Last season doesn’t matter to those who desperately want Ralph to succeed here. He’s been given another chance but you can’t just ignore everything that happened before because you like Ralph. I can’t understand this starting 11 finishing 11 crap. Play your best team, get the game won by 60 minutes. What are we trying to achieve: protecting a 0-0 then bring on some good players to win the game late on?
1st bit 100% 2nd bit I sort of get the theory but Ralph! mix it up a bit. Jeez, everyone on here know the tactic so you can stick your mortgage on it Gerrard et al will have worked that out as well.
Playing well but still losing, that’s a real concern. When we play well we need to be getting points, when we play badly we won’t. Yes we’re losing 1-0 not 4-0 but we still concede and don’t score. I don’t think it’s Ralph’s fault that we’re not scoring, we don’t have a goal scoring striker. But we need to grind out a few 0-0’s and Ralph doesn’t seem to be able to do that.
It's the style of play, not the players at fault. Che was given absolutely nothing last night. Same as Broja last season. 2 defensive midfielders leads to slow passing around the defence followed by either hopeless long balls, or a pass out wide to a player who has an entire opposition team ahead of him. This is how we played, and failed, last season. Why did we go back to it last night and refuse to change? Try stuff sure, but when it clearly doesn't work, change something. Putting on different players in the same flawed system and hoping for the best has rarely worked out for us.
Can anyone explain why JWP is playing CDM? I thought he was playing a more advanced role for the past 2 seasons?
After watching the match last night, I felt that Saints still have a strange ability to implode for no reason. Players change but there is a constant fear factor. It was awful last night but on reflection, I’m glad it happened against Villa. Most other teams would have put a handful past that team. Other teams never seem to have these collapses of confidence. It was like watching a Sunday league team with players chasing the ball. We couldn't pass, tackle, do the basics after two weeks of training. Not having a meltdown ,just mystified.
In this instance, last year is relevant. We pretty much played with last years team from the start, and we had a last year performance….
Yes, teams that will attack us and allow space when we win the ball. The lesser teams can, and will, just let us twat about at the back as they get into position.
With you on that. That's the timing for a revision of management as I said before. But I do have a lot of sympathy for those who paid to go and watch this stuff. I think if I'd been at Villa last night, my reasoning may have been sorely tested.
Ralph is quite rightly under closer scrutiny this season because of the end of last season's abysmal form and the fact that he has been strongly backed in the transfer market. I defended him at the start of last season because the previous season bad run was due to many unfortunate circumstances beyond his control but not so with March to May. He is not helping himself by starting the the same players from the poor run and even others that were deemed by him not good enough to get in that team at the time! You can't help but feel that we are only a couple of bad performances from going on another damaging poor run.
I'm a lot more confident in the defence this season. Yes clean sheets would be nice, but they aren't an essential part of winning a match. A team should still be able to win when conceding once. Yes, conceding two or three makes it difficult to win, but just the one shouldn't. So the fact that three of our four defeats have been 1-0 leads to me look in one direction only: up front. For all the good that the new ownership did in the transfer window (and it really was good), they failed to deliver us a goal scoring striker. It doesn't matter how hard they might have tried, or how close they might have come. They failed. As you say, we don't have one. And until we get one, we are always going to be significantly handicapped. The last time Villa kept a clean sheet was April. Against Norwich. April was also the last time that Wolves won a match. Both were very beatable. I appreciate that the January transfer is not the ideal time to making a major signing. But we might just have to get over that. Paying more in January is the punishment for not getting the job done in the summer.
I think that’s what Ralph does. What other reason could he have found to keep starting Ely and dropping Stu?
100%. Every saints fan I know and the majority on social media saw the team and thought “wtf is that” last night. Says it all. We all knew from LAST YEAR that these players are ****e. Yet he leaves our new stars on the bench. Totally inexplicable just like the opening day of the season.
