Armstrong. Nice Hair.
Where were we… oh yes, we
stayed up by the skin of our teeth.
Since then…
Ralph Krueger gave an
interview which was the usual mixture of microscopic amounts of detail and a
whole load of management bollockspeak. The main topic of conversation was of course
who the new manager was going to be and without saying that it would be Mark
Hughes, Krueger basically threw every compliment in the book at him - about him
having passed his audition and all that sort of stuff so it appears like a
formality with the only question being, why it hasn’t happened yet? The future
of Les Reed was addressed, sort of… and it appears that he retains the trust
and confidence of the Chinese owner, who we still haven’t heard a fucking
dickie bird from. The players at the
time were off to visit him as we had a preseason tour there to play two
matches, one against a Chinese side and one against Schalke. I would’ve thought
we could have arranged a friendly against the team that Graziano plays for or
even the one that Big-Time Fonte plays for. The one complete clunker in the
Krueger interview was by him at redefining what the pathway means. For the last
seven years we have assumed that the pathway meant the pathway from our Academy
through to the first team but according to Ralph it now means the pathway from
Europe to Southampton to Liverpool for players like Sadio Mane. No I’m not bothered about Mane but with the
anger at Liverpool still barely beneath the surface, it was a bit of a PR own
goal. When you think about it though,
there has always been two pathways but the problem is that the one I’m on about
has stopped for the last few years.
Politically, holidays were blamed for a delay but eventually Mark Hughes, Mark Bowen and Eddie Niedzweicki were confirmed as Southampton Football Club’s new management team for next season. It really had to be this way for a number of reasons. Firstly, Hughes completely deserved it and secondly, with the board hadn’t appointed him and then got another appointment wrong, their position would’ve been completely untenable.
A couple of ‘out of contract’ players moved on in Florin Gardos and Jeremy Pied. Gardos had some good games for us before his bad injury and I was always a bit mystified why he didn’t get given least a chance in the last two seasons when we were struggling defensively and Pied was bought in as cover, got injured straight away and never really looked the part. In Pied’s case in particular, you can say he was a pathway blocker, a cheap experienced player from abroad brought in simply to cover, take up a squad place and stop any promising right back we may have coming through.
The squads for the World Cup were announced and some of our ’in contention’ players made it and some did not. Predictably, Maya Yoshida made the Japan squad, Tadic the Serbia squad and Cedric the Portugal squad. Less predictable was Jan Bednarek making the Polish 23 so fair play to him. On the flip side, Pierre Hojbjerg had made the extended Denmark squad but when it was cut to 23, he found himself on the beach. A quick search on Twitter revealed that most Denmark fans were pretty pissed off that he was left out.
The biggest shock I guess was
that Ryan Bertrand, having played in 6 out of 10 qualifiers and never letting
anybody down, didn’t make the England squad or even the standby list. There were
several reasons given for this, none of which made any sense to me as he was
easily the best English performing left back in the season just gone. Danny
Rose had been injured all season, only coming back into the Spurs side for the
last two games but he’s been taken as the only specialist left back in the
squad. I didn’t really have an issue with Rose being in the squad but seeing as
he has had so many problems with injury the season, it would make sense to take
the second specialist but instead of that he went for the Man United squad
player in Ashley Young who is as right-footed are you like but has been playing
there for United this season. If ever there was an accident waiting to happen then
it’s that. Another strange one is that in addition to Young who could easily
play right back, there are three other right backs chosen with Trippier being
first choice and Walker expected to play on the right of about three. If
anything happened to Trippier then the latest Liverpool youngster in Trent
Alexander-Arnold was the back up or maybe he’d switch Walker out there and play
one of the three reserve centre backs he has in the squad or play Young there. Southgate
was asked about Bertrand and gave a bollocks excuse, saying he wasn’t at the
level of the other options. His opinion of course but not one that I think is justified.
It used to be the case that sounds
players left Saints because they didn’t get picked for England and then it
became the case that soon as a Saints player got in England squad, they move to
a bigger club and we lost them anyway and now appears to have gone full circle
again with the Manchester United, Tottenham and Liverpool players picked
instead despite not being regulars at the club or a regular in the position in
question.
The new kit design was eagerly awaited by some and of course there were some leaks in the media like the new Southampton shirt for sale on the Under Armour website in Hong Kong. It looked pretty average to be honest and the rumoured third kit is very similar to the All-red design that we wore in our first season back in the Premier League and looks very average as well. I quite liked last years effort but I’m too old to really get arsed about kits to be honest. As long as it’s red-and-white I don’t really care.
I am a season ticket holder and as a season ticket holder you don’t get a discount anymore when renewing, any more than the new season ticket holder would. What you do get however it’s a request from the club to fill in a survey about the club but it’s not about the football side of the club, it is just about the other bollocks with questions like what would make you turn up to the ground earlier and what do you think of the hospitality packages? In short it’s all about the corporate side which I gave absolutely zero fucks about. I, like a vast majority I would guess, am a football fan. I am not a fucking customer and as long as I can see the whole pitch from my seat, I don’t really give a fuck about anything else. I don’t care about catering I don’t care about artificially induced atmosphere, I don’t care about hospitality. I want to turn up 10 minutes before the game, watch the game, clap the players off and then fuck off home. This questionnaire seems obsessed with making people stay behind after the game and spending more money. A good question would’ve been if you wanna leave on 75 minutes, what would make you stay to the end of the fucking game to support the team? Anyway, my responses were full of sensible suggestions but not what they would’ve been wanting. Question: What ruined your match day experience? Answer: the team announcement when Shane Long is upfront on his own…. Question: What annoys you during games? Answer: The manager not having a clue what he’s doing.
The kit was actually release and the home shirt is red and white stripes and the away is yellow and blue which on the face of it is what everyone would have chosen. It’s amazing quite how much people find to get annoyed about regarding the kit which is (I repeat) changed every year. Some are annoyed because of some very minor detail on the shirt like a logo bring the wrong colour or the Under Armour badge being slightly too big and the wrong colour. Some people get annoyed because the kit was leaked on overseas websites first. Some people got annoyed when Saints media team tried to make light of it and implied that the leaked kit wasn’t the actual kit. Some people even got annoyed because the leaked kit that they didn’t like was possibly not the real kit and they felt they were being trolled by the club. For fucks sake. As I said at the start, the home shirt is red and white stripes and a away shirt is yellow. Happy days and if you don’t like it, don’t buy it and it will charge again in 12 months time. Important details are that it has the Southampton badge on the front and it has Premier League matches on the sleeve
Meanwhile, back on things that matter. After the last few transfer windows and us all becoming quite pessimistic about us sorting out the things that need sorting out with regards to players - this year with the transfer window closing early, we have no choice but to get on with it and so Stuart Armstrong arrived from Celtic for £7 million quid. Armstrong is an attacking midfielder with an eye for goal and seems an exact replacement for Steven Davis who of course has no eye for goal at all and hasn’t left yet. The signing of Armstrong rises intriguing questions about how the team is going to set up to play as there doesn’t appear to be on the face of it, a place for him in the 5-4-1 formation that we were playing at the end of the season. Still, the one thing we’ve lacked in the last few years is a goalscoring midfielder so hopefully, this is a guy who can get near to double figures. Oh, and he has nice hair apparently.
Probably unrelated but one in was soon followed by one out with Dusan Tadic completing a move to the Ajax. I have mixed feelings about this. On his day he is a brilliant player and when they happen, he is untouchable. In his four seasons with us, he has played well in the main under the two decent managers that we’ve had, Ronald Koeman and Mark Hughes. Under Puel and Pellegrino he was pretty shocking at times going 15 to 20 games without actually contributing much at all. He’s had some great moments in the Saints shirt though, dismantling Sunderland on the 8-0 win, scoring the winning goal at Old Trafford and recently of course, his major contribution in keeping us up in the game at home to Bournemouth. He was of course originally brought in to replace the shit house Adam Lallana and for the first two seasons, no one would question that he had been successful. I think that he leaves on good terms so as long as we replace his creativity then I’m ok with it. Apparently he’s talking a pay cut to move and his partner is Dutch so fair play to him. It is a bit of a surprise that he is leaving now, given that Hughes obviously really likes him but I have a feeling that this deal has been in place for long time and to be honest. If he had left in January, then no one would be that bothered. Four seasons was probably the length of the original contract that he signed and he has of course signed an extension which means that we got a not insignificant lump of cash for the sale of 30 year old who was inconsistent.
Alex McCarthy signed a new four-year contract which is really good news and something he completely deserves and it was really interesting that we were heavily linked with Angus Gunn, a promising young goalkeeper at the same time. I guess this means that Fraser Forster’s days are numbered and the club must be pretty confident about getting his wages of the books somewhere.
The new kit design was eagerly awaited by some and of course there were some leaks in the media like the new Southampton shirt for sale on the Under Armour website in Hong Kong. It looked pretty average to be honest and the rumoured third kit is very similar to the All-red design that we wore in our first season back in the Premier League and looks very average as well. I quite liked last years effort but I’m too old to really get arsed about kits to be honest. As long as it’s red-and-white I don’t really care.
I am a season ticket holder and as a season ticket holder you don’t get a discount anymore when renewing, any more than the new season ticket holder would. What you do get however it’s a request from the club to fill in a survey about the club but it’s not about the football side of the club, it is just about the other bollocks with questions like what would make you turn up to the ground earlier and what do you think of the hospitality packages? In short it’s all about the corporate side which I gave absolutely zero fucks about. I, like a vast majority I would guess, am a football fan. I am not a fucking customer and as long as I can see the whole pitch from my seat, I don’t really give a fuck about anything else. I don’t care about catering I don’t care about artificially induced atmosphere, I don’t care about hospitality. I want to turn up 10 minutes before the game, watch the game, clap the players off and then fuck off home. This questionnaire seems obsessed with making people stay behind after the game and spending more money. A good question would’ve been if you wanna leave on 75 minutes, what would make you stay to the end of the fucking game to support the team? Anyway, my responses were full of sensible suggestions but not what they would’ve been wanting. Question: What ruined your match day experience? Answer: the team announcement when Shane Long is upfront on his own…. Question: What annoys you during games? Answer: The manager not having a clue what he’s doing.
The kit was actually release and the home shirt is red and white stripes and the away is yellow and blue which on the face of it is what everyone would have chosen. It’s amazing quite how much people find to get annoyed about regarding the kit which is (I repeat) changed every year. Some are annoyed because of some very minor detail on the shirt like a logo bring the wrong colour or the Under Armour badge being slightly too big and the wrong colour. Some people get annoyed because the kit was leaked on overseas websites first. Some people got annoyed when Saints media team tried to make light of it and implied that the leaked kit wasn’t the actual kit. Some people even got annoyed because the leaked kit that they didn’t like was possibly not the real kit and they felt they were being trolled by the club. For fucks sake. As I said at the start, the home shirt is red and white stripes and a away shirt is yellow. Happy days and if you don’t like it, don’t buy it and it will charge again in 12 months time. Important details are that it has the Southampton badge on the front and it has Premier League matches on the sleeve
Meanwhile, back on things that matter. After the last few transfer windows and us all becoming quite pessimistic about us sorting out the things that need sorting out with regards to players - this year with the transfer window closing early, we have no choice but to get on with it and so Stuart Armstrong arrived from Celtic for £7 million quid. Armstrong is an attacking midfielder with an eye for goal and seems an exact replacement for Steven Davis who of course has no eye for goal at all and hasn’t left yet. The signing of Armstrong rises intriguing questions about how the team is going to set up to play as there doesn’t appear to be on the face of it, a place for him in the 5-4-1 formation that we were playing at the end of the season. Still, the one thing we’ve lacked in the last few years is a goalscoring midfielder so hopefully, this is a guy who can get near to double figures. Oh, and he has nice hair apparently.
Probably unrelated but one in was soon followed by one out with Dusan Tadic completing a move to the Ajax. I have mixed feelings about this. On his day he is a brilliant player and when they happen, he is untouchable. In his four seasons with us, he has played well in the main under the two decent managers that we’ve had, Ronald Koeman and Mark Hughes. Under Puel and Pellegrino he was pretty shocking at times going 15 to 20 games without actually contributing much at all. He’s had some great moments in the Saints shirt though, dismantling Sunderland on the 8-0 win, scoring the winning goal at Old Trafford and recently of course, his major contribution in keeping us up in the game at home to Bournemouth. He was of course originally brought in to replace the shit house Adam Lallana and for the first two seasons, no one would question that he had been successful. I think that he leaves on good terms so as long as we replace his creativity then I’m ok with it. Apparently he’s talking a pay cut to move and his partner is Dutch so fair play to him. It is a bit of a surprise that he is leaving now, given that Hughes obviously really likes him but I have a feeling that this deal has been in place for long time and to be honest. If he had left in January, then no one would be that bothered. Four seasons was probably the length of the original contract that he signed and he has of course signed an extension which means that we got a not insignificant lump of cash for the sale of 30 year old who was inconsistent.
Alex McCarthy signed a new four-year contract which is really good news and something he completely deserves and it was really interesting that we were heavily linked with Angus Gunn, a promising young goalkeeper at the same time. I guess this means that Fraser Forster’s days are numbered and the club must be pretty confident about getting his wages of the books somewhere.
And another one - Mo Elyonoussi, a Norwegian winger, arrived from Basel to fill the void left by Tadic‘s departure for £16 million quid. On the face of it, he looks an exciting addition to the ranks and with only YouTube clips to go on, all we can do is hope he adapts and turns out to be decent, unlike Boufal and Ramirez who both arrived with an accompanying YouTube highlights real and high expectations which proved to be unfounded.
Please Don't Be Another Boufal
The squad for the trip to China was announced with a couple of notable omissions and a couple of notable inclusions. Jordy Clasie was involved which was a surprise after he’d turned into a bit of a forgotten man last year when on loan in Belgium. Not included were Boufal, who is clearly still persona non-grata and Guido Carrillo who as far as Hughes is concerned is clearly persona non-ability. Saints have a friendly against Schalke in one of those friendlies we have a different teams in each half and drew 3-3 with goals scored by Redmond, Harrison Reed and Jake Hesketh. It was interesting to see Harrison Reed was picked as a right wing back which I think is probably going to be his position this season as back up to Cedric if he hasn’t taken his Boyband and tight shirts somewhere else by the time the season starts. The formation was a variant of the 5-4-1 that he was played at the tail end of last season and though nothing is definite of course, until the transfer window has finished-this looks like the way we are going on personally I am fine with that and with England doing so well at the World Cup with three at the back, I can see it being fashionable for a while anyway.
The Angus Gunn interested became real and he signed from Manchester City with the accompanying sound of Fraser clearing his locker out (and dropping everything because he wasn’t using his hands). Another game in China and a 3-2 win with Stuart Armstrong setting up Gabbiadini for the first goal, Nathan Redmond scoring again and then Sam Gallagher coming off the bench for the winner. Meanwhile, big news, with the emphasis on fucking big and the signing of Jannik Vestergaard from Borussia Monchengladbach, a highly rated 6 foot 6, 25-year-old centre back with over 200 Bundesliga appearances under his belt. We were linked with him last year but he’d only just signed for Borussia so the significance of that is that it’s clearly a ‘club’ signing, like most of our best signings have been in the last few years.
We March On... With Massive Fucking Strides
So far, this transfer window
has been excellent and that we have addressed the obvious issues. The players of
course need time to settling in to the Premier League but on the face of it and
on paper, it looks really promising and I suspect it’s not over yet. In my opinion, the squad need an alternative to Cedric at right back and the front end of the team needs some maintenance. If we
are going to play with one striker, which seems likely then there are question marks
over all the strikers we have who could possibly play that role. Gabbiadini has
the movement but not really the physicality, Austin just doesn’t have a fitness
and you know he will be injured for three months of the season, it’s just a
case of which three. Shane Long isn’t even in the conversation really and
should of course be moved on if we are looking to progress as a squad. If he is
used as anything other than an emergency right winger this season then I think
I might cry. Sam Gallagher has the physicality to play up front on his own but
he is raw and unproven at this level.
The World Cup ended. We sent four players out there but of course,
Tadic didn’t come back. Maya Yoshida had
a great tournament with Japan, reaching the last 16 and the man himself putting
in a superb performance against Belgium.
Jan Bednarek scored his first goal for Poland and it turned out to be
the winner against Maya’s Japan. Cedric
started the tournament ok for Portugal, got a shit penalty given against him
aginst Iran in the 3rd game and then got dropped for the last 16
game against Uruguay which they lost.
The three have all had a late holiday – guess who of the three have
posted the most photos with their bro’s and shirtless selfie’s on social
media? Take a wild stab in the dark.
The we had a disastrous blow when our record signing went out on loan. We didn't want to lose him and fought tooth and nail to keep him but Guido Carrillo is far too good for Southampton and we were lucky to hold on to him as long as we did. Fair play to him for wanting to challenge himself as he clearly found it too easy here - so he's off to play up front for Pellegrino in Spain. Good luck to them both,
The we had a disastrous blow when our record signing went out on loan. We didn't want to lose him and fought tooth and nail to keep him but Guido Carrillo is far too good for Southampton and we were lucky to hold on to him as long as we did. Fair play to him for wanting to challenge himself as he clearly found it too easy here - so he's off to play up front for Pellegrino in Spain. Good luck to them both,
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