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Reply | What’s clear already
at 14:49 24 Sep 2025
Not for me. Edwards was at best ok. The other 2 CBs were much better.
His worst moment was gifting them the winner. He left Chiesa totally alone. If he was organising the others then perhaps he should have been worrying more about his own position. |
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Reply | Genuine question,has Damion Downes ever actually been a professional footballer?
at 14:37 24 Sep 2025
If I was being ultra generous I'd say he hasn't been given the chance to play in a position he's decent at (he's utter sh1te as a centre forward). But in reality I'd say he just looks as though he has nothing to offer. WS doesn't play with a second striker and even if he did Arma and Archer would be better options.
Our best hope is that we can get maybe £1m for him in January. Some at the club might want to loan him out somewhere to toughen him up but I think if he was sent out to a League 1 club he wouldn't get many minutes. Better to send him back to a less competitive league.
A prime example of how SR are clueless and ruining the club. |
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Reply | Disrespectful I know...
at 17:21 22 Sep 2025
I agree. He's been poor so far, but that doesn't mean we should sack him now. I have doubts about him too, but he should be given a fair chance.
I'd also say that he's really only had 2 games with his squad. Both very disappointing games, but just 2 games. It's now up to him, he has to deliver, but he should be judged on results with us, not on where he came from or what he did before he started managing. |
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Reply | Disrespectful I know...
at 15:47 22 Sep 2025
There is very little correlation between playing ability and coaching/manging ability. I thought everyone knew that. Who was the more successful manager, Bobby or Jack Charlton? Wayne Rooney or Will Still? |
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Reply | Disrespectful I know...
at 15:25 22 Sep 2025
"in any line of work, would you take instructions from a boss who had never done it themselves?"
So the teams WS managed in France just completely ignored him?? Mourinho's teams completely ignore him?? Does the current Germany team just ignore Nagelsmann?? etc. etc. No, of course not.
WS can be criticised for a number of things, including a lack of experience, but if a player ignores him just because he doesn't have the playing experience, then that player is not only an idiot but is shooting themselves in the foot.
Like any manager, WS will start with reserves of respect from the players for prior achievements. Any manager, ex-player or not can go on to lose the dressing room due to poor performance, but that takes a while to happen and we're not there yet. |
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Reply | Time to reel our necks in a bit
at 19:00 21 Sep 2025
The problem is not the lack of a striker. We have strikers who can score in the championship. Look at your own list. Arma scored 24 (28 in total) in 23/24. He's still at the club. Cameron Archer is just as good.
The problem with the strikers is that we don't have anyone who can play centre forward. So, for example, Arma can score goals playing on the right in a front 3. That's proven. He could probably also score as a second striker in a front 2, as could Archer. But there is no one to lead the line, no one to do the Che Adams role that Arma benefitted from in 23/24. That's what we're missing in the striker department (unless Stewart steps up to the job).
WS is partly to blame for this. It shouldn't have taken him long to see that neither Arma, Archer or Downs are centre forwards and for some reason he doesn't like Stewart. Once he'd seen that he should have demanded a centre forward instead of demanding wingers and full backs. |
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Reply | Long chat with Hull fan
at 15:23 21 Sep 2025
We do have terrible owners but I don't think cost was the reason here. Rohl was the ex Sheff Weds manager so hardly likely to have been on high wages.
Rohl said at the time that he wanted to work in Germany for family reasons. That's probably why he never made the shortlist.
But if SR had been given every manager option under the sun, I reckon they could still come up with a bad choice. |
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Reply | "In his own words" Damion Downs is not a centre forward
at 14:59 21 Sep 2025
I agree he looks like a wimp. He's not up for a physical battle which is the complete opposite of good championship centre forwards like McBurnie.
In the article I posted it suggested he played school "football" i.e. American football, as a quarterback. The quarterback and the kicker are the only two positions in American football where they try to avoid physical contact. His other sport was basketball which is a non-contact sport. It's probably just the way he's always been.
I don't think you can really take a player like that and coach him to be aggressive like McBurnie. He will always be passive. He's happy running on to the ball in space behind the defence. He's not happy if he has to challenge for it or hold it up with his back to goal. |
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Thread | "In his own words" Damion Downs is not a centre forward
at 11:24 21 Sep 2025
I've said here before that Downs doesn't look like a natural centre forward. He's not good with a centre back bullying him, he's not physical enough. He needs the kind of space you only get as a second striker or playing wide.
Also, he's no good in the air, he's not going to win any headers unless he's unmarked. I remembered someone saying that Downs said himself that he was no good at headers so I just googled it and saw this article, which explains a lot. Maybe this has been posted here before but I don't think so:
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6550848/2025/08/14/damion-downs-usmnt-southampt
The article describes Downs "in his own words" and says:
"He grew up in Germany playing mostly as a winger or an auxiliary striker (sometimes known as a second striker or shadow striker), and has only developed into a leading No 9 in recent years."
Whether he's developed into a 9 is highly questionable. I'd say not. I say he'd still be better as a second striker, playing the way he learned as he grew up. Interesting that Poch doesn't see him as a 9 either:
"From his understanding, that’s how Pochettino currently sees him, too. In the Gold Cup, his head coach rarely played Downs as an out-and-out striker, preferring to use his qualities to help with the team’s build-up behind more traditional No 9s Agyemang and Brian White."
Yep, that all makes sense. The problem Saints have is that some idiot (Spors?) has bought him to play as a centre forward, while selling Tall Paul, who was the only centre forward we had. Arma and Archer are second strikers too, not centre forwards and the manager doesn't seem to rate Stewart. So we don't have a centre forward. Plenty of second strikers, no centre forward.
I really do wonder about Spors and our recruitment team. As shown by this article, Downs says "in his own words" that he is not a centre forward, so why did those idiots recruit him to play as one? I suppose that once again it's all about SR buying one for the future they hope will come good in a few years time and they can sell on. Will Still must take the blame too, for not being able to see that Downs is not up to it and demanding a centre forward for this season.
Meanwhile we're buying wingers to put crosses in to a non-existent centre forward. How's that going to work?
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Reply | Will Still Says Players Have To Get Out Of Bad Habits From Previous Systems
at 18:44 19 Sep 2025
I agree with WS here. I've said on this forum that, even this season, the players still often look like they're playing Rustyball and habits are difficult to shake, particularly for someone like Downes whose been playing tippy-tappy since he joined Swansea in 2021.
But that wasn't the case on Sunday. We weren't playing Rustyball then. We were playing some kind of aimless hoofball, if we had any kind of plan at all. It's up to WS to implement a new way of playing and he needs to give us some signs of what that is, starting at Hull. Downes, Charles and the others have been with him for a full pre-season and several competitive matches. We should be seeing more of the new way of playing than we have done so far. |
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Reply | The Next 5 Games
at 13:22 18 Sep 2025
It will be interesting to see what happens to Sheff Utd. They will obviously improve as they can't be any worse than they were under Selles and Wilder is a man who knows how to get a tune out of average players. Will they get back to last year's form and get into the play-offs? They sold a couple of important players but brought in Ben Mee and Danny Ings who I'm told are the solution to every problem in football. |
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Reply | Gazin Bazunu - some praise
at 11:16 16 Sep 2025
Yes, but 5 games is too small a sample to tell. Keepers, unlike say strikers, need to be consistently reliable, day in day out over the season. For them, the most important thing is not making mistakes, rather than having moments of brilliance. There are good reasons why many fans lost confidence in him. One mistake could see those doubts resurface.
He's still young and learning. Let's hope he continues to improve and give people confidence in him. |
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Reply | Striker!!!
at 16:40 15 Sep 2025
No, if he'd wanted a striker and SR refused to buy one, then he would say something evasive. Have you never heard public figures give evasive answers before?
You, on the other hand, are suggesting that he would tell a blatant lie. That's unlikely for anyone when they can just give an evasive answer, but WS is known as an honest and open person, so it's even more unlikely for him. Listen to him speaking and I'd say it doesn't sound like he's lying. |
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Reply | Striker!!!
at 15:58 15 Sep 2025
No, if he disagreed he wouldn't say anything at all in public. Instead he's been very specific in saying that he didn't want another striker.
With all the positions he did want new players in, he came out early in the transfer window and said what he wanted. If he hadn't got them, then that would have created a problem. That didn't stop him saying what he wanted. So, no doubt if he'd wanted a striker, he would have said that too. |
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Reply | Southampton V Portsmouth The Verdict
at 14:39 15 Sep 2025
Correction: there were 3 debuts, not 4 as you say.
More importantly, the debuts were not the reason for the disjointed play. The only starter making his debut was Fellows and he was actually one of our better players. The next one didn't appear until the 74th minute. By then the pattern of the game had already been set and the other debut players made no difference to it.
The reason for the disjointed play was our gameplan (if we had one) which seemed to be to try and get long balls and crosses to Archer and hope he could out-muscle the defenders, which was obviously never going to happen. |
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Reply | Striker!!!
at 17:23 14 Sep 2025
Fair point. I'm prepared to give WS time. Let's hope he turns out to be a better learner than RM was. |
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Reply | Portsmouth Game Matchday Thread
at 17:23 14 Sep 2025
"chose your words carefully next time"
😂
it would be funny anyway, but this was from that careful chooser of words tonyfromdk
😂 |
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Thread | How is Will Still trying to play?
at 16:26 14 Sep 2025
After a full pre-season and some early games finding our way, WS got the players he wanted in the transfer window and switched to his preferred formation......... and it looked pretty hopeless. It's ok if the team doesn't click at the first attempt, that's totally understandable, but it was worse than that. It was difficult to even see what they were trying to do.
He said he wanted to bring in wingers and get lots of crosses into the box. Great, but when you see Fellows throw in crosses to Archer and Fraser, you wonder why we even bother. They're never going to win any headers. So far Azaz doesn't look like the type to get on the end of things either, and he was often slow to get into the box.
WS says we don't need a centre forward but it's difficult to see us scoring many goals without one. Plus we spent half the game playing long balls up to Archer (who's too small to win many battles with centre halves) just to see the ball come back again.
If we had a gameplan that hadn't clicked yet, that would be OK. But so far, it's difficult to even see a plan that makes sense. I'm sure that WS is no fool, so hopefully either his plan will start to work soon, or he will learn quickly and adapt. Either way, there is a lot of work to do. |
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Reply | Striker!!!
at 15:44 14 Sep 2025
Don't blame SR. Will Still says we didn't need a centre forward. We got players in all the positions he said he wanted. He had plenty of time to look at who we've got as strikers and decided we didn't need anything more, so it's now up to him. |
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