Southampton match thread sponsored by Trevor Morley's head

[Theroyalbox]

Is this the way to derby county
Leeds United and leister city
Leaving here is a pity
The championship awaits for me

[multisync1830]

Sorry but the quality or lack of it was proven in November if not before. Therefore there are several people involved who should shoulder the blame. Those on high should have insisted on additional players OR removed BM and give the new manager a budget for January.

To lump all the blame on BM is selective in the extreme..

[Sanguine]

We may both be near the bottom of the league, both be punching a bit above our weight, but today, and his recent form at a key point of the season, shows why spending maybe a bit 'too much' on a player, in Rodriguez, is someone's the right thing to do.

[RoyalChicagoFC]

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[TBM]

The decision to sack Brian has been justified to be the wrong one - 0-1 1-4 and 0-2 - Poor old Brian - he really could not have done any worse. Sideways move by the club that frankly beggers belief!

Massive +1

We had 1 - ONE - good shot at goal. The rest were all hopeless long range efforts that were never going to go in.
We were at hom against fellow relegation strugglers, we really should have had more than the one qualified chance at scoring! HORRENDOUS!

Yet people harp on about this "new attacking style" and how "Adkins is the future" and "will bring intelligent football", if anything we've gone backwards, we've gotten worse!!!

He's had 1 week with the squad........seriously, what do you expect him to do with the players in 1 week?

McD has had all season

[Mike Hunt]

The decision to sack Brian has been justified to be the wrong one - 0-1 1-4 and 0-2 - Poor old Brian - he really could not have done any worse. Sideways move by the club that frankly beggers belief!

Massive +1

We had 1 - ONE - good shot at goal. The rest were all hopeless long range efforts that were never going to go in.
We were at hom against fellow relegation strugglers, we really should have had more than the one qualified chance at scoring! HORRENDOUS!

Yet people harp on about this "new attacking style" and how "Adkins is the future" and "will bring intelligent football", if anything we've gone backwards, we've gotten worse!!!

Have you forgotten the matches against Wigan and Aston Villa? Great stuff there.

I can not tell if you are shit troll, or actually clueless man.

[ManchesterRoyals]

Absolutely. Today showed without any doubt at all that McDermott's sacking was fully justified, in fact he probably should have gone earlier. Today proved that the squad McDermott assembled is nowhere near good enough for the PL.

It was the same team we had last season. Maybe our new owner should have put some fukking money in then!!!
But he prefered to shift the blame onto the manager, who had this lot of polished turds performing out of their skins.

You seem to disregard history completely, we SOLD OUR BEST PLAYERS you fukkwit! We then scraped the bottom of the barrel bargain basement signings to build a team!
This is most of the team we now have.

WE SPENT A TOTAL OF SOMETHING LIKE £5M IN THE SUMMER: MAYBE YOU WANT TO EXPLAIN TO US HOW THAT IS ALL BRIAN'S FAULT?
If there was "loadsamoney" available then I am sure he would have spent it.
Every single manager in all of history has a compulsive spending habit, and if there had been money, it would have been fukking spent, you idiot!

U dont want Adkins u want Brian, Well can i remind u "ADKINS SAINTS BEAT BRIANS ROYALS 2-0 TODAY" FACT

[TBM]

Absolutely. Today showed without any doubt at all that McDermott's sacking was fully justified, in fact he probably should have gone earlier. Today proved that the squad McDermott assembled is nowhere near good enough for the PL.

It was the same team we had last season. Maybe our new owner should have put some fukking money in then!!!
But he prefered to shift the blame onto the manager, who had this lot of polished turds performing out of their skins.

You seem to disregard history completely, we SOLD OUR BEST PLAYERS you fukkwit! We then scraped the bottom of the barrel bargain basement signings to build a team!
This is most of the team we now have.

WE SPENT A TOTAL OF SOMETHING LIKE £5M IN THE SUMMER: MAYBE YOU WANT TO EXPLAIN TO US HOW THAT IS ALL BRIAN'S FAULT?
If there was "loadsamoney" available then I am sure he would have spent it.
Every single manager in all of history has a compulsive spending habit, and if there had been money, it would have been fukking spent, you idiot!

McD said himself that he should have spent more.........he was too loyal to the squad from last season, which lets face it was pretty average - we were just good at scoring from corners and free kicks

[BenSmith91]

We've got to keep fighting, guys.

[Ian Royal]

Never seen so much hit & hope

Hoooooooooooooooooof!!

Not watched any of our matches under McDermott this season then?

[ManchesterRoyals]

Never seen so much hit & hope

Hoooooooooooooooooof!!

Not watched any of our matches under McDermott this season then?

Dont u find it strange we reverted back to hoof when Ledge come on?

[kwik-silva]

Thought the Hunt change came ten minutes too late, and I still can't understand why you'd bring HRK off when he was our best player on the pitch and has been for the last few games. Apart from a brief five minute spell I thought we were shocking. No confidence to pass the ball about and we're still giving them way too much time. ALF is not a lone striker. I'm also somewhat perplexed we didn't go with a 'real' 4-4-2 straight from the off, we need to win every game - goal difference is completely irrelevant if we're 7 points from safety.

Absolute bollocks.

[Ian Royal]

Never seen so much hit & hope

Hoooooooooooooooooof!!

Not watched any of our matches under McDermott this season then?

Dont u find it strange we reverted back to hoof when Ledge come on?

No, because it happened 10 minutes or so before the first half ended, so it was before he came on. Re-watch the game against Utd under Dolan. Legs was pretty good bar letting Ferdinand ghost past him and that was one of our better passing performances.

[MmmMonsterMunch]

The decision to sack Brian has been justified to be the wrong one - 0-1 1-4 and 0-2 - Poor old Brian - he really could not have done any worse. Sideways move by the club that frankly beggers belief!

Massive +1

We had 1 - ONE - good shot at goal. The rest were all hopeless long range efforts that were never going to go in.
We were at hom against fellow relegation strugglers, we really should have had more than the one qualified chance at scoring! HORRENDOUS!

Yet people harp on about this "new attacking style" and how "Adkins is the future" and "will bring intelligent football", if anything we've gone backwards, we've gotten worse!!!

How can we have gone backwards after two games you complete & utter imbecile? Our confidence is shot to fcuk. This season was a write off even if we'd got Guardiola in.

[howser]

When are people going to accept that McDermott is no longer the manager and stop going on about "we have gone backwards" this dross that was on the pitch today was assembled by McDermott, we don't have the facility to bring anyone else in so Nigel Adkins has to try and create something using the ability and strengths of those presently here and today again, as it has for 90% of the season, we have seen just what minimal amount of Premiership ability and very limited strength we have. Absolutly no way near what is required to stay in this top league, and that was all delivered by McDermotts selection and completion of transfer targets.

The what seems continual rantings about Anton to spend money, he was going to, £10m I believe on Sigs, when asked if it wouldn't have been better spent getting three or so players in with Premier experience instead of putting all the pounds in one basket Mcdermott said "maybe it would" so don't keep lauding this "Anton spend some money" tosh he was willing to it was just the naive transfer activities of Mcdermott and Hammond that prevented this, also I am not sure that Hammond job is 100% safe either, Adkins strikes me as someone who likes to have control of the whole footballing side of a clubs operations, will be interesting to see how this pans out come the June to August transfer period.

After the last two performances Adkins has started 16 players in the two games, I suggest several of those will be putting their houses on the market in the very near future, as it proved today, many of the present squad neither have the class or ability to adopt to Adkins passing style and attractive football.

[Man Friday]

Bollox.

To everything.

[72 bus]

Once Anton buys the remaining 49% Hammond will be gone, he is just as much to blame as Mcdermott

[sandman]

Once Anton buys the remaining 49% Hammond will be gone, he is just as much to blame as Mcdermott

This just shows how deluded people are these days, Hammond!? The man should have a statue outside the stadium, he's been able to get millions more for players than they were worth, and he's got us great deals on players who were worth more, it is absolute madness to sack Hammond!

What the hell is wrong with you people?! If this is what we have become I see no future for this club.

For reasons known only to myself and my psychiatrist,

+1

[RoyalBlue]

Once Anton buys the remaining 49% Hammond will be gone, he is just as much to blame as Mcdermott

This just shows how deluded people are these days, Hammond!? The man should have a statue outside the stadium, he's been able to get millions more for players than they were worth, and he's got us great deals on players who were worth more, it is absolute madness to sack Hammond!

What the hell is wrong with you people?! If this is what we have become I see no future for this club.

Yeh, if we had a statue of the great man we could throw our shoes at it!

Quick to point out all of his successes but no mention of quite a few failures, including not being able to land key players when we really needed them - perhaps something to do with a 20% now the rest conditional on some event in the future approach?

Millions more than players were worth? Probably a bit of an exaggeration and also extremely difficult to tell, given the Reading Way is to try to keep quiet about money coming in and going out.

Oh, and very interesting and revealing to hear Mick Gooding start to spill the beans on 'The Reading Way' approach to their manager's desires in the transfer market. Seems he and Juimmy Quinn had aspirations for certain players but were knocked back and offered third/fourth choice alternatives.

[blueroyals]

Obviously the bloke is a top negotiator. But the whole DoF role seems a bit convoluted. A dis-economy of scale? Too many layers of management?

Managers can handle their own transfers and contract renewals. That's half of their job FFS. Why are we paying a DoF ~£200k+bonuses/year to do it for them?

Adkins could identify the next Michu, and Hammond could block it because he doesn't A) play in Ireland B) play in L2 or below C) hasn't played against us in the FA cup yet

The manager's signings can only be as good as Hammond's judgement. Hammond is a bottleneck?