Typical Hojbjerg performance last night; got the assist for their first goal, in some nice link up pkay, than promptly became anonymous before getting subbed off.
I defend the right of anyone to be an awkward bastard. I'm taking the grumpy old fart line, humfuckingbug!
I am thinking of changing my vote to Ralph out. I am sorry Ralph but drawing home and away to both city and utd drawing at home with ten men against spurs and beating them away is just not what Saints do
We all go on about jinxes and counter-jinxes (well, okay I do anyway). Maybe the Ralph-outers we’re just playing the long game. Fair play to that.
I stand by every word I said!! 2 x 9-0, tactically inept etc etc Look, he's got us playing some nice stuff, and it's been a hell of a week football wise, but..... No, there's no buts. He's doing rather well. As it goes, I like moaning. It's one of my favourite ever past times, and if I was all happy clapper the world would go slightly off kilter. Someone needs to be in the #RalphOut camp just to keep him on his toes (in the unlikely event he reads this) **I'll think about changing my vote and the end of the season, when we've got a PL safety and a shiny FA cup**
Back when we were on our terrible run I wouldn’t have held it against the club (to sack him). All the ingredients were there and he is a great coach, but the results were poor and it’s his 3rd season. But he’s shown he’s the right man for the job, at this point in time. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It’s also wonderful to shout “I told you so!”.
I think that most of us recognised the difficulty in managing a thin squad that had a freakish amount of injuries and without the facility to get players back quickly last season. All things being equal Ralph's record stands up against well against previous managers and the fact that he takes the cups seriously and we play an exciting brand of football is all in his favour.
I think one thing he's learned is that you can't all our press for 90 minutes week in week out and regularly win games. We're a lot smarter with our pressing now and our game management has improved hugely. I also feel like the big difference this season is that we're having more games (or half's) where our performance is just an average 6/10 compared to most of Ralph's reign where we've bounced from unbelievably good to horrendously bad and not had a lot in between. It's allowed us to build more consistency and stability. It's also clear how much more comfortable he feels now its more like his own squad. The quality at FB has helped immeasurably too as Tom (I think) mentioned yesterday.
The performances this season have been generally good (not bad enough to sack a manager) compared to the second half of last season and the results have started to come now. I think that fans were tacking on last season on to this one without taking everything into account, I said that if the results hadn't changed then Xmas was a good time to review things but thankfully things have turned. Sacking Ralph too early would've been a gamble and unwarranted IMO.
