LCFCJohn

Makes sense for Tolaj to be fair. Gets to play at the next level up and geographically not the furthest move.

Leeds are a disgrace and their fans frothing at the mouth wanting us to go out of business because of the ‘we predict a riot’ song are an embarrassment. Literally the thinnest skin out they, they can’t even take a joke of a chant. If Carlsburg did relegations this season, the 3 from the PL would be Coventry, Forest and Leeds!

What is the point of this game? Seriously. I get in Olympics type sports, 3rd place and Bronze medal means something. But in football it really doesn’t. 3rd place game between the 2 losing FA Cup semi finalists anyone? A game between the 2 sides who lose the play off semi finals to see who was the 3rd closest side to getting promoted? Those are tongue in cheek examples as obviously the World Cup is different level. But the point stands, do either England or France even want to play this game? I’d suggest no they don’t. All about money though I guess.

He didn’t make any big calls, pens, red cards etc. But as I said, he has no control over the game. They were at it from the first minute and he had no authority over the game at all. Edit - what they can do is book for accumulation of fouls even if each individual one by a particular player doesn’t seem individually worth it.

As per everyone else, we were pathetic from an hour onwards and it was obvious what was going to happen. The equaliser, how many times had Messi done that short corner? We had the box crowded while they had the freedom to do what they wanted on the edge and it cost us. Once they equalised, it was obvious it wasn’t even going to extra time. It reminded me a bit of our FA cup final win had VAR not intervened. Rodgers had gone entirely defensive, had the goal stood, we were done as we had no threat left. As for Argentina. They are a f***ing disgrace. They were enabled by a pathetic ref who lost control from the first minute. Why again are we letting a ref from the USA take charge of important games? They don’t understand football! And given how much they apparently hate us, I assume both Emiliano and Lisandro Martinez, Enzo Fernandez, Cristian Romero and Alexis MacAllister will piss off and stop earning their living off our clubs over here. No? Thought not. Hopefully they all get what’s coming to them over the coming season.

We’re done. France on Saturday it is!

I agree comments in fitness aren’t needed just yet but we do need to see improvement. I think there seems to be a lot more to be positive about over the past couple of days. Finally seeing some outward movement and you’d expect inwards movement to follow as the dominoes fall. I’d say this and some of other other threads currently due show that the fans, even those of us who want the owner out, will responding positively to positive actions and signs, and not be negative for the sake of it. It seems we also have quite a turnaround of fans this season with more young supporters maybe. That said, people like Linda Ginetta posting stuff like being proud to have had Harry Winks wear the shirt is plain daft and done to aggravate other fans, given the lack of popularity for the player in question. So there is more than one way to be a negative supporter I’d say.

With respect, you do seem to have gone in quite OTT there. Looking at the comments on the first page before yours at the top of the second, there’s a lot of balance stuff there with some cautious positivity about areas such as the organisation being a bit improved, the shifting out of players and the youngsters we expect (Braybrooke, Alves, Page, Aluko) and hope (Carr, Hutchinson etc) to play either big or supporting roles in the season. But we do need to see what else the rest of pre-season brings. We still haven’t brought anybody in, despite rumours some are close. As per my post above, we will need to see some that aren’t older heads and bring hopefully some players more towards their peak. I’d love to see a Tolaj type for example. Show we mean business picking some better players from this league but who knows what the finances will allow. Basically, cautious positivity about certain areas whilst highlighting what we still need to see is as good as you will get at this point. I haven’t seen people criticising fitness. Surely people realise where we are in pre-season? Fitness has been a huge issue over the past seasons though so it’s natural we will be looking at this area and seeing whether we can tell a positive difference.

I’m still not overly positive. I think there has been such a rot the last 2 seasons that it takes quite a turn around from winning 20 games over 2 seasons and doubt relegations to a side that will win 30 or whatever is needed to go up. However, whilst I have not yet seen enough to shift my overall view of the season coming to positive, there are things starting to happen that look positive as steps. The outgoings are a positive. If we are to shift the mentality and rot from a losing one to a winning one, turnover is key. We have been held back for years now by this same crop of failures. Seeing the likely of Ayew and Daka go on a free and now managing to shift Winks and VK is great. If Vestergaard and Faes could follow this goes a long way towards clearing these experienced but rotten characters. The movement of some youngsters who likely won’t make it has been good as well. It suggests lessons are being learnt and maybe a sign of McCarron’s involvement. I need to see more from an incomings perspective to be convinced. It’s all very well getting the above lot out but wasted if we replace them with similar. I don’t mind the Ings, McCarthy and Chaplins signings if they are good characters and more the Pearson’s experience type signings. What we then need is to see the signings with development potential follow. We have some good youngsters and if these experienced signings come, we just need those middle ground where they are of a good age but ready to hit the ground running.

Bizarre and special (not in a good way) women! Clearly she is just attention seeking to get people to bite and basically just being contrary for the sake of it. Even something like thanks for the efforts, despite the last 2 years, could at least be attributed to the good season under Maresca. Proud? He’s not f***ing Messi Linda! He’s just a run of the mill player. As for will be missed, each to their own . Anyone who will miss these players, given the collective poor attitudes, lack of effort and contribution to our decline to our lowest ever level in our history, can’t really care for the club much can they?

Seems like we have woken up! Happy with the outgoing business so far. Bad eggs like VK and Winks out and moving on players like Silko T and Richard’s who aren’t looking like making it. Not so much Cartwright as I thought he’d get a chance here but still fine. This must be Mccarron’s influence as we know Rudkin would not manage so much business and good business for the club.

I agree. Weren’t Norwich interested last summer? I’m sure around £4 mill was suggested then. Since then, he has a year left not 2, and his stock has dropped, even though I hold the senior players responsible much more than the younger players like Stolarcryk and Nelson who were having there breakout seasons. Similarly to Nelson, with Jakub, it seems very much a case of take a nominal fee (probably no more than £2 mill for either) or lose for free.

I just feel very pessimistic about this game tomorrow as it seems clear it will be decided by officials. I don’t think it’s particularly about Argentina being well liked. It is just that FIFA are about individual names, the global superstars like Messi and Mbappe as they are where the commercial revenue is. And FIFA care about money over the game speaking for itself of course. Despite having it 4 years ago, you just know they want the final billed as Messi vs Mbappe again. France are navigating their own path quietly comfortably but Argentina have needed a leg up, hence the officiating decisions. Now France have a challenge in Spain, don’t be surprised to see some dodgy decisions go against the Spanish. Of course we could beat Argentina purely by being too good to overcome the officials if we are on our game. If we win, it’ll be a hell of an achievement for this reason.

Yeah this is what I was saying. No doubt we are bare in some areas but yeah, I was saying we’d need to see some of these as not just being in the central role as we’d be stacked then. I did see Alves as more off the left but it sounded like he played well centrally against Northampton so wondered if Martin saw him playing centrally. All unknown really until we see who else goes and who we bring in.

Yeah I don’t think we can rely solely on him. And Page is young. But yeah, we don’t need all 4 ear marked for that no 10 position. But if BDR did go, or the other are likely to be in the other positions then that works. Ideally we have a squad who can be flexible and cover more than one position though.

I’m alright with Chaplin generally and Ipswich fans speak highly. My only concern currently would be that Alves got great reviews playing centrally at the weekend and Page I have felt was more of an attacking midfielder. Having BDR on the books as well seems a bit overkill. Unless the plan is for Alves off the left. Or if Martin sees Page playing deeper. And BDR possibly to leave? Probably needs some of those to happen.

I feel for Ings and McCarthy as this shopping through agents for former Southampton players/managers has already reached meme territory and they immediately get tarred with that. There’s nothing wrong with a couple of experienced heads. Pearson used to do it and they aren’t known as bad eggs. If we bring in some complete gems during the window and balance that with utilising the free market to bring in a couple with experience like this, I’d like to think most would be supportive of that. But the club has created this reputation by repeated actions. People chuck out this negative tag very lazily like supporters have been given no reason to be. It’s based on the clubs actions and people are now thinking the worst. It is at the point where the club have made so many repeated mistakes that is is genuinely fair to assume failure until proven otherwise.

Come on, you can only sell players if there is interest

And there was someone on here a few weeks ago (forget who) who tried to question the fact that some of us were saying our recruitment is agency driven and we have no/limited actual scouting going on. Which of Conor Chaplin, Danny Ings or Alex McCarthy suggest the club is actually doing any work to scout rather than just having names of free agents passed by agents exactly?

He was for the 5-0 at the KP under Maresca though!

I still reckon this one falls through when Rudders realises he got confused on the map and Chaplin’s link is to the wrong south coast city!

I may be wrong but I can’t imagine that is a factor for loans, and particularly young players. He will have a contract and surely we could only pay 100% of the wages on that contract and not more. He will be driven by the best development opportunity and playing in a league below where he has already gained experienced, and with teams from the Championship interested, we can’t be seen as the best development opportunity.

Problem is, FIFA have started behaving in a similar fashion to the global TV audience where it is all about player names, not teams. You have this nonsense where people follow players (we have seen it with the likes of Algerians and Mahrez and Bangladeshi fans with Choudhury). FIFA have followed suit where it is all about the likes of Mbappe and Messi and the stall has been set out to try and ensure that the final can be billed as such for the TV audience. Hence the dodgy decisions in favourite of particularly Argentina.

It’s not even deflective/reverse psychology type stuff to say we are the weakest side left in this final 4. I mean Argies have laboured through the knockouts similarly to us so it could go either way but still looked a stronger squad. But the winner of the other semi final is clear favourites.

Yeah, a high profile example right there. It’s just outrage from people who are too ignorant to accept what the data actually means. Don’t get me wrong, I think that a diverse population needs to be in the context of accepting this is still a western country and accept/adapt to our values and traditions. But this is blown out of promotions.