Very good point. The best form of defence is attack. However, it seems our new striker won’t arrive until toward the end of the window so the coaches have clearly focused on making the defence more solid with the new formation. It failed today although in fairness we are unlikely to have a tougher opponent all season. 4-2-2-2 will return soon.
Anyone who thought we wouldn't get a beating today is more than a little naïve. This team will take several games to settle and as we all know Ralph's team selection and substitutions are absolute ****.
They shouldn’t be though should they? The quality of players was unavoidable but team selection and subs are controllable.
Just had a read through. I didn't think it was quite as bad as a lot of others did tbh. It's just the meekness of it which is hard to take. I've never known such a spineless and soft team. We were playing fairly well for 20/30 minutes as soon as they went 2-1 up you could see it was game over and we had no belief or desire to get back into it. The striker situation is just plain odd. Armstrong was 4th choice behind Long last season and yet suddenly is back in favour. Once the game turned we were crying out for someone to hold the ball up up top and yet we left the only player who can do that on the bench. Reckon Che will be off in the coming weeks. Even if he doesn't we still desperately need another striker. Don't think this formation suits us at all. Far too defensive and that doesn't solve our issues at the back as today showed. Made it far too easy for Spurs in the end and I don't even think they played particularly well tbh. There's absolutely no chance they're gonna sack Ralph after this and nor should they. I'd be very concerned
Ive backed Ralph to the hilt, I want it to work out, I like him but we have given him his chances and he has to go. What the **** has he been doing in preseason? We have a league one standard left winger at left back, a league 2 standard right back at centre back, two midfielders up front. Our best striker sat on the bench. Our new CB signing isn’t even considered the 6th best CB. ****ing shambles. We will go down if he keeps doing this stuff.
To start with a positive (probably the only one), I thought there was promise from the three CMs - very tidy. Definitely something to work with there. I mean, it's not like we have much to work with right now, so probably best to start with that. Granted there wasn't much creativity between them, but that's fine. They're CMs, not no10s. Unfortunately, sticking three CBs behind them immediately leaves us struggling at the other end of the pitch. Even if all three of those CBs were actually good enough, that isn't a great position to be in. 4-3-3 seemed like such an obvious formation to play. But as odd as it was to leave us starting with so little attacking threat, it was nothing compared to the decision to remove it altogether at HT. At least we were still in the game in the first half. But to remove our only striker...it just gave Spurs license to attack us at will. For a large part of last season, I thought Ralph had turned a corner with his subs. He seemed to be calling them right. But with the exception of Perraud for Djenepo, all the subs today were a total head-scratcher. Whether because of who came on, or who came off, or who didn't come on.
Looks like I didn't finish my post lol. What I mean by concerned is that if they're gonna pull the plug after just a handful of games then they should have just done it after Leicester. To do it now would be baffling imo. Leeds next week already looking huge for him though. For what its worth for all the talk of having poor defenders, I think a lot of it is just Ralph and I don't feel he'll ever get the defence sorted. A lot managers simply can't coach a defence (eg Howe, Martinez) and I think he might be another one of those. It's why I don't feel like this back 3 experiment is going to work, particularly when playing with 3 CM's. Should probably give it a bit longer if that's the way he's going to go mind. Be interesting to see how he lines up next week.
Totally agreed. As DTLW said we have ****e defenders.. why are you putting more of them on the field? We set up as negatively and defensively as we could today.. 3DMs and 3CBs and we still conceded 4 and should have conceded more. Just go ****ing high press attacking again, at least thats fun to watch.
I only watched the first half. As soon as Salisu got his season off to a blinder in the 2nd I skipped ahead and then skipped right to the end. To be honest I was expecting 5 or 6 so 4-1 was a surprise! I might watch the 2nd half later. Maybe. Positives in the first half for me were the debutants, great to get new players on the pitch and see some great potential there. Djenepo was playing well and looked good I thought, KWP is such a player, hope he survived that because it was brutal on him and he wont last a season with that kind of abuse. I've seen people call us meek and passive but first half was working. I think Ralph might have got a bit carried away with his ambition at HT, keeping us in the game would have made more sense rather than trying to fix something that wasn't actually broken. The doubts keep building and creeping up, he has the players at his disposal, he has had the opportunity to experiment in pre-season and then playing 2 10s with no strikers appears experimental to me so I'd have to stop and have a good think about what he was trying to do and I cant be bothered. There's a clear sense that this was more of the same and in that sense its the worst possible outcome for Ralph. Id have taken the 2-1 defeat as a positive, collapsing once again, not really anything good in that. Anyway onwards to a very solid looking Leeds, playing the kind of football we used to be good at. Eek.
Tide turned at the end of last season imo. Speaking to others at Brentford and yesterday there's very few who believe he will turn it around.
Our mental fragility seems to have been a problem for years now. There isn't a Saints fan around that thinks a one goal lead is enough for us, and when we go behind that's pretty much it, barring the odd exception of course. Then we can't seem to stem the tide afterwards. I don't know how you address that or coach that, but it doesn't seem as if it's being addressed or coached. Maybe it's just an early blip. We'll find out soon enough.
Think we signed 6 new players with none being sold and we still had at least 3 players playing out of position. (I'd suggest JWP and Romeu were also in unfamiliar roles). Something is not right there. Pump as many bodies in defence as you like, but if they don't know what they're doing, don't be blaming them when quality Prem opposition run riot. Used to be a supporter of Ralph, last season saw me lose patience with him, sadly this season might see me become vocal opposition to him. We did have some lovely fast passing moves during the game which was nice, and hopefully we get an actual striker soon. Also to dump this unpopular opinion right at the end lol... Stu is lightweight and a liability. Play him vs crap teams, keep him out vs the good ones!
No but equally I think quite a few think it’s too early to be talking about changes on the coaching side so soon after we’ve made several changes on the coaching side
His failure to address the problems in central defence will be his legacy unless someone is brought in before the end of the window. It is ridiculous that he has to change his whole formation and tactics just to accommodate an extra CB because there aren't two that he can trust in a back four. Bedders, Lyanco and Stephens are not leaders and the others are too inexperienced to lead the back line. It is time to ditch the 3 CBs experiment because it massively compromises the forward press and sometimes attack is the best form of defence and i'd rather see another creative player in the team (Aribo and Stuey preferably).
It's almost at the point where we don't want to score first - which is a ridiculous thing to say. My first reaction to scoring is elation. But within seconds it turns to thinking "oh, three more points dropped from a winning position". It's become so normalised now, that it's just expected. Fraser was probably saying the same thing to his new colleagues on the bench when JWP struck; "don't worry guys, I know them, that's the points in the bag for us".
Yeah as soon as we scored yesterday I knew it wouldn’t last long. We scored way too early and it just woke them up Yesterdays result was completely expected tbh, we aren’t anywhere near Spurs level. The top 6 will have that kind of score line a lot at home against bottom half teams. Think there has been a bit of an over reaction in regards to it, probably due to optimism being built over the summer. Leeds next week is a much bigger indicator of how the season might go.
