Match Day Thread Sparta Prague v Southampton Thurs 24th Nov 6pm

Took words out of my mouth Jaidi

 

Ever been to Milan before? I have so it wouldn't have been new for me. I get it can still be a good night out, but the results/performances have been bad.

 

They are rubbish, but they are my rubbish. It's too late to change. Picked the wrong team in 1968. Should have chosen Pompey. Only joking honest, you wouldn't kick an old man when he's very down.

 

Being in the San Siro with 7000 other Saints was unbelievable and something I will never forget.

 

Right? Blimey, has everyone been on the sauce?

Yeah, disappointing performance, but you know what, playing in Europe is tough. Ask some of the far bigger and better resourced teams than us. Like, I dunno, Manchester United.

We have a creativity/scoring issue. We know that and we also know that Jay is not the answer. But saying that, CP does need to rotate. We had enough to win that game, but we're going through a ropy spell in front of goal. It happens.

We need to beat Hapoel at St Mary's and we're through. We should, and probably will, manage that.

If we don't, we've got a lot further in the competition than for many years, and it's a tough gig that we'll have leaned a lot from.

Chill!

A word for Clasie tonight. Thought he and McQueen looked good.

 

Yep, what a night that was. Sometimes football is about the experience as much as the result.

 

Everton don't exactly look good right now.

 

I am on about the football on show. You can still enjoy a night out and not enjoy the footy.

 

At the front:
Redmond was flat
Rodriguez was abysmal
Long tried, but couldn't make a difference
Austin hardly touched the ball.
In the middle:
No one was playing intelligently or with consistent passion or talent.
At the back, Virgil had his worst match I've ever seen and the rest were bland at best.
Bleh!
We deserved to lose.

 

Our right hand side is the biggest problem. Martina was really bad and we had no one over lapping with him.

 

See Mr Saintlys comment.

Also we were a lot better that night than we were tonight.

Were you glad you went to Hull then?

 

I think Clasie looked decent, and Pierre made a difference as we looked worse when he came off

 

Nope.

But off to Barcelona in Jan to watch a game and have a long weekend. Hope it is better.

 

That's 3 goals and 4 points from our last 5 games in all competitions. Starting to become a lot clearer now who needs to be shipped off and it's time to be ruthless. Jay, definitely time to go - he's had enough game time now to at least show some sort of glimmer of hope that he can reproduce the form of old. Every game I forget he's even playing. Martina...everyone's summed him up better in one word than I can in several. We need to try and clone Tadic if possible - hopefully the TV money can go towards funding that research. If nothing else, I'm hoping this season is a wake up call to the board that selling your two highest goal scorers might bring in an excess of £40 million odd, but it does leave oneself slightly impotent in front of goal.

 

No denying that. Long term he's not good enough. Again though, we know that, which is why we got Pied.

 

Think we've scored 8 goals in the last 11 matches, and won only 3 of them 11.
Of the 8 scored, 2 were pens and an own goal.

 

That made me smile. If I wasn't so pissed off I might even have laughed

 

Agree with pretty much all of that but a word on the rotation.

It has worked pretty well so far but our squad isn't big/good enough to fight on all fronts and there comes a time where you have to choose what you're going to prioritise.

For me that has time has come.

I know this will be unpopular, but my personal feelings are sod the league. We're not gonna go down, and we're not gonna get top 6.

Even with rotation there's no doubt that in the same week there's been 'stronger' and 'weaker' teams. And so far the stronger teams have undoubtedly played the PL games.

That needs to change in the next couple of weeks. We have 2 massive cup games that will go a long way to deciding how good our season is. I will be pretty upset if Romeu, Virgil & Austin don't start at the Emirates next week.

 

Unfortunately, Jay is showing no signs of progressing and Martina actually appears to be going backwards. The latter needs to be permanently shipped out, whilst the former needs to be sent out on loan - with a decision then made later on whether to permanently ship out.

The really worrying thing though is that it wasn't even like we started with a bunch of kids. That front six are in our matchday squad - whether starting or on the bench - every week when available. We need a goalscoring/creating CM, and we need a top striker. But that is nothing new. Fortunately, I'm very confident of beating Hapoel and still progressing. Oh, and Sturridge wouldn't be cup tied for the KO stages

 

I went to Hull and it was a lot better than tonight. It wasn't good but it was better. We actually passed the ball to each other and had shots. Pretty basic stuff really.