ian__marshall

Love it when players go down this route. Should be livid, but I always find it both hilarious and ironic that they blame the club. Surely the blame lies squarely with the agent, and the player. If his agent hasn't done enough to sell his services and convince a potential buyer he's worth a certain amount then that isn't the clubs fault. He simply needs a better agent, or to put up better numbers. He really can't be complaining that the club has blocked his move when less than 2 weeks ago he could have moved for less, only to see no one make an offer at that lower price. I've been very critical of the club for their conduct over recent years, but I fully support their stance on this one, even if it leads to him going on strike. His agent has had the best part of 2 months to broker a deal at a value the club could have done nothing about. If he wants to throw his toys out of the pram, I suggest he looks closer to home before kicking up a fuss with his employer.

That was grim. The balance in midfield is way off with too big a gap between the attackers and centre mid. I presume Choudhury is supposed to be playing the inverted role, but it looks like someone forgot to tell him. I'd pull Skipp and Soumare who have been dreadful, and stick Choudhury and Winks in the middle with Ricardo at RB. Really, really poor so far.

I'm losing interest in the sport big time. It's becoming a bore fest and formulaic/choreographed. I wouldn't say it's isolated to football; Formula 1, Golf, and Boxing are all going down the same route of trying to prioritise monetisation over the actual sport. They're following the WWE model of trying to create drama and narrative that casuals can follow. As a sports purist who is only interested in seeing elite athletes do their talking in the their arena of choice, I really have no interest in how many times a day Messi changes his underpants, why Verstappen eats bran flakes for breakfast, or what trash talk Tyson Fury has directed towards his next opponent. Re: PSR and competitiveness of football in general, I don't think anything has actually changed in the forty years I've watched the sport. There's always been a hierarchy since transfers became a thing and money became the currency of success. Trevor Francis going to Forest for £1m in '79 was just scandalous when you think about it. If memory serves me right we didn't spend £1m+ until the signing of Draper in '94, 15 years later. Jack Walker along with the creation of the PL were probably the catalysts for accelerating change. Walker demonstrated a model where if you're willing to spend big you can buy success irrespective of the club's size, and the Premier League dangled the carrot of financially rewarding those willing to splash the cash. Add in the genius of Richard Scudamore who transformed the image of top tier English football and the path was set. In all honesty, for as long as I can remember it's always been a closed shop, Liverpool dominated the 80s, United the 90s, Arsenal early 00s, Chelsea after, and City during the 10s. It was completely unimaginable for anyone to break United's dominance in the 90s. Blackburn briefly succeeded, but is it any coincidence their journey was one similar to the one we now experience? Whenever challengers appeared, their top talents were poached, for instance United breaking the British record to sign Cole from Newcastle, Collymore to Liverpool, Ferdinand to United, Campbell to Arsenal, etc, etc. Point being, this is nothing new. PSR is just another tool to try and maintain the status quo. Let's get it right though, we are not in the situation we find ourselves in because of PSR, we are in the position we are because we've been poorly managed by the club's leadership team since winning the league. PSR or no PSR, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to realise that if your business outgoings are greater than your income then the situation is effectively unsustainable and will eventually lead to ruin. We've created this situation. Yes, PSR is a challenge you have to navigate, but it's not insurmountable as others have shown. You just need to have people in your organisation who understand how to manoeuvre around the barriers. Sadly for us we don't.

Going to go against the grain here and say I'm not too sure we should sell. Genuinely think if he was given a run as a striker he'd surprise a lot of people. That said, no manager so far has tried him out in that role, so what do I know. If the intention is to keep playing him as a winger then I agree with the majority that it's probably best to part ways as I don't think he's particularly great in that position.

Rumours of Swan joining too. Sounds plausible, after all there's no smoke without fire.

The way things are going I think we're more likely to end up like Reading. Stoke at least have owners with plenty of money.

Calamity for the first, but you can't seriously be calling him out for their second goal. The ball makes its way to the centre of the goal. Any striker missing from there needs relegating to the under 21s. It's reasonable for Jakub to expect one of Jannick or Hamza to deal with that situation and either stop the ball getting through or making Osmajic work harder for the chance. If anyone should be called out it's Hamza. He has Osmajic in his field of view all the way through that move yet casually jogs back failing to cover. Bear in mind Hamza was fresh as a daisy, there's no reason he shouldn't be sprinting back to provide cover. Truly awful defending on so many levels.

Sorry if I've missed it, but how's everyone watching this game?

Disgusting behaviour and hugely unprofessional. You can hate the fans as much as you like but to simply ignore a directive from your leader is very disrespectful, particularly in the formative stages of the relationship when you're both getting to know one another. You'd hope that he'd want to make a good impression, but the key word is 'want', and maybe he has no desire to do that. It tells you a lot about his character, I hope Marti takes a hard line with him over this, completely unacceptable!

Wow! Just when you think this group of players can't stoop any lower they go and put in a performance like that. Absolutely embarrassing stuff!

That is one of the worst peno's I've ever seen. Up there with Kermo.

Awful from the lads tonight. Let's hope they don't embarrass themselves further.

Nice to see Soumare putting in a shift tonight 🤣😂🤣

I can understand him having the arse with RVN and possibly Rudkin after last season, but what's his issue with the fans? Not exactly been given the Faes treatment. Those who have have travelled up there for mid week fixture against lower league opposition deserve better than him not even acknowledging scoring a goal. Sad times.

What a finish!

To be honest I think most of us did what any fan of football would do. Brilliant protest from your fans. Thought the plane fly over was really powerful, it must have been up there for a good 15 minutes, and completed many circuits of the stadium - top effort. To then not enter the stadium, have all of the banners across the seats, then eventually when you did enter holding back in the concourse must have taken some organising and agreement across the fan base. Said previously in another thread but I have a real soft spot for your club. Proper fans that always travel well and are loud. Disgusting and disgraceful that the EFL has allowed Chansiri to treat you the way he has, they should be ashamed. I hope and pray Chansiri comes to the realisation that what he's doing is in no one's interests, and you eventually end up with an owner worthy of such a historic club. BTW you should be very proud of your lads today, despite all the nonsense they gave everything. Good luck for the rest of the season 🦉💙🤍💙🤍

Chance to put down a marker today, and set the tone for the rest of the season. Hope we come out of the traps extremely fast. Whilst it's a potential banana skin and could be a very tough game, if we can get a couple of early goals I genuinely think it could end up being a cricket score with the attacking players we have. Looking forward to getting down to the ground as I'm really up for this one. Hope I feel the same come 4.30pm.

Agreed. He's had plenty of the off season to work with that side and they looked a shadow of the Russell Martin's team last time out in the Championship. I know Soton struggled with the opener that season against Plymouth, but you could see that they were well drilled. Soton today reminded me a bit like us under Cooper. Trying to play the Enzo way without understanding the small coaching details that make the system work. Time will tell I guess, but I'm not convinced they've closed the gap between us from last season.

Disappointing that Soton take the 3 points, but they looked dreadful, so if that's the standard we need to beat this season, we'll cruise this even with a points deduction.

Ward normal service rssumes

This Soton side look like they've been coached by a Temu Russell Martin.

Ward's made more saves in this match than the entirety of his time with us. Where was this performance at home to Wolves?!?

I thought our defence was slow, but being done for pace by Kieffer Moore is something else.

The fee is frustrating. What annoys me about the fee, is WHU have clearly played us and we've fallen for it like a naive little child. How many times when we were an established PL team did we express interest in a player only to get knocked back repeatedly until the end of window where at which point we were desperate so either paid the asking price or more? For the first time in years we're in a position with Mads where technically we don't/shouldn't need to sell him, and if the transfer went to the wire we're fine as we already have his replacement, yet the club have caved in at the first sign of WHU expressing interest in a keeper with no experience in the PL, and at a time when similar aged keepers with similar ability appear to be going for higher fees. I appreciate there's the PSR argument but surely having moved on Coady and Wilf, whilst getting JV, Ward plus other high earners off the books we have a bit less urgency. I just hope we've included add-ons in the deal, though doubt we have as we never seem to pursue this option. From a playing perspective, I'm not overly concerned as Stolarczyk is an excellent alternative so we're lucky that we can at least go into the new season confident that we have a very good keeper between the sticks.

Impressive benchmark numbers shown in the launch video. Looks very good so far from the short play around I've had with it. Definitely feel that the accuracy has improved, with much less hallucinating. Wish I could try the Pro version but no chance based on the pricing. Keen to have a play with this is Co-Pilot too, think that'll offer some more practical applications. Certainly seems to have set a new standard for others to follow and thoroughly expecting Gemini to not be far behind. Just pleased to final have another reasoning model that performs to a very high level without needing to use Grok 4.