Southampton v Leeds United 30th September 2023 at St Mary’s Stadium please log in to view this image Another early morning getting up at 2.40am for the lunchtime kick-off at St Mary’s. As it’s been pointed out to me by some of our long-distance fans, they do this for every home game so in reality we are lucky living closer to Elland Road. The good thing is that I travel by coach from Leeds, so I did sleep most of the way there and back. I nearly didn’t go to bed beforehand as I’d been at a family party but was told by my children, I needed to get some sleep. At our pub stop in Winchester, this was cut short by 30 minutes when we were all kicked out of Wetherspoons, through no fault of our own I may add. Severe maintenance issues shut the pub. We arrived in Southampton to glorious sunshine and arrived back in Yorkshire to downpours after a 17 hour plus round trip, sadly to see us lose. It was good to catch up with my nephews at the end of the game and also thanks to all those who gave me positive feedback today which is greatly appreciated. Team: Meslier, Cooper, Struijk, Shackleton, Byram, Kamara, Ampadu, James, Summerville, Piroe, Rutter. Subs: Gray for Kamara (73), Anthony for Summerville (73), Bamford for James (81). Subs not used: Darlow, Ayling, Rodon, Gruev, Gelhardt, Poveda. Leeds lost the game 3-1 with Struijk scoring the Leeds goal (58). Attendance: 30,372; 2,825 Leeds fans. Referee: John Brooks. Booked: Kamara, Cooper. Today was a very poor performance from Leeds against a side who were always going to raise their game against us. I’m sorry to say that Farke has to take ownership of the tactics and team formation put out today. Not changing the team when they scored an early goal, especially when we were under the cosh from the start was a big mistake as far as I’m concerned. Personally, I would have had Rodon back in defence with Struijk back on the left-hand side where he is strongest. Southampton were quicker out of the starting blocks today but the one thing they kept doing was rugby tackling our players and roughing them up. How they didn’t have anyone sent off is beyond me, especially when we look at how Rodon was sent off the other week. His first booking shouldn’t have happened, but he still ended up sent off, whereas today, the referee had second thoughts about giving them another booking which would have reduced them to 10 men. Swings and roundabouts and no consistency. Although I haven’t seen the replays of the game so far, it was mentioned their first goal was offside and there was a handball incident. I’ll have a look when I can at those incidents although it probably wouldn’t have made a difference to the score, as we left them too much room and able to dictate the play for too long periods today. Despite being three goals down at half time, the 4-3 comeback scoreline of previous years didn’t look remotely possible even after Struijk scored to pull a goal back. The first half saw us a goal down within the first couple of minutes which meant we were up against it from the word go. The nearest we came to scoring was a superb effort from Rutter when he hit a long range shot that forced their keeper to make a great save. There were a few times when we did look up for the game, but they were few and far between to be honest. Southampton increased their lead after the half hour mark where we should have changed the formation but instead, four minutes later they scored a third goal giving us an uphill battle for the rest of the game. There was a great atmosphere under the stand at half time and I know some were undecided whether to come back up into the seats or not for the second half. As it was Struijk pulled a goal back then James, Piroe and Rutter saw their keeper make saves as Southampton held on to the lead and a comfortable victory on the day. Back to the drawing board and you’d have thought the team had travelled down through the night like we did the way they played. Southampton were the better team on the day, and we will now have to pull our socks up with the two home games this week against QPR and Bristol City. See you there, LUFC – Marching on Together! please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image please log in to view this image
In the prematch interview with the saints manager he said he was pleased with the aggression and intensity they had worked on in training. Also as an ex player at Norwich under farke and having been sidelined, I think he'd have worked harder on his gameplan. Also knowing Farkes methods would have helped. Lessons to be learned from from this. Very disappointing performance and result, given saints previous form.
Thanks I didn’t realise he’d played under Farke but no doubt he’d want to beat him even more then. I knew we’d be their cup final but didn’t expect things to go wrong so quickly. Something to take into account for future games is that we have to be up for the fight from kick off
