Suprised how much better Bournemouth are compared to Southampton. Ripped us apart and beat us 6 - 1 :-(
You're clearly supporting the wrong team as you don't think most of our players are good enough I'm sure those that haven't been mentioned will feel honoured I'm so glad I sit in The Chapel with a bunch of top Saints fans who don't go into meltdown when we lose
You'll have to do better than that if you want to get a bite mate. Bournemouth, whatever they might think, are not our rivals.
"Premier League club in abject-performance-3-days-after-massive-European-game shocker!" All but one of the teams that played in Europe during the week failed to win this weekend. And the only team that did win, lost their European game. So basically, NOBODY was able to pull off two wins in both games. This, my friends, is what competing in Europe does, especially to smaller clubs like ourselves. It is, frankly, absurd to expect us to be able to compete on all fronts. So please, make a choice. Do you want us to aim for top 8, and write off Europe, or do you want us to go for the Europa, and settle for 12th-14th in the league? Once you decide, perhaps you will stop getting so upset that we don't win every single game. Personally, well, seeing as we're in the Europa and almost through, and seeing as the Premier League is gonna be very tough this year, then I say let's look towards the cups this season. That said, I will be quite happy if we don't qualify for Europe again next year, not unless we actually spend some money and stop selling our best players. Incidentally, which two teams are top of the league? Oh yeah, Chelsea and Liverpool, neither of whom are playing in Europe.
The old expression is After The Lord Mayor's Show. Thing is, I thought professional footballers were aware of that [especially SFC players] and were professional enough not to suffer from it. Seems not.
How is it a meltdown to point out that striker, AMC, and attacking MC are currently weak spots on the team, despite the fact that we have eight players in those positions? If we bring someone in, someone has to go. Sorry to shatter your fantasy world where Saints have 100 players and they are all awesome, and we can afford them all, and no one complains about playing time. Stop. Hoarding. Players.
Over the weekend l found myself musing over us having beaten the illustrious Inter Milan and having comprehensively out-played them over the two matches and thinking how far we have come since Inter won the treble some 6 years ago. Today l wake up and l find myself wondering how we lost to such a pathetic team as Hull City? There is no rationale that can be applied to this other than to say its what defines us called as a Saints fan - our hopes and aspirations are raised and crushed at every twist and turn - we live with it - we march on.
Inter is a pale shadow of what they once were, so people should probably not have been so impressed. We should expect to beat the 9th place Serie A team at home. I'm not saying it was easy, we played well. But it was not really much of an upset. Hull is... kind of stinky. But they are still in the Premier League and if you fall asleep, they can beat you. And that is just what happened. I think the lesson here is that you can't afford to ever take your foot off the accelerator. This was not a game where Hull got lucky. They earned their three points. But at the same time, I also acknowledge your main point. It is a funny game. We can talk about how teams should maintain a razor sharp focus at all times, but the reality is that is impossible. All teams will lose some bad games, and all teams will have some amazing upsets. It happened to us last year too, when we couldn't buy a win in January and then suddenly became the best team in the league or close to it from February on.
That's just a rational debating point and is not what I'd consider a meltdown. However, implying that we're in a relegation battle is. Vin
I know. I said I wouldn't. You seem to be missing your own statement. You listed 8 players saying they are not good enough as of now. In that list were Tadic, Bouffal and Austin. I believe that is the part people are commenting on. Tadic - creates more chances than most Premier League players Austin - Proven goal scorer who is actually scoring goals for us and on track still to finish the season with a good tally. Bouffal- really? He's played bugger all time, so you must be some soccer expert to be able to tell us he's not good enough. If your statement was being so pedantic that you were referring to "as of now" as in 6pm yesterday because we'd just lost to Hull, so none of them are good enough, then it's hardly worth acknowledging as clearly our team wasn't good enough because we lost and played poorly. Players have bad games. Somewhere I hope your statement has been lost in translation. If that's the case it would be good if you could either correct it or explain it (without calling people stupid).
ISIRTP - I know you don't like me when I point things out on your posts and often reply in a nigglymanner, but please bear with me here - I'm just tying to have a conversation and understand your view on this. This post if yours makes perfect sense. It's a sport. It's football. **** happens. Yet you don't seem to understand why a few people are questioning your post yesterday evening listing 8 players and saying they are clearly not good enough. Some players can be questioned, but as in my post just above this one, how do those three players suddenly become not good enough, especially when you consider your post I've quoted here? **** does happen and players can have bad games.
I see my decision to avoid this thread last night was correct....I could have done a spoof thread and been pretty accurate. My thoughts: 1. Saints can be annoying (we all know that). 2. We need to score when we are ahead. 3. These things happen. 4. Not important who gets the last word.
As you know things can change rapidly in this division!! Given the points spread between Watford and Hull, 5 points, and Saints only 3 in front and looking at our next two fixtures, Saints might be slipping a few more places and might only be 1 point above 18th place. Throw in a few injuries, suspensions, the heavy playing schedule with being in two cup competitions at the moment, it is smug to say Saints are not, despite the good quality of players in the squad. And who is to say that one of the big clubs, say Chelsea or Manchester City won't put in a bid of £35m for the best defender in the PL (Virgil), and snaffle him away in the next transfer window?
Agreed. I did well Fran - I hardly read any of the thread, made a post and then came away from it for the rest of the evening. I made a mistake of reading the last page today
The last page was enough. Games like this happen...hope the team has learnt from it. The world hasn't ended....if we had to win one of the last two games, I would have chosen the Milan one.
Irrespective of the result and not keeping our foot on their throats after the goal, I never get how/why some people are so negative at away games, especially the longer trips. The group behind us yesterday were continuously moaning. all game not just after going behind, all of them seeming to play off each other with agreement. First half - "this is boring" when we were 1-0 up and very much in control. Second half after going behind "we always do this"... we don't always do this! Granted there was a time when it happened a lot but less so these days. Recently Arsenal away (sickener) and Chelsea at home last season are the only ones that spring to mind in terms of dropping points from winning positions. Oh and west ham away last Christmas I suppose. Why do people bother travelling so far just to moan? Also despite Maya having a great game they were giving him acres of space on the right and I can't help but wonder whether we might have exploited that a bit more with Martina in the second half...
I'm finding the forum a bit like my larder. I know what's in it. I like what's in it. I want to have some of what's in it, but I know that too much of it is not good for me. I fight the temptation! I feel as if, just like my larder, I'm doing quite well recently in self discipline and beating the temptation. * just had in-laws family here for the weekend, so on top of the rather heavy weekend, the larder has some goodies left over from the weekend (food and drink). To help me with the fight against temptation, I got on the scales this morning to see how much damage the weekend did. We're ok... ish.
Agree. There was acres of space for the right player. For all his defensive abilities, Yoshida is no right winger. If it makes any sense at all, this game was too easy for us. We got lulled into playing it more like a practice game in the first half and then for 5 minutes just lost concentration. To be fair we battled hard after that and could have had 2 or 3 in the closing minutes. My one complaint really is the number of times we get it into the box 'hit and hope' balls and not a controlled pass to a specific player. Watching Chelsea on Saturday was like a master class on how it should be done. Can't wait for Boufal to show that he's, "better than Hazard".
