Match Day Thread Burnley v Saints Saturday 10th August 3pm

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Ahh, that's better.

 

Oh yeah I do agree with that, but I just feel that if even if you take out who's the least **** cb argument, when you've got a poor choice of cb's anyway then surely you want your most experienced one for Burnley away in a torrential downpour.

It's just frustrating (for me) seeing Vestergaard make the exact same mistake as he did in Ralph's first game when Maya's sat on the bench.

I probably wasn't too rational at around 20 to 5 tbf

 

The issue *is* attacking players. Did you notice we didn’t score? The issue is also defense. We were and are a ****ty-to-mediocre side. Lots of problems.

I think Hasenhuttl is perhaps overrated by some here, but we know he is way better than Hughes. At worst yeah, he’s probably average. If only the rest is of the team were average.

Managers don’t have that much say in signing players anymore. They have too much to do on a day-to-day basis with training and studying videos and film, etc. it’s the scouts who go and recommend players and the football director who does the deals. Hasenhuttl can give his general opinion about players or what he needs but that is about it. What he cannot do is control the purse strings which is our major problem. He was given a bad team on bloated contracts. His hands are largely tied.

Last summer when everyone was talking up Hughes, I pointed out that we really had not done any better with him in charge and had survived mainly due to a bit of luck. That was not the case last season. The team was miles better under Hasenhuttl than Hughes.

 

Liverpool lost 2-0 away to Burnley the season before last in the second game. ****ing Burnley! SACK KLOPP!!

 

Unreal that I've seen anyone bad mouth hasenhuttl after ONE game in **** conditions at a tough ground.

Get a ****ing grip. We are lucky to have him, it's not his fault we have such a below par squad. I think Stephens must flatter to deceive in training.

 

Tricky but is, the defense was pretty good until the goal. I thought Vestergaard in particular was having a solid game. The only good opportunity came when Stephens slipped.

It’s a hard thing to fix. Hasenhuttl can put Vestergaard in the right position, but he can’t head the ball for him. And let’s not forget that Yoshida is also prone to bad errors, so where does that leave us?

The game plan to me was not wrong. Without Hojbjerg, I think that was probably the best lineup and formation we had. The execution was ****. And not even for most of the game. We simply fell apart once we went down. I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing you can see on the training pitch.

 

Can someone on social media tweet the club to try and find out how many tickets we sold please.

 

Why weren’t you telling us for the last 6 months he’s average?

Where was your post two weeks ago telling us he’s average and we’re going down? Perhaps it’s just a knee jerk reaction to a very bad result.

 

Yeah, but that ain’t Ralph. All the talk has been about what Ralph wants to do with shipping people out, now, after losing the first game badly, the same old **** gets trotted out.

Ralph can’t ship out players nobody wants. We may still shift a couple more this month anyway.

Today was ****, but the reaction from some fans is way over the top.

 

I feel very perplexed & disappointed. Everything seemed positive up to today if only marginal. Burnley ..... boom! Barnes! what a ****ing surprise! Vestergaard howler! What a surprise! We capitulate & go down the plug hole away up north? Defence was basically same as last season & in the tough, grinders, failed! Miserably 3-0? yep even that surprised me. Same ****e as before. Forwards not taking chances, albeit difficult/snapshots but more importantly, defenders being absolute tossers & then a piss poor backbone! Won’t single out anyone but we have to change / correct. If we don’t then they are all culpable. Simple.

 

Andrew is our saviour! No, wait .... Andrew is a ****er, la laa laa la ...

 

Not everyone was talking up Hughes.

 

don't disagree at all. Blaming the manager for the clubs inability to shift overpaid, average players who signed when he wasn't even at the club is mental thinking.

I was surprised at how naively we set out for this one though. I noticed early on that we weren't pressing high up the pitch which surprised me. Our three forwards routinely retreated to just over the halfway line. I presume the intent was to draw the defence out and create space behind when we won the ball back. Just led to a scrum in midfield.

Redmond did a great job of unsettling them on his own when he got the space out left but we needed to be causing them more problems than we did on the right as well. Ings was notable by his absence and Adams struggled to compete physically and lacked quality in distributing the ball on a few ocassions.

We basically played them on their terms and stuck with it even though it looked by halftime as though a mistake would decide the game. No surprise it did and no surprise it was us as we have form in that area.

It was a flop across the board basically. I was disappointed in our tactical approach and more disappointed that we didn't change it early enough. I was looking at the clock at 60 and thinking it was past time to try something new. Then the games got away from us. Bringing Obafemi on ..to do what? We weren't exactly opening them up with distribution so his pace wasn't going to tip the balance. Bringing Boufal and PEH on at 3-0 was.. I don't know what.

 

I’m Not sure I want to see the game again, but I thought early on we did press them and won a few balls back. For 15 minutes or so I felt comfortable without being excited. Then they started lumping it forward and we stopped passing.

You can’t press a team who lump it forward and you can’t chase all day of you stop passing the ball. Then we collapsed

I don’t really agree with those who say we did ok defensively until the goal. I thought we looked nervy I’m the middle at the back and a couple of times nearly fecked up

 

I find it hard to get too het up over the first game of the season. 37 more to come and I was never expecting us to be near our best just yet.

The defending was disappointing once we let the first goal in, but it's far too early to throw the baby out with the bath water.

Let's see what happens over the next seven games.

 

Yes, like you and others have said Burnley’s style is hard to press against. Hasenhuttl alluded to this as well in his interview.

I thought we did an okay job of keeping the ball moving in the first half. It was a lot of backwards and sideways passing that didn’t amount to much, but some credit has to be given to Burnley for keeping a good shape and not giving us lanes or targets.

We looked a little nervy (because we are not good), but I felt like we were doing a reasonable keeping it together despite that and our confidence was growing. First game of the season, I will not blame anyone for a bit of shaky leg.

It’s why it was such a bummer that Vestergaard gave up the goal because I thought he and Bednarek were doing okay. I felt more that it was Stephens who was shaky and Gunn too, I thought was lumping the ball up when he did not have to. And yeah..then we collapsed.

Yes, so you keep reminding me, lol. Okay, ALMOST everyone was high on Hughes. And yes I do remember that you were not one of them. There were a handful of us. We know who we are.

 

Djenepo hasn’t played yet. He is going to be awesome.

I wonder why we play Ings the way we do. Not that he isn’t good at it, but I feel like maybe Armstrong could do it which might free him up to get into the box some more. He is probably our best finisher and one of our only two players who can score. And Armstrong might be third best (aside from JWP on free kicks).

 

Unfortunately sir this is not just one game or one loss, it is another game and another loss from a list of about 30 over the last 3 years, we start well, do not take our chances against a well drilled defense knowing it will come back and bite us in the ass, because defensively we are Championship level, and it does every time. Yes I have played football for 24 years and watched football for 50 years and recognize when things need to change and what area's things need to change to have a well balanced team to compete at a high level. This team has needed drastic changes in defense and they trot out the same players who played together last season and what did Ralph and the board expect, that somehow some pixie dust was sprinkled on them during the off season and poof,they would be premier level. I am not one of those questioning Ralphs managerial qualities because, like many on this forum we see what he has done for the team, working with what he has, but I have seen the same script played out over and over again, at least we did not lose from a winning position, something we hear every week on TV. Another thing is that Burnley are being flattered by this result, other teams will rip them apart if they play like they did for the first 60 minutes today. I am done ranting.

 

I think every fan knew we needed some changes in our defenders. No doubt about that.

I thought every fan knew (because the club told us) that we had to shift players before we could buy, once we’d signed a couple of players. We signed a winger and a striker (positions that for several windows fans had rightly been saying we needed) and were then told that players would have to leave before anymore came in. Now I know some are going to say “well we should have signed a defender first” but sometimes life isn’t like that and we signed the players that we wanted who cane available. And as sure as eggs are eggs, if we’d gone into this season without a new winger and striker, those fans would have been moaning.

Do some fans think we haven’t been trying to sell some of these players, that would allow us to buy knew ones? Sadly we couldn’t shift them. Now that is down to previous bad decisions on signings, or signings that haven’t worked out (again that happens). The club made it clear that players would have to go, whether to free up transfer fees or cash, but we were told this. We knew. The club can’t make players leave.... as several fans pointed out about Charlie. They have contracts.

Now we can understand that, or we can keep focusing on that negative and bring it up time and time again, because until the majority of those unwanted players are gone, that fact remains and the bit that gets me is THE CLUB TOLD US! I think it is healthier to understand and remember what was said, than to keep moaning about it. It is what it is.

It was **** yesterday, but it was just one game. It doesn’t mean the sky is falling in. We have a good coach who showed last season that he can work with poor players and we need to give him the patience and support that he can can do enough again whilst the club try to move players on in the next window.

I agree with what SotonOldboy said about Burnley being flattered, as I thought they were very poor until we made them look half decent. They will get beaten by other teams, but that is football. City got stuffed by Palace last season. Chelsea lost 5 to Bournemouth. It’s football.


Over the course of the season, there is going to be some more **** and some good. I’m ready for both.