You can play well despite not being as creative as you want to be, especially against such a strong and well organised team. As I said I'm off now because I just don't get Saints fans I really don't. I've posted less and less recently and that is likely to continue. I genuinely feel that there is a lack of understanding, but I'm Not going to fall out with any more people.
Some games are won and some are lost. I'd rather focus on the fact that that was only our third league loss of the season, with away trips to Arsenal, West Ham, city, Leicester and united ticked off.
Everyone sees things differently, not always down to a lack of understanding. And I agree to an extent... when you do read all the way through you'll see me say a couple of times that there's no shame in losing to Chelsea/better team etc. My disappointment was the nature of the first goal and timing which played into their hands. You see it as we then dominated for a while, whereas I think they had their lead, surrendered the ball, sat off us and were confident enough that we couldn't break them down... which we couldn't. They knew they'd get chances on break too. Costa should have scored in first half and if Hazard hadn't of ****ed up a fairly simple pass Pedro would of had a one on one too. Like I say we may have had a lot of possession and terroritory forcing corners etc. But the aim of the game is to score goals. If you don't come remotely close to that - or even close to creating a chance - then I can't describe that as 'very well' personally. I actually think they were in full control of that game from as soon as the first goal went in. Not too downbeat about the result in general as thought it'd be a tough game... just my thoughts. Hope you read this before you go.
Maybe the little ceremony in the middle before the game might give a little perspective? We lost a game to one of the best, in form, teams around. We need this player and that in January? Well I suppose if you want us the win the league this year, yes. I would rather we carried on developing the Academy players as per the Southampton Way (remember that?) and I am not at home to any Corporal Jones types.
It's not really an either/or with developing the Academy. At right back, it isn't an Academy player getting minutes...it's Cuco Martina (and would be Pied if healthy), two imported stop-gaps. At CB, it isn't Stephens, it's Yoshida getting the lion's share of appearances in lieu of Fonte/Van Dijk. There's room for a good CB and a good RB without having any real effect on the development of the youngsters.
Erm, I said exactly that in the part of my post you've edited out? I don't think we dominated them in the first half though. Dominated possession perhaps but we mainly passed the ball around in front of them. It looked very nice and makes our possession stats look good but Chelsea were quite happy for us do what we were doing and kept us at arms length without any difficulty at all. Almost every time Hazard had the ball I felt a goal might be coming, I felt something was about to happen. I never had that feeling when Saints had the ball.
On MOTD2 discussing how the 5-3-2 did a job on us & stifled our attack. Much like Watford did earlier in the season, will have to come up with a way of dealing with this tactic.
I'm watching Gullit talk about this right now. That clip of Steven Davis out on the left wing was quite telling.
Nice analysis from Ruud on MOTD2 - said Southampton didn't play with enough width against the back three of Chelsea and when we did get width we were not switching the play quickly enough to the free wide man. It needed to be a decisive 30 yard cross field and not the two/three passes going side to side which allowed the compact Chelsea defensive enough time to get across
Blimey. All I can say is that you can see who was at the game today and who wasn't. We really weren't bad at all (and neither was Martina) - we were just beaten by an excellent, very well organised, smart team with a couple of world class attackers at their disposal. It happens and you take those ones on the chin.
Sorry mate I don't see my notifications on app... just saw your post as I'm about to hit sack. My bad
Yup. Can't really complain too much, we had a lot of possession and did dominate midfield at times in the first half. We couldn't break down an excellent defence and created almost no chances. No shame in that. If we had no chances against Burnley I could see reason to get upset.
Most likely it wouldn't have affected the result as we just had too many players not show up today, but I do think the heads dropped after the second goal. I think it had been a gradual frustration right up until then that on each of the 8-10 occasions that Chelsea didn't play Pulis-ball with 11 men behind the ball, and we actually looked like catching them on the break, they seemed to miraculously avoid a card from Mike Jones book despite repeatedly & cynically fouling our breaking player from behind just before or around the half-way line. They knew they could get away with it from early on, so they kept doing it unpunished. How no Chelsea player got booked today I have no idea. As I said, too many players didn't show up for this to make a difference. However, I really thought that for consistently getting something so simple wrong and allowing one side such a massive advantage because of it, I'd have put today's refereeing down as pretty poor. A one off error for a pen is one thing, but calling the same thing wrong repeatedly for a full 90 mins is another IMHO.
Good luck in the Inter game and hope you land the points. It was a pleasure sharing your matchday thread you're a good bunch of lads, very friendly!
100% agree. Hugely frustrating but you have ot say once thy knew they could do it, they did it superbly well.
