......... to be used when being interviewed after a match their team has played against the Saints. It reads: "That performance in no way reflects the way my team can play. Our defending was poor today and made their forward line look fantastic. I expect better than that from my defenders and we will address that in training. Their midfield was allowed to run the game and my players did not try hard enough. I expect better than that from players who pull on the shirt. Our forward line never got a look in and today they were slow and nowhere near sharp enough. There were a couple of occasions when the ref let their defenders get away with some dodgy tackles. As for Southampton their first goal was offside and they should never have had the penalty for the second. I have never known a side be so lucky as in any other game our keeper would have saved their third and fourth goals and what was the ref thinking when he gave the free kick for their fifth. He should know that football is a contact sport and I couldn't see anything wrong with that knee high sliding tackle from behind with all studs showing that brought down Connolly. If we had played them on another day we would have beaten them without doubt." Kenny Jackett is learning it by heart ready for Saturday.
As an addendum to the above: "How are we supposed to defend against the South Coast Brazil? They ran rings around us with their dazzling skills, pass and move football and intelligent interplay. Next time we won't bother turning up and just award Saints the 3 points by default. It will save on petrol costs for the coach down".
It really does seem to be a Saints disease, doesn't it..? I think we've famously got several managers sacked after beating their teams too. I'm going to test this one. I'll pick a team like Brighton or Derby, as they have 100% records too, so far, and see what the opposition managers have to say about playing them. Might be revealing.
That would be acknowledging that Saints are a great side. The thread is about managers saying anything other than that. Mind you, Barnsley's Keith Hill was very complimentary.
I thought that Paul Jewell compared us to Real Madrid in one of his interviews? And I'm pretty sure the Torquay boss didn't say anything negative about us. Still, a very funny piece nonetheless.
That's a bit of a backhander nowadays though isn't it..? A collection of great players who can't work as a team. That's not Saints. I shall have to see what Martin Ling said.
The speech is for managers whose team has played the Saints.I know we can field two good sides but the FL haven't yet allowed a club to have two teams in the same league.
True, the Real Madrid analogy would be better applied to QPR last season with Taraabt as their Ronaldo. Although that would probably inflate his ego even more (if that's possible?!)
The actual quote from Jewell was "Our defence made them look like Real Madrid" - Far from a compliment, still I'd rather win games than take plaudits from other managers who are usually only complimentary on the oppo after a victory. Remember the Poortvelit side would always be praised about how they played football.
It occurs to me that luck plays an important part in some peoples knowledge of the game, indeed Saints recently got lucky five times in one game, and again lucky 4 times against Torquay and before that 3 times lucky at Leeds, just when will they realise the true meaning of the word lucky
Ahh, I must have mis-heard the quote ... my bad. In that case, Paul Jewell can do one, yes their defence was weak at times but our attack is on fire atm as show by our last 4 games. Besides, they only scored thanks to a momentary (10 minute) lapse in concentration by our defence
I said that Jackett had been practising his speech based on my notes. This is what he said about yesterday's game:- "We can play a lot better than that. We had a co-ordination problem from back to front. I was disappointed with a lot of aspects of our game. "We showed heart and guts but we didn't play well for a lot of the game. We are capable of a lot better than that. "We just lacked quality today. The effort and commitment was there but we didn't do ourselves justice at times and I was frustrated."
