 | News
Comment | Yan Valery Departs On Permanent Deal To France
at 22:44:28
I feel with bednarek and Stephens also on the way out, Valery was a useful, flexible and fairly low wage backup for our defence. If bednarek goes too we'll be down to only 3 CBs in the entire squad wouldn't we? Surely we need to be bringing in at least 2 to have a responsible level of cover? |
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Comment | Fulham After Harrison Reed
at 14:19:10
I agree with what you say about Reed, it's a shame that he hasnt made the jump up to this level, but plenty of managers have had a look at him now and for whatever reason they don't feel its worth playing him.
However... "The transfer business they have done so far this summer has been good, so whhatever happens we have a better squad than last season so should be fine. " I would agree...IF we had signed a centre back. A proper, quality, proven centre back. This has been our biggest problem since Fonte left and VVD got injured, and it doesnt matter how much we tweak our forward options if the team still has no faith, feeling that even after going a goal or two up we still cant count on a win.
I hope the Ralph effect is enough to transform us back in to europa league hopefuls, but I really cant believe that we are about to finish our third summer since losing Fonte/VVD and we still havent got in that solid, physical, leader in central defence that we so desperately need. |
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Comment | West Brom Could Snatch Deadline Day Deal For Austin
at 14:11:45
I'm suprised at how much bad feeling there is for Charlie. When we signed him he was exactly what we needed - a proven premier league goalscorer to give us a different option to Pelle when needed.
As a striker who picks up goals whenever the ball is pumped in to the box or during goalmouth scrambles, he was never going to score much under Puel or Pellegrini, when we passed the ball around 30m from the goal rather than putting players forward. And how many times have we spent the whole game hitting high crosses to the back post when Shane Long has been our lone striker, only to put Austin on in the 80th minute and completely stop delivering those balls, and instead give him through balls that he will never catch.
I think hes always tried hard for us and shown good desire, while being used in completely the wrong way. Its a shame it didnt work out better but at £4m he was a steal and he goes with my best wishes.
He goes with my gratitude, I wish it had worked out for him and us, but I blame th |
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Comment | Saints V Brighton The Verdict
at 17:19:19
"13th on 5 is solid if unspectacular."
I really can't understand this comment. 1 point per game is borderline relegation form. When you consider that we haven't played any of the top 6, and we've played one of the teams we really need to finish above to avoid relegation (Brighton), I can't agree that 5 points is a solid start.
I'm delighted with the impact ings has had, but our defensive weaknesses from last year seem no better, and if they aren't solved then I can't see anything changing. |
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Comment | Saints V Leicester City The Verdict
at 10:25:33
Yes indeed, deja vu from so many times last year. A clumsy hoedt challenge leading to an opposition chance, and a cross to a striker being marked by cedric, who yet again was beaten in the air and failed to close his man down on the ground after. I accept we have no real alternative to cedric but hoedt has been a liability for too long to keep his place ahead of yoshida, who still makes mistakes, just not as many as hoedt. |
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Comment | Saints At Everton The Verdict
at 12:35:51
A disappointing performance with exactly the same issues at the back that we saw last season, but then we only signed one defender in the summer and he was ill. Cedric beaten for a header, Stephens constantly letting his man go and Hoedt still giving away stupid free kicks and being inneffective in the air. IMO yoshida is the best of a bad bunch, and should have been playing.
One positive is that we created plenty of chances. Yes Ings and Austin missed a lot, but in the last 2 years we wouldn't have made the chances in the first place. I'm glad to see the impact Hughes has made there, just a shame to see last years defenders havn't improved under him. |
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Comment | Cedric Could Play Against Burnley Despite Illness
at 12:29:36
I completely agree with IWOZTHERE, Cedric has felt like a weakness in the defence ever since we swapped Clyne for him. The vast majority of goals conceded come from attacks down our right.
That said, if we werent going to buy an additional right back I cannot understand why we let pied go. He provided more than adequate cover, won't have been on large wages, and seemed a model professional. |
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Comment | Fraser Forster Blamed For Traffic Jam On Millbrook Road
at 14:09:59
Best news I've heard all season, Forster has finally managed to stop something!
Hopefully the staff on the training ground can work on converting this newfound form into shot stopping as well as just traffic. |
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Comment | Puel On The Brink !
at 14:12:51
"Saints will not sanction any transfers out till they have the new man in place and his thoughts on the squad."
While this would be sensible and professional, that is not how the club has worked in recent years. We sold mane before hiring Puel and we sold Lambert before hiring Koeman (though I admit that transfer was a special case with Liverpool applying the time pressure).
Most importantly I hope the club hurries up and sorts out this managerial situation asap though. The past 3 seasons we have been embarrassingly slow in the summer window - selling our players very early on and bringing in replacements far far too late, meaning we always start with an unsettled (and often incomplete) squad, having played all of preseason with large numbers of players who then don't feature regularly during the season.
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Comment | Saints V Swansea City The Verdict
at 11:06:33
A fair assessment of the night, where the only positives to take were boufal looking the business and Shane Long scoring a classic "long goal" and indicating maybe he will return to form provided he gets more balls in like that cross from Bertrand.
Regarding the defenders it really is beyond belief. The club have known for months this would happen, and to be blunt we should have signed one anyway in the summer given that VVD was always off within 12 months and Fonte was not guaranteed to keep playing at a top level given his age.
saintsnutcase has summed it up absolutely perfectly - within a month we've gone from the strongest centre back pairing in the Premiership to the worst. Lets hope it doesn't result in relegation, something that would be far more costly than spending some of that transfer profit on a squad with appropriate depth given the number of fixtures (and associated injury list) that we always knew we would have this season.
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Comment | Gabbiadini Meeting Due In Milan Today ! But Will Saints Sell A striker To Fund Deal ?
at 11:42:54
I have to strongly disagree with this, we have been short of strikers all season and it has cost us badly. Earlier in the season when rotation was being blamed for europa and league losses, it was really only the striker rotation that was hurting us, because Austin was the only solid finisher in the squad and we were very poor without him. Earlier in the season when our defence was really solid, we lost and drew so many games that we would have won if we had had real options up front. That includes europa league games, where playing Jrod at milan cost us 3 points and a qualifying spot for the knockout round.
Its been clear this season the clubs decision to keep only one out and out striker in the summer (Austin) and pocket the Pelle money has cost us dearly. Long is a good player but he's only been a prolific goalscorer for one 6-month period in his entire premiership career, and that was the second half of last season. He was best for us out wide supporting Pelle. And Jrod hit his pre-injury form as a wide striker playing off Lambert. Neither are a solid option for leading the line, especially with the Jrod of old seemingly gone.
If anything we have 5 players competing for the two "wide-striker" positions: Boufal, Tadic, Sims, Long and Jrod, and 1 competing for the central goalscoring main striker position, Austin, who is injured. |
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Comment | Fonte Set To Move To West Ham United
at 11:37:05
All I know is that I wish him luck, suspect the club is far more at fault for this odd situation than it seems and lastly wish this had not happened as he clearly has 2-3 years left in him as a top CB and is the last symbol left of our amazing journey from league one to europa league!
It certainly is both a sad and confusing situation. Considering he is not rumoured to be getting any more money than he was offered here (indeed he may actually be taking a lower contract just to leave), and that he stayed and steadied the ship while the past seasons mass exoduses occurred around him, then I must assume something has gone wrong between him and the club behind the scenes. For me I do not buy the story that he has got too big for his boots - he has agreed terms with both west brom and west ham -suggesting he is so unhappy here he would take almost any move. Maybe it was being left out of all the europa league games, maybe he was promised something that was withdrawn, or maybe the club actively tried to unsettle him so they could sell him on for a quick profit before he retired? |
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Comment | Saints Need To Find Momentum
at 11:55:19
No one is failing to realise that Austin was meant to be Pelle's replacement. The same people who want an extra striker now were saying we needed an extra striker when we just had Pelle as our single out and out goalscorer.
Pelle went through patches of bad form in both seasons under Koeman, and because there was no one else to take up the slack he couldn't be rested or given time to get his confidence back - the teams fate was directly tied to his form and when he had a bad patch the team inevitably went on a loosing streak. Last season it was Nov/Dec, and in 2014/15 it was in January, where we dropped from 2nd (and challenging for 1st in the table) down and out of the champions league spots before he regained his form. Back then the fans were screaming out for the club to sign a second striker in that January window to provide another option, and though Les Reed boasted in the summer that "we didn't panic buy an extra striker and we kept calm etc..." the club quite clearly threw away and incredibly good shot at champions league football just because they weren't prepared to splash out a little extra of the transfer profits to get the one single player the team clearly needed.
Yes shane Long had half a season last year where out of the blue he bacame a regular goalscorer, but that has never been his game and it was never something he could be relied on to repeat. He is a creater of chances and someone to tire the defense out.
Leaving this season with the pressure on injury prone Austin instead of on Pelle was always a mistake. Its not Austins fault just like it wasn't Pelles fault when he had bad patches - the team should not be forced to rely so much one one single player. |
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Comment | Krueger Wants Honest And Transparent Policy At Saints
at 16:54:34
I'm so fed up of reading both Les Reed and on here the phrase "We cant compete with the top 6 clubs" as if the fans are asking for something unreasonable. Pretty much every fan knows and accepts we cant financially compete with the top 6 clubs, or even Everton in 7th, what we are asking is for us to compete with the group below this - Crystal Palace, Stoke, West Brom, West Ham, Newcastle, (soon it seems even Bournemouth). Since we have built up our revenues so well and also are raking in enourmous transfer profits each window (still the only team in the entire league pyramid to make profit without reinvesting 3 years in a row on player sales) we should be able to more than compete with these clubs. Not to mention the extra TV money and prize money from the cups and europa league that, while small, will still amount to something that these other clubs wont get, along with the bumper under armour and virgin media sponsorship deals. |
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Comment | Saints V Sparta Prague The Verdict
at 11:45:38
Nick, you keep saying after every goal-less game that lack of an extra striker is not to blame. To say that no-one would have scored up front last night is plain wrong. Jrod had 2 clear cut chances in the first half and completely fluffed them both, something he has consistently done all season (Inter milan away another example). Had either Austin or Pelle been given those two chances you know they would have put at least one away, or failing that forced some tough saves from their keeper. I really want Jrod to recover but every match he starts for us he really holds us back.
Granted in the second half we created much less, but waiting until gone 70 mins to throw Austin on when the team had already seemed to give up and slow down was very poor from Puel. Austin is our only credible goal threat (and our only out and out striker) in the entire squad, but he needs to be on at the start when we traditionally get more balls in the opponents box. Clearly he is not able to play 3 time a week so that brings us to the real problem up front - we needed to sign a second out and out striker for the team as Austin cannot play all the time (Austin + Pelle would be the correct balance. When Pelle was our only out and out striker he went through barren patches too as he was also over-relied upon. |
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Comment | Alex McCarthy Replaces Forster In The England Squad
at 16:32:14
It does seem an odd call-up, but hopefully it shows that Dave Watson has liked what he has seen so far from McCarthy in training. After all he surely had some input into this decision. |
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Comment | Forward Planning Meant Quiet End To The Transfer Window For Saints !
at 10:46:37
Clearly the main cause of our quiet deadline day was shirt-based confusion between the different red and white striped teams. Claude Puel must have seen Stoke's unveiling of both Bruno Martins Indi and Wifried Bony, the exact two types of player our squad is desperate for right now, and as a then informed the board he was happy with the squad.
Considering they were both were loan deals (and so were not overpriced transactions) it really wouldn't have been unrealistic to see us do that business instead, still pocket a big transfer surplus AND look ready for serious competition in both the premiership and Europa league. Oh well. |
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Comment | Saints To Make One Signing ! But It Isn't What The Fans Want To Hear !
at 09:54:46
"the real truth is that we cannot match the spending power of the big six for even one year"
Sadly the real truth is as it stands over the past 3 years we cannot match the spending power of the top 19 clubs around us. With net transfer surpluses ever time we have spent the least of any premiership club 2 years running and are looking to make it 3 from 3, despite the club's highly touted increases in commercial and prize revenues. |
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Comment | Four In Four Out ! But Saints Still Need To Strengthen !
at 14:25:20
I know it's picky, but its 8 out, 4 in. 4 in 4 out is just not true and smells of spinning news as the club would like.
8 Out: Pelle, Mane, Wanyama, Juanmi, Gazza, Stekelenburg, K Davies, G Ramirez (he did play albeit briefly last year)
4 In: Redmond, Hojberg, Pied, Macarthy.
I agree with the point of the article though, we absolutely need a couple of quality proven signings who can slot immediately in to the team, not more gambles on future potential. A CB and a Striker are a must, and considering our central midfield has gone from overflowing with quality (Schneiderlin, cork, wanyama) to no real proven holding players I would be much more comfortable with an enforcer too to compete with Romeu.
I'm also aware that countries feel it vital to take 3 keepers to a 1 month world cup/euros, but right now we are planning to play a 1 year campaign with only 2 which is a little risky if either get injured! |
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Comment | Kelvin Davis Granted Testimonial Game
at 14:21:34
I'm glad that Kelvin is getting the testimonial he deserves, having been a fantastic (and loyal) player and the only constant throughout our ups and downs.
I have to say though that while Richard Wright certainly did put in some great performances, probably delaying our relegation by a year (that point blank save against Sheff Utd in our final game escape comes to mind!), I cant see that many fans disputing that Boruc's final season with us was easily the finest set of goalkeeping performances between Niemi and Forster. He was virtually unstoppable as we raced up the table before the breaking his hand against chelsea, I would say the finest keeper in the league that season, even with the slip ups against Stoke and Arsenal. |
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