Not for the first time this season, it feels as if fate has pissed in our champagne. C'est la vie I suppose.
Too many people like that. We've been playing that way for a while now and I for one am not keen on it.
I'm not either, but it's doubly frustrating when we're lobbing aerial balls (against Stoke, no less) while rendering it utterly pointless by leaving the contesting player with nothing but opposing players in their vicinity.
Yep. Combining the spread-the-pitch positioning of an Arsenal with the aerial attack of Stoke makes for some supremely awful football.
I think we've been a victim of our own early success. Teams suddenly realised they needed to stop us. We didn't have too many Ideas then to open teams up. It's ok though as its been a great season. Ronald is also learning and shown what an excellent coach and leader he is. I am enthralled at how he will tackle season two. My bet is we sign some quality creativity.
My guess is that he'll try to build a higher tempo side...our early season success saw us flooding forward at every turn, making quick one-touch passes and aggressive runs, and I suspect that is Ronald's ideal. Not sitting back to counter, but getting men running at exposed defenders before a bank of mids can establish. A central attacking playmaker would help there, as would a Benkeke-esque striker.
I wouldn't rule him out. I'd say it's 50/50. I guessed right away what it was, and it's actually good news as it's usually a simple recovery. The shoulder dislocation itself is not a big deal. It hurts like nobody's business but once it's put back in place, it is essentially fixed. It's the collateral damage to all your ligaments and muscles and stuff from the initial dislocation caused by your bone being in the wrong place and bashing and stretching things. They may have to take an MRI to assess that. But if there's no fractures or torn ligaments or anything, everything is pretty simple. You just immobolize the arm and wait for the tissue damage to heal. If you're young, healthy, and a little lucky, you could make it back in f3-4 weeks. Alderweireld has 5.
Well i cant believe how we lost that game. Saints were superior to Stoke all afternoon apart from putting the bloody ball in the net, which does help ! I thought we played well for large parts of the game, but have def lost the knack of scoring goals. Never mind onwards and upwards, at least there was no traffic on the roads today !
Come away absolutely gutted and angry having lost to that bunch of hackers and thugs. Anyone who says how much Stoke have changed their style this season wasn't watching that game. Really disappointed in supposedly our top referee who right from the start let them get away with appalling tactics whilst pulling us up for everything. Stroke combine thuggery and diving. As my son said after only a couple of minutes, we are going to get nothing from this ref and he was right apart from four bookings and lots of cuts and bruises No way we should have lost a game in which we had so much control regardless of them kicking the wot sit out of us Ahhhhhh
I feel like we're usually a little better about it in the first half. But we seem to run out of ideas at some point, especially when behind and by the last 20 minutes or so it's all long ball. Today was a little extra disappointing because you know that is how Stoke is set up to play. Mane's speed was giving them fits, so why abandon that and play right into their hands? But also Bertrand and Clyne were both rather quiet today, so we weren't getting much joy down the flanks. And Tadic and Davis weren't at their best either. All we really had was Mane.
Just back from the game. Ironically, we played much better in the second half than we did in the first, but conceded two goals and failed to score. We responded very well after conceding such a poor goal so soon after HT. Tadic had the big chance to score when he had one cleared off the line, but we did enough to get a second. Despite conceding the two goals, we defended very comfortably for the majority of that game, Maya and Jose in particular. Morgan was also very good in midfield today. Honest opinion was that Pelle was dreadful today, and very frustrating. Couldn't get himself into any good positions in the box, and his touch let him down many times. Still, we are at least 10 points above this lot even with them beating us.
I thought most of our yellows were probably yellows, but he was very reluctant, almost deliberately so, to give yellows to any Stoke players. We didn't get many 50/50 decisions either, but he was no worse than usual.
