Whoops half a report Nick! I know how you feel!

I admire your stamina in giving any type of report Nick.

Sports Republic are a total liability and should never have been let anywhere near Southampton Football Club. Their only success is making our previous Chinese owners look mildly competent, some achievement by any metric.

I’ve now no confidence that they will even be able to get us promoted from next season’s Championship.

We are at a very low point. However, we will just have to tough it our this season and aim for 15 points to make it mildly better than a total disaster.
If we prepare well for the Championship we should start next season with reasonable optimism that we can finish in the top 6 or close to it.

...and still is a question

The players aren't good enough.

How Armstrong gets a game is beyond me same goes for Aribo

To be honest Nick we are now witnessing probably the worst Saints team certainly in my memory; The league table for us is not just embarrassing , it's a disgrace. especially when you consider the progress clubs like Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest have made with no more resources to play with than us. Sports Republic and the people that made football and financial decisions alongside them, have proved themselves to be totally inadequate. Wherever you look, whether it be the quality of our first choice players, the managers selected to guide us to success, and the ridiculously long list of missing or disillusioned players, it is testimony to the utter shambles we have had to witness. We are now in the middle of a run of 'easier' fixtures, but still with the same result. To ask any manager to find a system that can find a way for our forwards to score goals is apparently asking the impossible. So now the best we can hope for is relegation to the Championship so that we can begin the whole process again, presumably ready to make the same excuses when we return to the Premier League. I'm not sure what happened to Nick's report, but for guys like him who love and give their total support to our Club, we have been left devastated, bewildered and badly let down.

The question many pundits, commentators, social media, etc are asking is this the worst side to have graced the PL? Sadly it is looking like it as I cannot see anything positive to suggest anything is going to change. I think Brentford on Saturday is almost critical solely from the point that fail to win that against a side that has not won away and where on earth do you get your points from. I can see a scenario now, post Brentford where the stadium will be significantly empty on match days and players just won't bother because why risk injuries etc for a foregone conclusion.

I don't want us to be the worst side to grace the PL and I want us to exceed the Derby Co record but even that is now starting to look a forlorn hope. I hate to say all this as there have been low times in the past but I really am struggling to see any hope, even a glimmer of one.

Two things I noticed about this match which perhaps have been evident for quite a while:
1. The act of getting just the one goal is almost super-human for this team because it is such a rarity! So when they do get one there is this almost inevitable feeling of “job done” even if it there is stil a long way to go.
2. At the moment, that slackening off of intensity has been most noticeable in the second half of a lot of our games. And until the last few minutes this was evident again on Sunday.
I suspect this habit has been around for a long time, especially as it has not occurred to many, if not all, our opponents.

Because what it is all about is fitness.
And the trouble with the way RM told the team to play - keeping possession - was that it encouraged economy of effort and discouraged surging runs. But what this resulted in wasn’t a team that could control games, but a squad of players that cannot play at full tilt for 90 minutes, so inevitably they were forever getting taken to the cleaners. In other words THEY ARE NOT FIT ENOUGH FOR THE PL.

So if Ivan the Terrible can do anything, its to get them much much fitter, so they can last out the entirety of a match and not to think they can take the foot off the peddle at any stage, especially when they have scored.

I don't think this is the worst team ever. For the first 16 games it was the most suicidal and idiotically managed team ever. We are certainly not great and the appalling summer recruitment in attacking positions would have probably done for us but with proper management, tactics and team selection from the start we would have got well over 20 points. And if VAR was fit for purpose we would probably have been in double figures by now even with the RM imposed self-harm.

I think in the segment he posted Nick did raise the most depressing point for even the most starry-eyed optimists - who in the hell are we going to catch. Ipswich and Leicester are the obvious two but the third? Wolves, Palace or Everton I suppose. I don't see it.

So the next few months is about preparing for a promotion push. That means no nonsensical waste of money on signings aimed at keeping us up. We know SR's record on that. If we bring people in they should be prepared to go down with us and play in the second division next season.

I can't think of much positive to say about the football but I am certainly keen to wish Nick and everyone else on TUI a very Happy New Year.

Lansdown Saint took my line.. Can’t believe Juric is already making the same mistakes with personnel. Armstrong and Aribo are top quality Championship players but lack the tools to play in a Premier League season. Armstrong just doesn’t have an end product at this level and Aribo needs to be at his angriest and hungriest to be at the required level but most games looks like he’s been on McCarthy’s herb pipe before the game.. This is why I like Fernandes, he hasn’t been doing it the last few games as well as earlier in the season but he gives absolutely everything every minute.
Let’s face it, the Premier League is becoming a comedy show where referees are concerned. They are either completely corrupt without trying to hide it or they are the most incompetent bunch of clones out of the packet. It’s a total disgrace what’s happened this season with the amount of games we’ve been robbed in. It’s quicker to count the ones we weren’t. Sick and tired of being stitched every week and zero apologies from these cheats. The game is rigged

So much better with the new manager? £12 well spent , only question is will he last the season or will Rusk get the task of shepherding us back down to the Championship.

Maybe we should have saved the bedsheets to protest against the litany of VAR decisions that have robbed us points rather than flogging a dead horse.

According to Match of the Day the opposition are allowed to foul the keeper if you don't set the defence up correctly!!

The only saving grace for this game is that we have been super poor when we have not played Downes (note I am not saying we are great with him but certainly not as bad as this game)....and if Juric has any sense he will realise we need Dones and Les in our midfield together....if these two are fit and not picked against Brentford I'm pulling my hair out...