Forget the 2 softish goals we conceded and the unlucky injuries to Dejan and Gaston, this match gave me more encouragement than any other this season. It has been a fear amongst us Saints fans whether there could be life after Cortese, if he should ever leave, well the Lads and the manager put those fears to bed with what I would say was probably our most dominant display of controlled, possession football this season and all this with the soccer world waiting for us to implode. Everyone had their part to play, but special praise should go to Cork, Shaw and Rodriguez, who were all superb today. I'm feeling very positive for a top 8 finish and hopefully a cup run and I hope that the injuries are not as serious as they looked.
For me, the players should be professional enough to do their jobs, and losing a chairman should hardly affect their performance. In my opinion it was just another game that we should have got more from. Until we can learn to close out games like that, we will remain where we are, at best. Sorry if that sounds awfully pessimistic, but that's the truth as I see it.
Point taken PTF, but if we play as well as we did today for the rest of the season we will win more ganes than we lose IMO.
Agreed, but Sunderland were also bog-awful in the first half. The second half was probably more representative of the opposition we're going to be facing in this league.
I don't understand what happened in the second half, does somebody have a decent explanation? Huge gaps in our defence suddenly started to appear, we were all over the place. It seems as if we continued to play pressing game with our forward players trying to close down their center backs, and Sunderland just commited more players forward and hoofed the ball up front and when they collected the hoofed ball, we just could't cover all of their players.
They got a rocket up their backsides at half-time obviously, and we seemed to get overrun a bit in midfield when their subs came on. I was a bit puzzled why we waited so long to use ours, but with the injuries it's a good job we did.
Until we learn how to deal with physical teams and those that like the ball in the air a lot we are going to struggle against quite a few teams. West Ham, Stoke and Newcastle are in this bracket. Sunderland went very physical in the second half after seemingly starting the match to sit back and play counter attack. Its a recurring problem and one that the teams above us are better at dealing with.
Yeah, but that's the downside of pressing high as a team, I guess...perhaps we need a plan b when those tactics are deployed against us. It cannot be denied, however, that we played some wonderful, flowing football today which helped us to gain the upperhand and we certainly deserved the 3 points IMO. I do think that Callum Chambers lacked a bit of presence today and we missed Nat Clyne's defensive nous and unfortunatey wasn't one of Artur's dominant displays.
Despite the aggresive nature in the 2nd half we didn't come close to a caution, it would have been easy to retaliate against some of the rough stuff, but as we were getting few decision going our way I guess discretion was the better part of valour.
Just in case it hasn't been pointed out, Artur was playing while injured for much of the second half. Davis warmed up but Artur stayed on. Thank goodness he did, otherwise we'd have been down to ten players by the time Ramirez and Lovren were injured.
I've just finished watching the 90 minutes. Yes, the first and second half performances were very different, but don't let us run away with the idea that we were poor in the second half. Sunderland just got better and stood up as opposition rather than getting blown away in a first half, where they were like rabbits caught in the headlights. The real problem Saints have is converting all that possession into goals, and it was no different today. Other than that, it was a pretty good performance against a team who are getting better and better under Poyet.
That's the way I saw it too TSS, we had the ascendancy for 65+ minutes of the game and most times out of 10 we would've won the game, but in football, for whatever reason, you don't always get what you deserve. Just think if we had come back from 2 goals down and played like that, most would be satisfied, but it's a different perspective when you lose a lead. All in all I'm happier with my team's performance than I suspect a Sunderland fan is.
tbf, if you look at the teams above us and below us, we are in the position we deserve to be....7 teams who are better than us, Newcastle who are about the same as us, and a large gap before the rest. We are by far the best of the rest.
This is what frustrates me about the "new" Southampton more than anything. We can go to Anfield and win, we can hold Man City and Man Utd to draws, but we can't beat the likes of West Ham and Sunderland and Villa and Crystal Palace. It makes you want to scream!
That feels rather familiar with our history Chilco! I remember in the 80s and 90s feeling oddly confident when the likes of Newcastle and Man Utd came to The Dell, but dreading the likes of Coventry. We have a tendency to play well against teams that try and play against us - teams set up to win. It's the bashers and blockers we tend to struggle against, and they'll tend to be the teams scrapping away at the bottom.
Many moons ago a company asked a random set of fans from Arse and Chelsea concerning performance versus results. The Arse lot wanted less pretty football if it meant more trophies. The Chelsea lot were a bit bored with just being direct and wanted more entertainment. Suppose our performances vs results is a little like how the Arse have felt for the last load of seasons!
I thought we played some fantastic stuff at times today, a real joy to watch. But we do lack a truly ruthless finisher. Hopefully Osvaldo can be that man. And a fully wound up Boruc would have saved the second goal and possibly the first too.
I would say that, on balance, Poyet will be happier than Poch. But Poch will have little to complain about, other than being worried about his injured players. In fact, I'm going to look for all the post match interviews to find out.
