The comment on MOTD, about Dibling only being 6 months old when Lallana made his debut for Saints reinforces the age difference between the two. I also liked, in the woefully brief after match comments that didn’t talk about Dibling’s contribution (I watched the Saintsplayer catch-up version so maybe it was truncated?) that they picked up on us not having anyone on the edge of the box when we defend corners. I mentioned it yesterday and I will keep banging that drum until it changes.
It doesn’t really matter whether whether it was 3 or 1 in the end. Are we getting to 35ish points this season? No Are there three teams worse than us? No Would we have a better chance with a different manager? Maybe slightly but not by so much it’s worth damaging the long term plan in place here We plod on
Our defending of set pieces is a massive issue and has been all season. Gonna continue to concede from them almost every week as teams will notice how weak we are there. Having seen the goal again it really is schoolboy stuff. Fernandes is a hell of a player and improving week by week. Joy to watch and gets up and down the pitch so well. Ramsdale made some excellent saves but his passing in the first half was atrocious and kept putting us under pressure. For yet another match we looked visibly worse after the triple sub. Kind of a damned if you do and damned if you don't situation for Martin as we all wanted him to be more proactive but making that many changes at once clearly isn't working. Contrary to others on here but I thought Stewart actually looked relatively bright in patches. Showed some lovely hold up play not long after coming on which Lesley wasted. He reminds me of Crouch though in that he doesn't really get off the floor.
Only have to look at the McCarthy save towards the end of the match at Wembley. Low in the corner down to his left; exactly the sort of shot Bazunu basically never saves.
Not sure about that. I think our best chance would be to try and make ourselves hard to beat and keep as many clean sheets as possible. We simply don't have enough goals in the team to play in the way Martin wants to and concede lots of goals in the process.
I maybe am being harsh on Stewart, but I just don't see anything in him. He looks like he feels he doesn't belong in the Premier League. I need to give him a chance maybe, but I think after a long layoff and then he comes back and finds himself in the Premier League it may be too much in one go for him. On that note, I feel for Armstrong. So much of us being here this year is down to him and his goals and assists last year. I think he has a mental problem too, in that his last two seasons with us and Blackburn previously in the Championship he has been on fire, but never been that prolific in the Premier League. Maybe in his mind there is that niggling doubt that he may not be good enough. He is such a confidence player and just needs to come on, score and then I think we will see more of last year's Adam.
He isn't good enough though if we're being honest. It was obvious last time we were in the PL and even last season that the championship is just his level. No real shame in that though. It is what it is.
Actually, let's look at it - PL level players: Ramsdale Sugawara KWP Fernandes Dibling Lallana Potential PL players: THB ABK Downes Archer Les SAA Cornet PL players on a good day: Beddy Wee Man Championship level players: Stephens Taylor Aribo Armstrong BBD Stewart McCarthy Wood Who knows what they are: Sulemana Bazunu
Lallana was superb. Love the way he communicates and organises. We lost a huge amount when he went off.
I'm happy that he has had this chance for redemption back here, he has always been a class player and it showed yesterday.
Plenty of great Championship strikers have never made the step up, for one reason or another. Just off the top of my head: Ross McCormack. Jordan Rhodes. Dwight Gayle. Billy Sharp. Grant Holt. David Nugent. As you say, no shame in it; that's an illustrious list of some of the Football League greats.
Yeah there’s an old adage: if you can’t score, don’t concede. A back line of sugawara, THB, Bednarek and KWP with ramsdale should be keeping more out. I think?
It’s just odd as you would still expect a top championship striker to have occasional success in the PL. it’s weird how he doesn’t even get a sniff of the ball.
I'd be looking for a new set piece defensive specialist coach. The amount we concede from them will see us relegated if things don't drastically improve.
Not the only issue, but it’s not hard to leave a player on the edge of the box at corners to contest that second ball. Weird that we haven’t reacted to that keep happening when it’s costing us. Seems so basic. For some reason we leave massive gaps on the left too. Thought it was just a KWP playing out of position thing when it was Diallo for Man Utd last week, but it was the same yesterday. Acres of space. Other weird things with our ‘tactics’: There was a free kick or corner (don’t remember which) against us from our right not long before we conceded, and there were 3 Ipswich players lined up on our left before you got to the first Saints player. Ball was so obviously going there, it did, and they should have scored from it. We had a free kick maybe 25 yards out second half. Ipswich didn’t leave a single player up, and yet we had 5 players behind the free kick. Chance to put a ball into the box? Nah mate, chance to pass it back to the GK. And lo and behold, free kick didn’t go anywhere near their box and went back to Ramsdale 3 passes later. Infuriating. How do you create chances, scare the opposition and score goals? Attack with pace, move the ball at pace, run with pace. So when we win the ball in the oppositions half and they are not set defensively, that’s the perfect time to take advantage and attack right? Nope. Pretty much every time that happened (and not just yesterday), we immediately passed it back to the defence and slowed it down again. The opposition reset and then funnily enough, we found it difficult to pass it around them. I just don’t get it.
As I said last season ….our manager had a successful career as a defender…..but our defending now he’s our manager, questionable.
On the gaps out wide thing I think it's a deliberate tactic to force teams out there. Which would be fine if we actually made an effort to go to the man and block crosses which we don't appear to a lot of the time.
