Stick Around Mate Because This Year, We’re Going to Have an Attacking Plan

Rasmus Ankersen’s quest to unshit himself gathered pace and as was rumoured in the last pre-season article, Ivan Juric became a Saints legend by persuading the Atalanta board to part with EIGHTEEN MILLION million euro’s or pounds – it doesn’t matter – for Kamaldeen Sulemana. Honestly, I’d have taken EIGHTEEN MILLION chocolate buttons. The realisation of what he’d done made Ivan fall ill and end up in hospital and the good news is that he is making a good recovery.  Moving to Atalanta is probably the only correct decision that Kamaldeen has made in the last two and a half years.  Good luck to him and I hope he does well but there’s absolutely no point in saying “what if?” if he does well, because he was never going to do well for us. Maybe the Italian game will suit him if he learns when to inject pace into every attack. That would require a degree of football intelligence, however, which is something that has been beyond them whilst he’s been here.  I honestly thought we’d be lucky to get £8 – £10 million for him so even though here is still work to be done, Rasmus has certainly partially unshit himself and for that he must send thanks to Leny Yoro for being a donkey and to Ruben Amorim for persisting with that match-up for an hour.

Kamaldeen, shortly before shooting wide, crossing to no one, passing to the keeper or falling over.

The second part of Dragon Solak’s promised three pronged recruitment, happened with the signing of Damion Downs, a German born American Centre Forward who, followed the profile of the first signing of the summer Joshua Quarshie by being very tall and very quick. Downs joins from FC Cologne in Germany for a relatively modest £7 million, due to the fact that he only had one year left on his contract. It will either be a masterstroke or it won’t but signing a striker to fit into a pattern that the manager obviously wants to play can only be a good thing. On the face of it, he’s a similar profile to Ross Stewart in that he is tall and quick but hopefully he’ll manage more than half an hour a season. Either way, it is good news to have two players of that profile so if one is injured, then the other can step in and we don’t have to change the entire tactics of getting the ball from one end of the pitch to the other. I wonder if the President of the United States will try and impose a tariff on us for signing an American? Probably not as the arsehole is busy dancing around on stage with Gianni Infantino at the Club World Cup.

The only previous American I can remember playing for us is Kasey Keller, a goalkeeper who we signed on loan from Tottenham to get over an injury crisis in the ill-fated 2004/2005 season.  Keller only played four games, one of which was against the Skates and he somewhat comedically gave away a goal by crashing into Claus Lundekvam on the edge of the penalty area.  We still won the game, however.  We had another American goalkeeper called Cody Cropper a few years ago but I don’t think he set foot on the pitch for the first team.

A Genuine “Player Holding the Shirt” photo – and not some Fabrizio Romano photoshopped bullshit.

The announcement of the signing of Downs had been on the cards for a while and was eventually timed in an attempt to bury the news that Jack Stephens has signed a three-year contract which will take him up to the age of 34.  This was met with the usual and expected vitriol on social media.  I will say that three years seems a little bit heavy, considering the fact that the club is aiming to get promoted back to the Premier League next season and Jack is certainly not good enough at that level. The disciplinary issues of last year are also a bit of a black mark, given that a main part of his role is leadership.  It does remind me a little bit of when we gave Kelvin Davis a three-year contract when he was already 34 and on the verge of becoming our third choice goalkeeper.  However, all our managers right or wrongly, see something in him and want to have him around, so as long as financially this is not a bad deal for the club, then I don’t have too much of a problem with it.  The people who do have a problem with it clearly know everything about the money he’s on and about the clause that says he has to play every single week if he’s fit.   Jack will probably play plenty of games this season but I honestly don’t expect him to be a regular on the team sheet with the likes of THB, Ronnie Edwards and Joshua Quarshie likely to be around.

The Smile of a Man with a 3 Year Deal, who knows he’s Boiling a Lot of Piss

As the players returned and training started, Saints social media was awash with images of the players and of course you are looking for those who are present and those who are not. Aaron Ramsdale is a noticeable player who is present, but the likes of Joe Aribo and Jan Bednarek were nowhere to be seen. It seems pretty obvious to me that these guys are going to leave but I just wish they’d get on with it instead of lingering. One interesting rumour about a player departing was Sam Edozie being a target for Russell Martin at Rangers. This is the same Russell Martin who at the start of last season decided to send Sam out loan to Anderlecht for the season because he thought that Ryan Fraser and Ben Brereton Diaz were better options for the left-wing position.  If Russell Martin had come in for his favourite Wee Man, then no problem but he binned off Sam last season when he certainly wouldn’t have been worse than the two players he signed so, as they say in Scotland, get tae fuck!

The media tried to make a big sensation out of Aaron Ramsdale asking to leave because he wants to play in the Premier League, as already mentioned by Dragan Solak a few weeks ago. I don’t think any fair-minded Saints fan would begrudge him a move though it is amusing though seeing the reaction of fans from Premier League teams who definitely do not want the goalkeeper who’s been relegated three times. These are the sort of people who clearly do not watch football as Rambo easily makes half of the Premier League teams better than what they are with their current goalkeeper.
 
Football broke out with a trip to Eastleigh and two separate XI’s for the Will Still debut game.  Two minutes, 1-0 down, awesome.  Smallbone gives it away in midfield, down our left, low cross, goal.  We are so back, baby! The first half team that contained the likes of Bree, Taylor, Wee Man, BBD, Arma and the Loch Ness Drogba, huffed and puffed and got given a slightly soft penalty on half time with Charles brought down.  Arma despatched it easily. So, with the first half being hard work to watch, I consoled myself with the likelihood that about seven of this team won’t be anywhere near the first team picture, at the start of the season.

Potential Multi-Club Model Benefit Alert

The second half saw a much higher energy performance from virtually the first whistle. Jay Robinson was a huge positive and really caught the eye by being positive and skipping away from his marker on numerous occasions, including the time when he perfectly weighted a through ball for Cameron Archer to slam into the net first time, for what turned out to be the winner.  Aside from Robinson, Sam Edozie looked lively down the right and Tyler Dibling looked comfortable as part of a midfield three along with Flynn Downes and Kuryu Matsuki. Matsuki looks a really interesting player because he was always looking to drive forward, always looking to keep the ball moving quickly and he wants to get to the edge of the box and get shots away and was always available for a pull back. On another day, without some very committed Eastleigh defending, he could’ve had a couple of goals.  With the fullback positions being up for grabs, Sugawara and Welington certainly looked livelier than Bree and Taylor.  There was a debut for Joshua Quarshie, who looks very solid as you would expect, from someone who is such a massive fucking unit.  On the one occasion he had to run, the Eastleigh attacked had a five-yard start in a ten-yard race and Quarshie won easily.

They say these early pre-season friendlies are all about fitness and blowing the rust off but I always think there should be more to it than that. Every player should see it as an opportunity to stake a claim as we have a new manager.  You can either do some really eye-catching stuff like Jay Robinson did or you can just jog through the game like many did, especially in the first half. I promise you that Will Still will be smiling more about the Jay Robinson and Kuryu Matsuki performances, than he will be about someone who jogged through it.

Jay Robinson – Remember the Name

A behind-closed-doors friendly against League 2 Gillingham was next with two one-hour games which thankfully, were both won by 1-0 and 3-1 respectively. Cameron Archer scored again and it was good to see Ross Stewart, Tyler Dibling and Kuryu Matsuki get on the score sheet. The general impression was that it was much better than Eastleigh performance, particularly the first half and there are some interesting takeaways, a few being that Ryan Fraser doesn’t seem to be a winger anymore and plays at the front of the midfield three. Sam Edozie looks like he is going to play on the right rather than the left. Tyler Dibling is exclusively a midfielder these as opposed to a winger. Flynn Downes and Shea Charles have not been paired together as yet. The style of play is quick and dynamic with a lot of emphasis on crossed both high and low going into the box. The other part of that of course is that you have to have players in the box and midfielders and wingers are clearly detailed to make forward runs into potential goalscoring positions. After last year, it will be nice to have some sort of attacking plan. Of the players expected to leave, Joe Aribo made an appearance from the bench and Aaron Ramsdale was back in goal for the first game with Baz playing the second.
 
Valenciennes rocked up to play in the Solak Derby at Staplewood and it was another of those behind-closed-doors, two lots of 60 minutes efforts. The first game saw Flynn Downes and Shea Charles paired in midfield but we had a flashback to last year on 17 minutes as Jack Stephens performed some Russell Martin fuckaboutery and got caught on the ball in his own penalty area and 1-0 to the French 3rd Division side. Saints eventually equalised as Charles slipped Archer through to produce an encouragingly decent finish. It was a different formation in the second game with ex-Valenciennes Joachim Kayi Sanda lining up alongside Usain Quarshie and Charlie Taylor. Smallbone and Aribo were the two starting midfielders and the world shuddered. It was Aribo who played the ball over the top that Ross Stewart fastened onto before hitting the post from a narrow angle and Arma firing in the rebound for what turned out to be the only goal. The only other incident of note came from Usain Quarshie, who appeared from nowhere to clean up after a horrendous Taylor back pass.

The main talking point from this game will be Jack Stephens and the dreadful goal. Apparently he played well other than that but the point is, that Jack really doesn’t make it easy for himself. With many scratching their heads over his new contract, awarded mainly because he’s experienced and a role model and does the right things…. and then he does that. If Quarshie or Kayi Sanda had done that then it’s no problem because they are young and it’s all development but Jack has to make better decisions than that.
 
Next up is a trip to Spain and a couple more friendlies in the middle of a training camp. As far as the Championship is concerned, it’s kind of hard to know where we are at this point because there is so much to change both before the season starts and then, before the transfer window shuts. Remember, last time in the Championship we had JWP, Tella and Lavia in the squad for the first game and they’d all gone within a week. However, with Damion Downs, Ronnie Edwards, Matty Fernandes and THB to come back into the squad as well, you could be forgiven if you were looking forward to the season with a bit of optimism.

There is still work to do to trim the squad by about five players.  Maybe the intentions will be revealed next week as I can’t imagine the manager will want 31 players in Spain.  Hopefully someone is hiding BBD’s passport as we speak. If the five trimmed are ABK, Fraser, Aribo, BBD and Taylor…. then it’s “All aboard HMS Piss This League”… if it’s Ramsdale, Fernandes, Dibling, THB and Downes… then maybe not.