Following on from Rickie Lambert's announcement regarding his retirement, I have viewed a lot of nostalgic videos from our halcyon seasons as we swashbuckled out way up the leagues. I have long had the belief that we played our best football in the season 13/14 where our holy trinity of Lallana, Lambert and Rodriguez made our intricate and scintillating forward play a joy to watch. Yet over the next two years, despite many key players leaving we continued to climb up the league under Ronald Koeman.
Sometimes the goals flowed but often Southampton relied on the genius and pace of Mane or a single headed goal from Pelle while a solid defence and double pivot screen helped keep many clean sheets. Therefore was this side better, probably not, but was it more effective, probably. Now, arguments could be made that the league was weaker this season because of the number of teams in transition, however
After watching England's uninspiring efforts on Thursday night I was also drawn to the same conclusion. Love England or hate them, it seems that the players are always branded rubbish or future stars, never somewhere in between yet England's players are generally of a good level yet their team performances are nothing compared to Northern Ireland and Scotland where player for player the quality is lower yet the teams are far more effective. Similarly, South American football has shown that an effective Peru can challenge teams containing containing world stars like Messi, while Portugal's Ronaldo is also not yet guaranteed a World Cup berth.
Koeman seemed to stumble across the right formation in his last season at the club when we were looking like we were going to be in for a long and hard season, however the effectiveness of the 3-4-2-1 cannot be underestimated and last season despite Puel's fault we did have some patches (like the run up to the EFL final) where we looked a promising and effective side.
So what makes a team effective? Surely it cannot be solely down to formation, do the players need to understand their roles perfectly or is it down to balance within a first X!? Surely Pellegrino must be a manager who is good at getting the best out of what he has, case example being his last role at Alves. what can be do to make Southampton more effective, or is just a matter of time?
Sometimes the goals flowed but often Southampton relied on the genius and pace of Mane or a single headed goal from Pelle while a solid defence and double pivot screen helped keep many clean sheets. Therefore was this side better, probably not, but was it more effective, probably. Now, arguments could be made that the league was weaker this season because of the number of teams in transition, however
After watching England's uninspiring efforts on Thursday night I was also drawn to the same conclusion. Love England or hate them, it seems that the players are always branded rubbish or future stars, never somewhere in between yet England's players are generally of a good level yet their team performances are nothing compared to Northern Ireland and Scotland where player for player the quality is lower yet the teams are far more effective. Similarly, South American football has shown that an effective Peru can challenge teams containing containing world stars like Messi, while Portugal's Ronaldo is also not yet guaranteed a World Cup berth.
Koeman seemed to stumble across the right formation in his last season at the club when we were looking like we were going to be in for a long and hard season, however the effectiveness of the 3-4-2-1 cannot be underestimated and last season despite Puel's fault we did have some patches (like the run up to the EFL final) where we looked a promising and effective side.
So what makes a team effective? Surely it cannot be solely down to formation, do the players need to understand their roles perfectly or is it down to balance within a first X!? Surely Pellegrino must be a manager who is good at getting the best out of what he has, case example being his last role at Alves. what can be do to make Southampton more effective, or is just a matter of time?
