Ralph’s had a whole year now. He is - results-wise - no better than Hughes. So why the mad f*cking bum-love for him? The previous two seasons we have sacked our managers and stayed up as a result. Now suddenly this is a bad idea. Explain the logic there.
Just looked at Saints fixtures and I can’t see us getting any meaningful amount of points until we play Watford away. I know this is defeatist, but we are a fragile team that only needs a puff of wind to throw us. The team today is about as good as it could be, but it was obvious from 5 minutes that they weren’t up for a fight. We cannot hope for there to be three teams worse than us. I know we’ve got away with it for two seasons, but we’ve run out of chances.
I've got little doubt that Sam would get more out of this side than Ralph, at the moment. However, I am still very much in the Ralph-in camp. I'm hankering for a change of players (ha, good luck getting that next month), not a change of manager. But given our run of fixtures after the Villa match, if we lose that then I'll very much be expecting a change in manager - whether straight away, or at some point over the weeks which follow.
Tactically though, what is Ralph bringing to the table? He doesn't seem to be able to change a game whilst it's in progress and he sure as **** doesn't seem to be able to coach the players during the rest of the week. Why the love for him? What do fans of Ralph think he actually does that Hughes for example, didn't?
It's more that Ralph's failure to exceed Hughes/Pellegrino seems like a strong argument that the problem is with the eleven on the pitch, not the guy yelling at them from the dugout. It's alarming if we need to sack a manager each year to get a few weeks of effort from the players before they go back to being useless.
I've mentioned a few times over the past couple years that my benchmark for poor decision-making is "does this seem like a move that Sunderland would make?" The answer has been yes more times than I would prefer...
Who are currently slumming it in mid-table in L1. And yet some people seem to suggest that relegation wouldn't be a bad thing for us. Sunderland are living proof that it can be a total disaster.
Great end to a great week. My car broke down yesterday as well. ****ing good job I don’t have a cat. I’m only going to say one thing about the game; Danny Ings so deserved a goal. But the team didn’t.
This the key debate: Is the squad/team good enough for Prem survival and more? I personally believe they are. Ralph/Rohl proved the team is capable last season. I don’t know why, but Ralph’s tactics/ team selections have been so weird this season. The same squad that were so confident last season, are suddenly so fragile.
One benefit of being relegated to the Championship is that we get two games a week to get annoyed at.
We are still much better now than we were under Pellegrino and Hughes, I dont care what anyone says. He is hamstrung by awful players with zero confidence. But you can see there is a plan there. Under Hughes and Pellegrino, I was despondent. With RH, we have a chance. I really dont trust the scouting of the club to get anyone better this time, to be honest. I know everyone is sick of it, but we were genuinely unlucky last week and today. We have got better.
Sheff Utd and Brighton this season. But that’s irrelevant. It’s f*cking football tactics 101 that you put an extra defender on if you are winning away from home against better quality opposition. Unless you are Liverpool or Barcelona. We are sh*t defensively and up front. So its still better to go defensive.
Because sacking everyone else has made no difference!We have had a succession of nobody managers who seemed to not give a toss. I’m in favour of not sacking the one who obviously does. I’m firmly of the mind that until the playing squad gets a decent shake up nothing will change by sacking the manager. Luck has kept us up each time not good management, proved by the fact that they’ve all been sacked. With 6 games to go the players - led by JWP every time - find some fight and scrape through. Skin of teeth stuff.
Mainly because he took over a poor squad and said towards the end of the season we needed a good clear out. In reality (and we all know the reasons). we haven't been able to offload as many players as we wanted and the rebuild has to wait until we do. Our transfers under Hughes, MP2 and Puel have not worked out well. He's brought in Ings, Danso and Djenepo so 2 out of 3 good ones and Danso still in with a chance of being a top signing. So I'll support him until he's made the changes he feels he needs. If that means dropping to the Championship so be it. I think the board should stick by him. The game was rubbish today. Too slow again. Too many players looking nervous and making silly mistakes but a couple of decent defenders in January could make a world of difference. If he keeps us up during the rebuild on and off the pitch that will be some achievement.
Fair enough, I was being flippant but I’m probably not alone in thinking that we can’t defend a lead. We have lost more points from winning positions than we have won.
We were still a defensive nightmare last season even during the upswing in results. My suspicion is that the players are a bit hesitant to flood forward in the way they did initially, having gotten bitten a few times, but IMO that's the only way we can get results. We aren't competent enough to set up defensively...we need to try and outscore teams, and to accomplish that we need to outwork them again.
