Harry say's

Agreed. Chelsea are a little bit crap.

 

We could have had 99% of possession and if we lost it would still have been crap. We can't and never have been able to take our chances no team should have as many chances as us in a game and only score one goal. As I said on the match thread as soon as Lambert gets marked out game or has a off day I worry about us.

 

You have to convert a percentage of your chances. We are making a lot which is good but Beef is right we need to be more clinical in front of goal.

 

Figures courtesy of Squawka.com.

7 Shots On Target 3
8 Shots Off Target 2
6 Blocked Shots 2
6 Corners 3
7 Fouls 16
80% Pass Completion % 60%
82% Tackle Success % 71%
59% Possession % 41%

Still think you were the better team, Ellers?

Don't mistake winning for playing well. You won, but don't get carried away that that somehow means you played well...

And, if you're interested, I've seen the same for us, games we won despite being dire (e.g. Leeds last year) but I didn't fool myself that we'd played better than Leeds. We were woeful and won but at least I'm aware of it. Something you appear to have missed yesterday.

Vin

 

Get a sense of proportion!

"We can't and never have been able to take our chances" Really? REALLY? I wonder how the ball ended up in the net against Man City twice the other week? Or Newcastle last week? Or Wigan? Seven goals in four matches. Over the season we have scored the same as or more than:

QPR
Reading
Villa
Wigan
Newcastle
Sunderland
Norwich
West Ham
Stoke
Fulham
West Brom
Swansea

I'm afraid that shows a statement like yours to be factually false. Or are you really saying we didn't score enough yesterday? I'l agree with that but not the hysterical claim that we're never able to take our chances.

Vin

 

I agree that we have had many games in the recent past (particularly last season and the season before) where we have failed to convert a number of good chances, but I certainly wouldn't say that that was the case yesterday.

There wasn't one single chance of ours that I said "we should have scored that". We didn't miss any sitters, we only forced Cesar/Green into one decent save. The stats may say we had 13 shots, 9 on-target (or whatever the actual numbers were), but they don't say how good the chances were.

For all our possession and control, I didn't think we created any great chances, and I didn't think we ever looked like scoring. It was the lack of creating, not the lack of converting, imo.

 

I mean when Lambert has a bad game which is fact, we don't have enough clinical finishers in our team. Look at last season it was the same, it ended up costing us the league. You can go on about the games we have scored a few but I would bet 80% of them is when Lambert has bossed the other teams defence. We aren't clinical enough in a hell of a lot of our games, if I could be arsed I'd look the stats up. Even in Stoke game we should have had more then 3 if finish our chances.

 

But that's the whole point if we had players that were more clinical or able to shoot. The chances we had yesterday even tho a lot were long shots would have gone in. I do still think we will stay up by btw, but having only missed about 10 games in three seasons the same thing comes up time after time.

 

Can we just agree that yesterday not much went right (which can happen to any teams) and revisit this if we perform badly in next few games. Hopefully, this was a one off.

 

Yeah credit to Redknapp, but when even he can outwit you you're doing something wrong.

Point about the bottom team never being the worst one is rubbish though! They might not be but never? Really?

And to everyone saying we created a lot of chances, no we didn't. Not every shot is a chance. We had more shots than QPR but they had the better chances.

 

I think you can argue about which team had the most possession, shots on goals, territorial advantage and so forth and reach the correct conclusion that what the statistics say contradict the final result of the match. But there can be no argument that over the course of the season to date the Rs have been the worst team. We have been, at times, absolutely dreadful. There were not that many QPR fans that predicted a win yesterday, and those that did were most probably eternal optimists letting their hearts rule the heads.

On the basis of what was served up to both sets of fans yesterday, you would have to say that neither side performed that well; QPR just managed to put away their few chances, whereas Saints didn't. It was no more complicated than that.

That Southampton continue to pass the ball around well and create chances suggests to me that they'll be fine. Rangers are by no means out of the woods.

 

I think I agree. Trying to beat Samba in the air isn't a chance, and neither is J-Rod firing off pot shots from distance (all credit to him though, someone had to do something).

 

Okay, Derby. They were the worst team in the league from the first to last game, but usually the teams in the bottom three are playing pretty well at this point in the season.

On Redknapp, everyone on here is going to disagree with me, and I'd suggest that's mainly down to bias, but I actually think he's a better-than-average manager with good tactical awareness and very good at getting the most out of his players. And prepare your pitchforks because I'm going to say something that will really anger the Saints hivemind now.......I'd be happy for him to manage us again in the future, should the situation ever arise.

 

Really? That's not in disagreement with your opinion, but do you really think it'd be worth the backlash?

 

If Harry ever returned to Saints (which thankfully he would never want to) he would have to promise never to be photographed, filmed or interviewed (and a burkha when on the touchline would be most appreciated).

 

I think most of our fans would get over it pretty quickly. I'm giving them a little credit here in assuming that they're not as petty and self-destructive as Chelsea fans, and would realize that a negative atmosphere is very damaging. Also most fans have a lot of faith in Cortese's decisions.

 

Yeah ok, someone like Mata or Rooney might have scored that dipping volley of Lallana's or the curling effort of Jay's which landed on the roof of the net, but to me they were no more than half chances. If you're being critical of our players for not scoring chances like that, then I think that is very, very harsh.

Ok, a more powerful CB than Yoshida might have smashed that header so hard, that Green would have only been able to palm it up into the roof of the net, but that is really the only missed chance which I think criticism is possibly justified.

We have missed some absolutely glorious chances in the past few years, but not yesterday.

 

Was he? To me it just looked like a certain 12mill player had him in his pocket. It's all very well saints fans saying they deserved to win. But your goal came from a keeping error, and we only had one proper save to make during the second half. Green's dive to his right from that long shot was a piece of cake.

 

Clinical finishers are a rarity, that's why Man Utd are willing to break the bank for players like Robin Van-Persie, and why Chelsea took a punt on Demba Ba. Can you name one side in the EPL that's choc full of clinical finishers? I can't. Of course we struggle when our leading goalscorer is marked out of the game, but we have other players who can contribute from all over the pitch. And QPR under Harry have been very hard to score against.

No need to start worrying unduly, we weren't Champions League quality after we beat Man City, and we're not going back to the Championship because we got beat by QPR. Keep things in perspective I reckon.

 

I'm not getting carried away as I have said I still feel we will stay up, but we badly need more players that can score. I'm not on about world class players either just players that can stick it in the back of the net like Sharp did for us last year in the few games he actually played.