Kanj

Not that I want this but Didn't Mbmeba also play LB? What if we sign Abdennour and pair him with PoloColo and Janmaat right?

Alright alright. He's signed. Let's fucking back the daft fella and urge him on like we did with Ben Arfa and make him feel like he's on top of the world. He's signed permanently and hopefully he proves all his critics wrong near and far.

Exactly with you.

Dummett is far better defender than Haidara man. Maybe not nearly as exciting going forward, which I'd take given how many goals we leak.

Behind Mitrovic - Aarons left, Perez behind, and Thauvin right oooo like it.

again I think the forced loan thing is nuts. Just like with Santon and MYM we should be having a right of refusal or recall after loan if the player played brilliantly or we are in need of player after loan is up due to other deals or injuries.

Curious if he decides to throw 1 of Sissoko or Wijnaldum further back and starts Aarons / Thauvin wide. De Jong as a #10 and Mitrovic up top. TBH that is exactly what he should do.

Hope he proves these fucking OM fans wrong too then. Hey had and lost Bielsa. They can fuck off.

To be fair like, Bertrand came through Chelsea's youth system, having been loaned out all over. Pelle was with Koeman at Feyenoord where he presumably watched Tadic at Twente and Fonte was signed by Pardew having been at Palace. It's hardly unearthing gems and as Sewelly said, if we were prepared to invest in more than one scout, we could easily do similar. All good players signed for reasonable fees near and far. I'd say thats good scouting no matter what you say.

The more concise version of what I was saying, nice post.

And the tackling ability and heart of a child. No thanks.

I thought we were going to have our own poor man's David Silva with him. Playing on the wing but being able to drift in and out with intelligence and eye for goal. But he wasn't that and we had some shambolic fucking managers here. I'll never know if he was ever going to make it, but good luck to the little daft fella. I hope he gets back into the France team and gets his career back on track.

I'd argue whoever is in charge of scouting for Southampton should be held up in some regard. Sadio Mane, Fonte, Lovren, Tadic, Pelle, Bertrand, etc. Regarding our setup - I still believe Carr is a great scout with some brilliant contacts. But I think our entire setup was always hindered with our aged training facilities, lack of backroom support staff at all levels, and poor manager. Had the backbone been invested immediately and aggressively coupled with a progressing forward thinking manager capable of getting the best out of 5M-12M signings to compete at the very highest level as well as "Sell-On" value to then recycle capital into players, youth academy grads, etc - the model has legs to work. We never did any of that shit and paired these players with Pardew. The scouting probably fine, the chairman or technical director lacking (our chairmen being fucking idiots) not knowing football and not having a manager with a clue on how to build a squad with these unique players always hindered us. You pair Carr's scouting/contacts + Southampton's squad building abilities + Football people + Proper Manager you get results. All well in good if you can find players but you're going to be operating with both hands tied behind your back when your striker shortlist of 5 people is widdled down and you sign emergency #7. You miss out on #2 b/c you didn't feel like paying 3M more or some 3rd party agent wanted you to grease him or whatever. You then just sign any player who is on the list and figure it out later with Alan fucking Pardew. You then have a chairman who can't do a fucking deal to save his life getting rid of players on these odd season long loan with commitments to buy so hey, try out our player and if he returns to form and you love him and he becomes a world beater or we have an injury crisis we can't take him back. tl;dr - but our shambolic setup can be partially blamed when you try to analyze Carr - he's done some 50-50s but needs a win on some brilliant players sooner than later IMO but I can't help but feel we've wasted far too much talent with the idiots we have working with these players or doing deals for players.

If Sissoko Plays: Aarons - Mitro - Thauvin Sissoko Wijnaldum Anita Haid-Colo-Taylor-Mmemba ? Is that what we have to do in the back?

In the old days we'd turn up here and just get fucking bummed. Wonder how it will be under Stevie Mac. If Thauvin signs fucking start him. Is Sissoko out?

You don't run the NUFC Gallowgate twitter account do you by any chance? I'd just run that lineup for the 0 fucks aspect.

Just like many of the younger french players that left, ones who captained their club or showed tremendous potential tend to be well-thought of. He's still highly regarded in France. He did pretty damn good over at Roma tbf, and scored that goal versus Lazio.

has he said anything at all regarding Ayoze??

He should be playing LW or Perez should be there. Right wing should be Thauvin or Sissoko. Central Mid should be Anita + Sissoko + Wijnaldum or Anita + Wijnaldum with De Jong or Perez playing #10.

The "manager" watched those two performances and thought nah, doesn't deserve any more games, soon after. How does that happen?! I blame his Algerian friendly match soon after that basically was so typically for us

I'm going to convince myself that I just didn't see him play as MOTM worthy as he did those run of games b/c it's gutting to see a player who basically finally resemebled what we lacked in terms of physicality and presence at the center of our midfield in years... Good luck to him, this kid came back and bossed Yaya/City and Liverpool.

Weren't we win for Ayew, Lacazette and Gomis? All didn't pan out basically b/c we didnt want to pay their salary and or transfer fee?

I really wanted him to succeed, I loved watching him play for Montpellier and it's a bit crazy to think how far that title team was dismantled over the past 3 years. Think Cabella could have come good this year if he was fit, I think his quick dribbling and passing would have been great for us. Disaster of a move for him, but I'd put money on him re-finding his form in France, getting back into the French team and so on. But in Thauvin we potentially have a mecurial winger who is going to be direct and cause problems. I'm all for it. We still need fucking defenders, ffs, but I'm not going to be so short sighted and think that isn't a move that needs to be done b/c quite frankly we do need a right winger (would have preferred Shaqiri).