Will Smallbone Joins

[Stadt]

He's not going to be fit so it's going to take him, let's say 4 or 5 weeks to be fully up to speed. Then there is a lot of competition for his favoured role, he isn''t any good deeper by most accounts.

 

All of a sudden he has to be very good for this signing to work out given what his wages will likely be. This is the problem with how we operate, we have very little margin for error and yet we continually make deals where it just has to work out - otherwise we're on the hook for years. People thought the Burns deal was low risk, already it looks we have a completely finished winger for 3 more years probably on upper championship level wages.

 

Smallbone might come good but the process behind the deal is rubbish. How many other clubs hand out three year deals to free agents? Especially because they're unattached through injury. For all Martin might have played a hand in bombing out the bad eggs - he's been instrumental in bad process signings again.

 

If half of his signings work out (which is a big improvement on where we have been - maybe 20%?), that means we have 8 bad signings this season when we really can't afford that amount. You could forgive him if he was an instant quick fix manager but he's not that either. It all boils down to taking risk we ought not to both on and off the pitch.

Edited 5 hours ago by Stadt

[LCFCCKEANO]

7 hours ago, SafewayFox said:

I hate to be that guy BUT does have that injury record.

 

That’s like saying Sancho wouldn’t have been semi retired at 26 if he didn’t have his alleged off field issues.

 

Smallbone may turn out to be an ok signing but as others have stated, we’re such a poorly run club that we’re an actual parody of how to run a professional football club at this point.

Point is that without the record he isn’t here, and I think Sancho is just not comparable because his issues are caused directly by himself, unlike Smallbone.

 

If he is injured we have plenty of depth now, and when he is fit he is probably the best midfielder in the league. Could be a terrible signing with injuries but so could anyone. Jonny Evans had a bad injury record and was over 30 and was one of our better signings in the past decade. I just don’t think right now we should be judging it based on injuries considering we haven’t even spent a fee and he hasn’t even played for us yet. If he spends the year injured then it is completely valid.

[SafewayFox]

5 hours ago, LCFCCKEANO said:

Point is that without the record he isn’t here, and I think Sancho is just not comparable because his issues are caused directly by himself, unlike Smallbone.

 

If he is injured we have plenty of depth now, and when he is fit he is probably the best midfielder in the league. Could be a terrible signing with injuries but so could anyone. Jonny Evans had a bad injury record and was over 30 and was one of our better signings in the past decade. I just don’t think right now we should be judging it based on injuries considering we haven’t even spent a fee and he hasn’t even played for us yet. If he spends the year injured then it is completely valid.

Sorry but I couldn’t disagree any more.

 

Sancho (never going to happen) would be less of a risk as physically not broken, as someone mentioned on this thread previously - Smallbone’s injury record is pretty damning.

 

He was only fit enough to make 10 appearances for Millwall last season.

 

I know you weren’t comparing him to Evans per se but he was a classy player, Smallbone wouldn’t be described that by any Saints fans.

 

 

Edited 3 hours ago by SafewayFox

[tinpot_fox]

On 04/10/2026 at 10:45, CruzNoir said:

This transfer window was all about quality and promotion as well as clearing the deadwood

 

That I feel has certainly been achieved, we can nit pick individuals but on the hole, the job has been massively successfully achieved on paper imo 

 

It’s Russels ability to put the jigsaw together that’s questionable at this point. I have no issues with the squad available as it is. Time for Russel to turn the tables on his career otherwise it will be bye byes come November I reckon.

 

Automatic promotion could well be gone if he doesn’t get the team going by then, but the Club will still see playoffs as the back up option giving Martin atleast some time to gear up to then before the possibility of a sacking 

 

If playoffs becomes unlikely, we are F’d, it’s not an option for anyone, a second season in this league then we enter the abyss 

One of the problems with the way this club is run is that we have had fanciful notions of promotions and then get relegated. We need to be quickly consolidating our position in this league so we don’t get relegated and then push on, if possible to be promoted. With our results this season so far, promotion is fanciful. If we can control matches, then get some tidy passes and through balls further up the pitch with Smallbone, then we might get some good results. We haven’t had a decent run of results for a long time, something needs to change and we need to find consistency 

[murphy]

3 hours ago, tinpot_fox said:

One of the problems with the way this club is run is that we have had fanciful notions of promotions and then get relegated. We need to be quickly consolidating our position in this league so we don’t get relegated and then push on, if possible to be promoted. With our results this season so far, promotion is fanciful. If we can control matches, then get some tidy passes and through balls further up the pitch with Smallbone, then we might get some good results. We haven’t had a decent run of results for a long time, something needs to change and we need to find consistency 

The fact that we're in division three is an affront to a club like ours.  We have the best squad, on paper, in the league and we need to go up to avoid financial meltdown.  We need to be more ambitious than 'consolidation'.

[Foxin_Mad]

3 hours ago, tinpot_fox said:

One of the problems with the way this club is run is that we have had fanciful notions of promotions and then get relegated. We need to be quickly consolidating our position in this league so we don’t get relegated and then push on, if possible to be promoted. With our results this season so far, promotion is fanciful. If we can control matches, then get some tidy passes and through balls further up the pitch with Smallbone, then we might get some good results. We haven’t had a decent run of results for a long time, something needs to change and we need to find consistency 

The biggest issue is most of our defenders can’t defend for shit, especially when tippy tapping around at the back

[splinterdream]

Me every 30 seconds