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Reply | Which clubs are not where they say they are
at 10:50 22 Jan 2025
London clubs are repeat offenders
West Ham are in Stratford
Chelsea are in Fulham
Crystal Palace are in Selhurst
but Arsenal are indeed up their own... |
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Reply | Southampton At Nottingham Forest The Verdict
at 16:34 20 Jan 2025
Your unrealistic expectations are hilarious. Under RM, Saints were a total sh*t show. You don't go from that to good in 5 games. As Jo Tessem said, we somehow got a win against Everton but there was no chance of another win this season under RM. Meanwhile we used up all our easy fixtures.
Now we dominate Man U away for 80 mins and then with no turn around time, 3 days later, we very nearly get a draw away to the 3rd place team while our best player is out injured.
Juric is a football manager not a miracle worker. Sorting out the mess he inherited is a fvcking enormous task that will take time. Relegation is inevitable, all we can hope for is improvement. It is bound to be a mixture of steps forward and steps back. Give him a chance. |
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Reply | Ivan Juric ...please learn from today
at 17:03 19 Jan 2025
I can see Tall Paul playing for 60 mins sometimes, or being a sub on for 30, but I can't see him playing 90 mins too often. Juric's style demands a lot of work and Paul isn't built for that. Seems likely he'll be used as an impact sub most of the time.
It's a shame Dibling was injured just when he seemed to hit on a decent front line. |
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Reply | Nottingham Forest Game Matchday Thread
at 15:18 19 Jan 2025
I don't blame Martin for everything, far from it (e.g. see the threads I've posted on Ankersen) - but you are sadly mistaken if you think the manager walks out the door and the result of what he's done suddenly disappears! It's the same in any organisation, not just sport.
Martin will get his share of the blame for as long as the players he chose/approved make up the squad, and as long as the players have the habits and fitness he trained into them. Next season will be squarely down to the new manager, whoever that is, but in reality, even then some of RM's influence will live on. |
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Reply | Sulemena on the bench
at 13:16 19 Jan 2025
No doubt he's being rested. 3 days ago he played 90 mins for the first time since the Vikings invaded. |
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Reply | Nottingham Forest Game Matchday Thread
at 13:14 19 Jan 2025
2 matches in 4 days is probably too much for our lot with current levels of fitness. A year and a half strolling around playing tippy tappy seems to mean we cant deliver the required intensity for 90 mins once a week, let alone twice. Hopefully we'll see some more signs of progress today though. |
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Reply | The difference between us against Man U and Bournemouth against Newcastle today
at 10:31 19 Jan 2025
So, everyone now thinks that Iraola is a great coach who is doing a great job at B'mouth. OK.
But how many remember that it took 10 matches for B'mouth to achieve their first win under him and that was against total losers and possession advocates Burnley? Not only that, Iraola had all summer to work with them to instil his new methods before the season even started. His first win didn't happen until he'd had 4 months and countless coaching sessions to get the team playing his way.
If Juric achieves at the same rate as Iraola, then our first win under him would come in late April. It takes time for a new coach to get across his methods. Juric has to undo all the bad habits that built up under RM and get the team playing with a totally different level of intensity. That doesn't happen overnight. |
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Reply | Happy New Year Uglies
at 09:17 1 Jan 2025
Happy new year. Let's hope that Saints form, like the sun, is past its low point and things are slowly getting brighter. |
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Reply | Who is conducting transfer negotiations in January?
at 09:16 1 Jan 2025
I'm not spinning anything. The words are there in black and white. Even a child can understand the difference between "the manager has a yes/no decision" and "the manager alone has a yes/no decision". If a child can understand the difference then I think you can too. So that means that you are deliberately claiming I said things, that you know I didn't. If it was the first time I'd let it pass, but it isn't. You clearly have some kind of weird agenda.
Making up bullsh*t about someone is disrespectful at least, so I will now start treating you with the same disrespect that you treat me. So, I wish a happy new year to all other Uglies, but you can just go stick it where the sun don't shine. Until you stop telling lies about me I hope your 2025 is as sh*tty as you deserve. |
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Reply | Who is conducting transfer negotiations in January?
at 18:28 31 Dec 2024
Why do you keep misquoting what people say? Are you really as stupid as you seem or are you deliberately trying to be annoying?
I did not say "the manager alone" has a yes/no decision. I said that the manager "will always set the priorities and have a yes/no decision on signings" i.e. he is ONE of the people who has to agree to a signing. If you were an owner of a club would you really spend £20m on a player that your manager said he didn't want, didn't rate and wasn't likely to pick? If so, then you are as stupid as you sound.
Every player we've signed as a senior player will have been approved by the manager at the time they were bought. The only modern club that hasn't followed this policy was Brentford in the first years after Matthew Benham took over and he insisted that the then manager couldn't overrule the data engine that Benham had brought with him to the club. This was so revolutionary that the manager resigned. They've since changed this policy. Now Phil Giles and Thomas Frank work hand in hand on transfers as they've talked about publicly. |
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Reply | Do Southampton Cut Their Losses Now On This Season And Cash In On Kyle Walker Pe
at 15:17 31 Dec 2024
The situation hasn't changed since the summer. He could have gone to West Ham, but not on the wages he wanted as a free agent. It's the same story now. If we get £10-15m for him (we won't) then that is money that doesn't go into his pocket, so he would refuse to move and he'd just wait until the summer when he gets all the money.
It's possible that we could get £2-5m and leave enough room for his wage demands, but I doubt it will happen because there won't be many clubs looking to spend big on a full back in January, as opposed to the summer.
So, I expect he'll see out his contract as he's planned to do for a couple of years now and then leave for free in the summer. |
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Reply | Nucleus of a fairly strong Championship side next season
at 11:34 31 Dec 2024
That's a very unlikely team if Juric stays or if we have another decent manager next year. It's a team full of 5'6" or lightweight players who can do bit of tippy tappy but not much else. It's very much a legacy of RM's days, which by next year we should be starting to move beyond. Next year we should be starting to see more death metal football and hopefully we'll use the parachute payments and money from player sales to buy a few players who can play it.
If next year our physicality in attack is limited to Fraser, Archer and Armstrong as in your team, then we will still be sh*t - but as we've seen, you can be sh*t and still make the play-offs. |
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Reply | Dragan Solak has been legged over…
at 19:04 30 Dec 2024
Yes, firing board members might be difficult and firing someone like Ankersen who is a founding owner of SR might be even more difficult (e.g. if there are constitutional agreements). But he doesn't have to be fired outright. For example, if Solak worked with Kraft to persuade Ankersen to concentrate on the other clubs in the group and step back from SFC, that might work. He's already the president of Goztepe.
So far Ankersen hasn't managed to f*ck up Goztepe, but there was talk of a cunning plan to get all the clubs in the group to play the same style (RM's tippy tappy) so it was probably only a matter of time. But none of us care about the other clubs in the group, so the more time he spends with them, the better. |
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Reply | Dragan Solak has been legged over…
at 16:57 30 Dec 2024
None of us know what's been said by who exactly, but it seems pretty clear to me that the blame lies with Ankersen. The 3 SR executives were supposed to bring different things:
Kraft - commercial management of sports and media companies
Ankersen - football expertise
Solak - serious money
Of these, it is clear that the failures have been down to poor football decisions, which was supposed to be Ankersen's bag. He is the one at fault. I think what you can blame Solak and Kraft for is putting their trust in Ankersen and not having a way out when it's become obvious that he doesn't know what he's doing. If they don't either push Ankersen out, or bring in some real expertise to overrule him, then Solak and Kraft become equally to blame. Depending on the personalities involved, it may be that Juric is the one who will overrule Ankersen on football decisions and that will be the solution. |
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Reply | Who is conducting transfer negotiations in January?
at 16:42 30 Dec 2024
Transfer negotiations are one thing, but identifying and prioritising the type of players that the manager wants in the first place is actually more important. The manager will always set the priorities and have a yes/no decision on signings.
Juric has shown already that he believes in centre forwards, while RM was more interested in false 9s and centre forwards on the wing. I bet Juric also knows that physical, ball winning midfielders are more important to clubs like us than tippy tappy types. The January window is probably a lost cause, but with a decent manager in place we now have more hope of signing the right kind of players in the summer. |
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Reply | Who is conducting transfer negotiations in January?
at 14:07 30 Dec 2024
What did Wilcox ever do for us? There were few great signings in his time here and who's to say we wouldn't have got them or near equivalents anyway? About the only thing he did was appoint RM. So, if his contribution to the club was negative then why should we miss him? Wilcox was part of the problem.
If we recruit a new DOF now then it will have to be someone who buys into the new approach, instead of being another tippy tappy merchant, which is what would have happened if we'd replaced Wilcox immediately. |
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Reply | Anybody still of the opinion that it was all Russell Martin’s fault ?
at 13:42 30 Dec 2024
Exactly this.
Whoever said it was "all Russell Martin's fault"? No one as far as I'm aware. But most people can see that RM's tactics were disastrous. Really, for those that can't see that then there is no helping them. His suicidal defending and ridiculous slow build up was never going to work, even if we had a mid-table PL squad. It was obvious to 99% of people by the end.
No manager can turn the ship around in 2 weeks. We will be relegated - and probably in the position I predicted at the start of the season: 20th. But we now have some hope that we can start to move in the right direction. RM had 3 transfer windows to implement his approach. If we want to compare Juric with RM's record, then we need to wait until he's been backed in 3 transfer windows too. |
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Reply | Crystal Palace Game Matchday Thread
at 10:02 29 Dec 2024
Criticism of him is harsh as far as I'm concerned. If you watch the highlights back I think he did a decent job with the chances on offer and very nearly scored a couple of times. Very difficult to get power when you are leaning backwards, the cross is just a soft chip from 30 yards out, or a PL level defender is unbalancing you. None of our other strikers could have done anything with those chances. He needs chances where a proper cross is pulled back from somewhere near the goal line. Either that, or play him with someone like Archer who can pick up a second ball.
That was the first time in his SFC career that he has been tried in his proper role. To have a couple of near misses is a good return from 1 PL game in a new role. He may not be the greatest but he needs a decent chance to show what he can do. |
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