When we play badly, I try to look for positives; when we play well, I try to look for negatives. I don't pick on players unfairly. I have never blamed Baz, and Le Tiss is, and always will be, my favourite football player of all time, Saints or otherwise. Can't believe I have to justify analysing football on a football forum. Back to the puns I guess.
I agree with your general point that it was a big part of why we went down but I always said I didn't really blame him as it wasn't his fault he wasn't good enough. It was a mental decision to put a young and inexperienced keeper in that position especially with such a poor defence and a lack of goals in the team. This is the league he should have been in last year and you can see that by how much he's improving as the weeks go on. Think the early support from Martin and fans at games have helped with that too.
Exactly! It’s a huge testament to his character that he is still here and fighting. But it was a disgrace from the club to throw him in like that
Plus one for enjoying that too. I agree with CGT that Manning is miles out of position in the example he showed too. I don't think it's exactly a big secret that positioning is a big flaw for him. I often wonder if he's more of a wing back tbh.
So basically we are saying it was Bazunus fault, but he is isn't to blame, glad we sorted that one out. As for Manning in the last game, he let us down by not being in two places at once but was somewhere in between. I have always been literate in gibberish, it's got me to where I am today.
No, Manning’s positioning was off by about 5 or 10 yards - which has been an area of concern all season. He didn’t let the side down as Swansea fluffed it. It is still a valid criticism. No winger should have 3 seconds on the ball before anyone gets near them. It is too long. We have been guilty of it too often. I am not sure what makes this an invalid criticism?
No. He only needed to be in one place. Instead he was practically holding Bednarek's hand. Let's face it, it's not the first time he's f*cked up. At fault against Cov. At fault the last time we played Plymouth in fact. I praised him in the one or two games when he played well, by the way.
As I saw it in the first half, he was left alone trying to mark two players in a big space down their right, Edozie or Stu should have been backing him up, but were nowhere in sight, if Swansea had a couple of decent wingers we would have been picked off.
Being left alone I can accept, but go look at the images Che posted. He has gone so narrow he is literally in the D. This means he cannot get to his man if they switch flanks. He needs to be more than 5 feet from his CB.
I must admit that seeing those wide open areas with no visible protection was worrying me, but maybe RM figured that the threat was negligible and set it up that way?
Personally, I think there are far better examples of poor defending by Manning than the one being discussed. Yes the Swansea player has been left with acres of space - but it's their RB. That's hardly Manning's man to mark. He really wasn't very happy with Stu and Edozie immediately afterwards. And it's something which I kept a close eye on, and the very next time Swansea's RB tried to attack down that side, Stu was far closer to him.
I think I have mentioned it before, but sometimes it appears that some clown has tied Mannings bootlaces together, he seems to get his feet tied up in a knot.
Saints v Plymouth Hoe, Hoe, Hoe 'tis the season to be jolly. I can't stand friendlies at the best of times but I went to a pre season friendly at Plymouth once. Why I don't know but we were ****e and ended up getting relegated that season (2004/05). Plymouth had just been promoted to the Championship and during that season had no less than 6 ex Saints playing for them. Jason Dodd, Ryan Dickson, Paul Wotton, Micky Evans, and Dexter Blackstock. (Dickson became a Saint later.) The only other time was when we all but confirmed promotion to the Championship from League 1 in 2011. It should be a happy memory but the home fans threw rocks at us on the way out, hitting a young girl standing next to me. Unfortunately, that is my abiding memory of Plymouth and Home Park. I can't add anything else about Plymouth other than the Hoe is a lovely place to sit and look out to sea. If only Southampton had a sea front that could be developed into an amenity for the locals to enjoy. Head to head Games won:33 Games drawn:26 Games lost:34 Over the course of our history they have put 6 past us on 3 occasions, while we have scored 5 against them 4 times. All of those high scoring games were in or before 1964. Since then there has nearly always been goals but nothing remarkable. We have won our last 2 games against them (both at home Park), but beware, we have only beaten them once in our last 5 home matches between us.
Me too. But then I was the same for the Swansea game. For me I think it’s that we’re ‘due a loss’. In this case, a few days after a thumping win it would be easy to take our eyes off the ball against a side who hasn’t yet won away from home. Another potential banana skin of a game.
