE OF SURVIVAL.

With everyone venting their anger/sorrow/ disappointment/ disbelief ..there are some who are already demanding Ralph's sacking....so what's next step...can Ross Wilson find another ...(ooops sorry he's gone already hasn't he ?) I am sure that we must have a list of alternative managers ...as well as player's we... (sorry Ross)... had been watching.... ...and look at those who are available as possible replacement just now...

well....there's that Mourinho fellow but he only goes to teams who are already established in top six..then again there's that Welsh fellow ..Pulis. He was always good at guiding teams out of the drop zone ..oh but he has his hands full just now...and that other Welshman ...Hughes - is it? ..Apparantly he's still unemployed ..or ..maybe we should wait a week or two and see if Ralph can turn things around in the meantime.
After all ..it's not December yet .

Goodness me this club is a right mess.

I don't want or have time to dig into why and quite frankly what I think doesn't really matter. However, I will say this:

NICK! I HAVE BEEN FOLLOWING THIS FANZINE FOR CLOSE TO 5-6 YEARS. FOR ONCE CAN YOU DO THE RIGHT THING FOR FOR SOUTHAMPTON FOOTBALL CLUB BY NOT SUPPORTING A ROTTEN ESTABLISHMENT. THERE IS TOO MUCH AT STAKE.

Ralph, unfortunately, has to go. He's definitely a quality manager but, for some reason, he came at the wrong time and has clearly lost the dressing room.

For me, I'd be happy with relegation if it means Gao and Katherina leaving the club for good. I suspect if we truly want to stay up we'll need at least 60-70 million to spend in Jan on two quality centre backs and a decent box-to-box midfielder who has the same level of talent as Lemina but an infinitely better attitude.

Lastly, managerial prospects that spring to mind are:

Tony Pulis - Not necessarily first choice but you know what you'll get with him. No player will get away with murder with him as manager.

Marcelino - He would be a major, major coup but unfortunately wouldn't be attracted to us because of our poison-chalice owners.

Quique Setién - Another major coup. However, I think he's holding out for Barcelona. Hopefully, Koeman gets the job instead once Valverde leaves.

Van Bronckhorst - He might bring hunger and dynamism to the squad and has a point to prove in a more established league such as the EPL. He comes from the same philosophy as Koeman but with a better win percentage when comparing their times at Feyenoord. You never know!

"and quite frankly what I think doesn't really matter". Yes it does Cortese - what we all think does matter. A committee of half a dozen or so regular contributors on TUI who represented the various views on here would have done a better job running the club over your 5-6 years than those that have been getting rich doing it.

Anyone else nostalgic for when we were a stepping-stone club? Most of us hated it at the time but without stepping stones you drown...

I appreciate that a lot of this is venting by people who care but seriously what do people expect to happen, because IRL Gao and KL aren't going to sell up straight away, we aren't going to sack Ralph nor are we going to have a fire sale at Xmas to get rid of 90% of the players.

Ralph showed last year that these players were good enough with the right coaching to play pretty well. The obvious deficiencies - lack of a quality leader at CB, an attacking midfielder/no 9 and a a consistent clinical striker were somehow got around.

This coaching alchemy seems to have vanished this season, possibly due to Ralph's assistant leaving and that coupled with a lack of ready made premiership quality recruitment over the summer for these key areas we seem to be back to exactly the same or even a psychologically worse position, if not an actual worse position, to than when Ralph arrived.

Friday was absolutely embarrassing. These next 2 games could be almost as bad.

Ralph is the weakest link and he is going to have to work with what he has got but if he can't get a decent performance out of these players again, he is going to be on his way. He's shown he can do it so someone else can also get the players heads straight in the second half of the season if he can't anymore. Just please God not Allardyce.

So there are some very valid points being stated and the one that worries me the most is if there is a player-manager bust-up. I did not watch the game and can't bring myself to do so since so many of you have stated the issues of player's lack of desire. So I am going to try and see if I can look if there are any positives so far this season. Before the season started, I looked at the fixtures and if you include this weekend's MC game, that would make it 11 games in total, I said what should be wins and the others are hopeful at best. So lets look at this.

Games against last years best/better sides: Liverpool, MU, Tot, Chel, LEI. MC - These would be expected loses with our current team. - We got 1 point from MU. So 6 games gone and only 1 point.

Games we should get something, if not win: Burnley, B&H, SU, WW, Bourn: 5 games for for a possible 15 points. We got 7 from this group. So almost half.

We have all stated that defense and scoring are the areas we need to fix. Well we have obviously not done either to a great degree, then getting this amount of points from a possible 15, is not a complete tragedy.

I know many people want Ralph's head after this game and from all the comments on the site, we are heading to relegation. So if this is the opinion of many here, then I would suggest one thing. I know it is unpopular, but as I said in last week's post, I think our season really starts in 2 weeks on Nov 8/9 as we have 5 winnable games in a row. As it was stated in the papers today, the club uis behind Ralph 100%, so I am suggesting that he gets those 5 winnable games. If we are in the same place after these games, then I will be the first to say he needs to go.

Since Goa has said he will not invest any of his own money, then we are stuck no matter who comes in to manage. The harsh reality is our owner thinks this is a business and not a hobby/passion which for our club size it needs to be - just like Mr. Liebharr passion for our team. The average amount spent in the transfer window by the top 10 teams was over 125M pounds. We spent maybe 60M. This type of mentality will not move you up the table and without a passionate owner willing to spend 40M on a high quality player central defender or striker, then we will be sliding backwards while everyone else moves forward. The old adage of "you can't make money unless you spend money" is even more truer in today's football.

We are at a time in our club's history that is going to be hard to cheer and think positively about since we all believe that more can be done and should be done. The realities are that we do not have a top-down mentality and backing that will accomplish what we all want for the club, which is to return to being thought of as an automatic 10 ten club with a chance for European football. I will not give give up on the team, but am realistic that this season will be hard to watch and by December, we will know whether we are going down or have a chance of staying up. COYR

I'd go along with a lot of American Saint's comments...
before Friday night's debacle many would have said we'd be glad of one point (given Leicester great start to the season).and YES it was raining on both teams, and for once VAR going against us - as last season Bertrand's clumsy tackle would have been strong words from the ref. and a yellow card. The game was effectively over in the first 20 minutes (at 3-0) as the days of those great comebacks are long gone ..the rest was down to damage control...and there was little of that, and despite the red card ..there were no yellows (!) which might have been anticipated from a real fighting side.
The whole team seemed to lose heart by the time Vardy popped up with 5-0 at HT ..
In the end we can be glad the defeat was still in single figures as Leicester clocked up 25 shots in the match. .more than any visiting team has recorded at SMS .

ALSO American Saints stats. are very revealing... of the 6 games we have already lost - 3 were to teams presently in the top 4... and we await Man.City next weekend. We also lost away at both Burnley and Tottenham ..and don't anyone say that was a surprise. (!), even 'though our wins at Sheffield and Brighton were very welcome.

All the things everyone else has repeated are correct...lack of quality / experience in all areas of the team and a lack of determination . I do think Ralph has been too soft on the demands he makes on the squad. YES - we know about the tougher training regime, and all that jolly camaraderie, etc, but everyone surely understands that all their futures are on the line now, and any repeat performance will surely end with loan outs/sellingon to pastures new after New Year, in order to make way for others who are more hungry.

In the past we've always pointed to the" tough" Nov. December fixtures where we traditionally played the top sides but now can be the deciding time for the rest of the season.. when we play 4 of the sides presently around us ....Everton in 2 weeks time and Watford, Norwich and Newcastle in the space of 9 days in early December.

Anyone can do the maths of that ...2 or 3 wins would give us a breathing space before New Year, but without those ..the other teams will pass us on the way up and it'll need a real miracle to retain our position in the Prem. next season.

Sorry I am on again! Whilst I do think the latest comments are valid, everyone seems to be assuming that the so called “easier “ fixtures coming our way are still winnable. Of course they should be but oppo managers will look at Friday’s performance, our fragilities and our lack of confidence and tell their players to attack and attack and attack and see us go down like nine pins.
Obviously I really hope we don’t but you are making big assumptions that after Friday we will now play better than before and the other teams no better. I think I’m afraid that that is false logic. If we now get more than a handful of points by the end of the year I’d be amazed and so I cannot see how RH can possibly survive. So why on earth wait for a month or two before hoofing him which could easily be disastrous.

david argyll ..from .....under weststand...
If you are referring to my list of the December fixtures. I haven't said that they were easy ...on the contrary..I think they will be a bit bl**dy compared to some others, but the significance of playing 4 other clubs (who are also treading water around the drop zone) can't go unnoticed because even if we get new signings in January they will be too late to affect fixtures that so obviously have a bearing on our league position and points tally.

If we fail to win at least 2 of them, we will remain in the drop zone and (they) will have moved up the table significantly.

What I can't get my head round is that Ralph seems to be the only one who thinks 3 poor CB's is better than 2.
We have a reasonably decent choice of players going forward but they mostly sit out games in favour of mediocrity! The preferred midfield 3 offer no creativity & so little pace its frightening & Nathan Redmond is completely out of his depth as second striker.
Five at the back leaves us so short of attacking options, particularly when the wing backs are pressed back as Leicester did so well. I said to my brother, after 5 minutes we're going to get tonked tonight if we don't change our system. Never did I think for a moment it would be so badly.
Ralph needs to find a system that suits who we have got & at present we're watching a set-up with 8 defensively minded players, leaving the other two feeding off scraps.
Please can we have a 4 4 2 or 4 5 1 that ensures the back four defends and we can play two of the three genuinely attacking side players we have and perhaps in a midfield 5 there might be a place for Armstrong? Who is the only forward think central midfielder we have at present. For goodness sake of we can't stop leaking goals let's try to score some rather than capitulate.
And let's not mix ourselves we are not likely to sign any thoroughbreds until we shift some of the donkeys both out on loan and currently playing!!

Totally agree Block8. I have said a few times that when you play 3 CBs that is nearly a third of the outfield strength. If we can barely muster 1 half-decent CB it is madness to play 3 of them. It just leaves the 3 MF with too much to do. Play 4-4-2 and at least only 2 of our disastrous CBs are on the pitch at any one time.